Canadian Government Considers Open Source

The Canadian Government has put out a "Request For Information" (RFI) - essentially, a formal invitation for feedback on the topic.

Rather amusingly, the RFI speaks of "No-Charge Licensed Software":

Canada has a Request for Information (RFI) related to No-Charge Licensed Software (typically referred to as Free and Open Source Software or FOSS and also applicable to freeware). For the purpose of the RFI, No Charge Licensed Software means Licensed Software that is available at no charge for the Licensed Software and is typically made available as a free download from the Internet. No Charge Licensed Software may also have No Charge Software Support Services (NCSSS) available at no charge from the Internet.

The general aim of the request is as follows:

The purpose of the RFI is to help the Government of Canada (GC) put together guidelines related to the planning, acquisition, use and disposal of No Charge Licensed Software (NCLS). While there is already significant interest for No Charge Licensed Software within the Government of Canada there are many questions being asked, see below. There exists operationally a requirement to produce common guidelines that are fair, open and transparent and can be applied consistently across departments.

The objective of the RFI is to provide an opportunity for those interested to provide information they feel Canada should be aware of when developing internal guidelines related to the planning, usage and disposal of No Charge Licensed Software. Information that would be relevant to the development of guidelines will be appreciated. The information provided will be reviewed by Canada, as part of a process of producing No Charge Licensed Software Guidelines for Government of Canada End-Users.

There are also a series of specific questions the Canadian Government would like answered, which give a better idea of what its thinking about:

Q1. In the Overview, the Crown provided a definition for No Charge Licensed Software. Is this an appropriate definition?

Q2. What are reasonable criteria that the Crown should consider in a decision process for acquiring No Charge Licensed Software? Are there circumstances in which the acquisition of No Charge Licensed Software would not be advisable?

Q3. What factors other than price should be considered as part of an evaluation guideline for No Charge Licensed Software? Are there other factors beyond those outlined in Appendix A & B that the Crown should consider?

Q4. How should existing Government Furnished Equipment, Services, Service Level Agreements and internal resources be considered when evaluating the usage of No Charge Licensed Software?

Q5. How practical is No Charge Licensed Software? Are there hidden costs that need to be considered as part of the process of evaluating the alternatives available?

Q6. What are the general financial, technical and security risks associated with acquiring and using No Charge Licensed Software?

Q7. How do Open Standards and interoperability factor into evaluation considerations?

Q8. How does the technology factor into the evaluation consideration, such as ability to maintain and evergreen?

Q9. How does the Crown evaluate the flexibility of the licensing models for No Charge Licensed Software?

Q10. What impact will No Charge Licensed Software have on Government Licensed End-User Networks?

Obviously the Canadians are taking a rather cautious approach here, but it seems that they are seriously considering using more free software. You can submit your comments (in English or French) until the 19 February.

Of Blogs and Microblogging

The eagle-eyed among you (everyone, surely), will have noticed the sudden excrudescence of a widget to the right. Since this represents the rude irruption of that upstart Twitter among the peaceful glades of Blogger, I feel some explanation is in order.

I've only been using Twitter for about a month, but I've found a what seems to me a fairly natural use for it alongside Open... and my Open Enterprise blog: posting stuff that doesn't really merit a full-on blog post, but is worthy of a quick mention.

So the idea of including a few tweets on this blog is to offer a few quick links or ideas that might be of interest to readers of this blog, without them needing to subscribe to Twitter or even leave this page.

It's meant to add, not take away, and nothing else will be changing in terms of what I blog about (except that I probably won't be posting anything really short, since that is likely to end up on Twitter.)

I intend running this page in its present form for a while to see how people like it. Please feel free to let me know whether you love or loathe it. I may also tweak some of its parameters - number of tweets etc. - so thoughts on that, too, would be welcome.

Why Open Knowledge Will Ultimately Beat Closed

Because:

each user of the knowledge pool becomes a contributor back to the pool. As the pool grows it is ever more attractive to new users so they use (and contribute) to it rather than to any competing closed set of knowledge. This results in a strong positive feedback mechanism.