From my Technopinoy blog, Jeff Ian Dy, a senior staff member of Teddy Casino, provides a link to the updated version of House Bill 5769, otherwise known as the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) bill. It’s much better now and the points which I had earlier raised seemed to have been addressed.
For those serious about legitimizing open source solutions, now is the time to provide feedback. Jeff did promise he’ll drop by my blog from time to time.
4 comments
The FOSS Bill promotes open source, and that is beneficial to the government and eventually to Filipinos in general.
The current software acquisition environment for the government is NOT a level playing field. Proprietary vendors are able to leverage the current dominance of proprietary platforms to sell even more proprietary software. They also encourage fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about FOSS by claiming FOSS will either not be able to match proprietary software features, or by exaggerating the effort required to move to FOSS. The ignorance of many in government about FOSS also plays into the greedy hands of these FUD-mongering proprietary software peddlers.
The bottom line is that FOSS needs a little help, and that is what this bill does.
The bill mandates a preference for software that gives certain freedoms to users and developers (this is the result of the different FOSS licenses). It does not favor any technology, platform, vendor, or any source of software. It does favor the FREEDOMS given by the FOSS licenses, and there’s no reason why this should not be the case. It is just a good a standard for evaluating software as any other standard.
The Philippines stands to benefit from the FOSS bill. Congress should pass it ASAP!!!
More than anything else this bill is pushing toward Open Standards. And such open standard need to have a concrete technology that implements it which happens to be in the realm of FOSS. Enforcing/Implementing Open Standards is not only a Goverment endeavor but other sectors are to contribute as well, especially, the education sector.
Contrary to being an anti-free market the Bill is promoting the knowledge to educators and students on what constitute open standards. Therefore, when these new students become IT providers they are to know first hand how to implement a system that complies to “Open Standards”.
Therefore, it is with the objectivity that we should look at the FOSS Bill and, as FOSS have proven, it does not cripple the IT industry but encourage local innovators.