David A. Wheeler's Blog

Thu, 26 Feb 2009

2009 UK Action Plan for Open Source Software

A new report from the UK titled Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan is in the news; it’s been reported by the BBC, Times Online, and Ars Technica (among many others).

Here’s the first paragraph of its foreword: “Open Source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the last two decades: it has shown that individuals, working together over the Internet, can create products that rival and sometimes beat those of giant corporations; it has shown how giant corporations themselves, and Governments, can become more innovative, more agile and more cost-effective by building on the fruits of community work; and from its IT base the Open Source movement has given leadership to new thinking about intellectual property rights and the availability of information for re–use by others.”

In the policy section, it says that (note the last point):

• “The Government will actively and fairly consider open source solutions alongside proprietary ones in making procurement decisions,
• Procurement decisions will be made on the basis on the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total lifetime cost of ownership of the solution, including exit and transition costs, after ensuring that solutions fulfil minimum and essential capability, security, scalability, transferability, support and manageability requirements.
• The Government will expect those putting forward IT solutions to develop where necessary a suitable mix of open source and proprietary products to ensure that the best possible overall solution can be considered.
• Where there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products, open source will be selected on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility.”

Remarkable stuff.

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