Quebec’s Open Source association FACIL(Google Translated) is suing the Gov’t of Quebec because Quebec has refused to open tenders for software and support to local vendors. Quebec is using an exemption in law that allows them to buy proprietary where no other options exist. (Cough, BS.)
Good for FACIL, I hope they win. I also hope that other Municipal and Provincial governments as well as the Federal gov’t get off their duff and start moving towards Open Source Software. Usually it is license free, it is always better code, and service and support can be provided by local vendors because they have access to the internals. OSS allows gov’t to create a more diverse knowledge based economy and allows it to support it’s citizenry rather than the Seattle and San Jose economies.
Cheers,
lance
People who would tell you that OSS costs more, are the same people who would try to sell snow to an Eskimo, as the saying goes.
I hope the lawsuit works, because this has been a major failing of Canada’s schools and governments for at least the last decade. The rest of the world (minus the USA) has been getting ahead of us, as usual.
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L.J. That doesn’t sound right. When the developing company is gone, you either rebuild (you don’t have the code), or you hire programmers (with OSS).
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There’s something so strange about SDA advocating for such a socialist concept like OSS. It’s no wonder Lance has met with so much opposition in the comments.
SaskBoy:
1) this is in Quebec. They have their own legal standards and there’s no sense trying to make sense of it, and making recommendations without a deep understanding of their legal history? Probably pretty shaky ground.
2) Free Software is about as far away from socialist as you can get. It’s designed to augment and be a core component of free market capitalism — it’s Microsoft and their ‘let the state-sanctioned monopolistic bureaucracy worry about it’ approach that is anti-capitalism. Even richard stallman, who’s a hippy in every other respect, made sure to stay neutral on this issue.
Also most of the people posting in response to lance seem to not be opposing him so much as telling the other side of the story…I see no reason why they almost all can’t be right(lance: linux has low TCO compared to vista, others: but there are issues X Y Z). Vista is a disaster, and doesn’t even look as polished as some of the stuff in the new ubuntu.