[plug] SA open source bill

[Denis Brown]

Waaayyy back at 19:48 17/06/2003 +0800, Chris Caston wrote:
>On Tue, 2003-06-17 at 19:22, Chris Caston wrote:
> > Looks like we are finally moving with the rest of the world and MS is
> > going into reactionary mode again:
> >
> >
> > http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/16/1055615720403.html
> >
> > regards,
> >
> > Chris

Silly me.   I e-mailed The Hon. Mike Rann expressing appreciation for his 
government's consideration of Open Source.   That was on the 17th 
June.   Now a full month later I have a written - as in postal mail - 
reply[1] from his Minister Weatherill for among other things, Gambling, 
basically saying nothing in two typewritten pages.   The nub of the 
nothingness though is that "generally, open source software is not yet seen 
by the marketplace to be suitable for fundamental business functions."   In 
part this is because the Commonwealth Government "has not promulgated a 
specific policy on agency use of OSS and will not be rushing to do so."

I infer that is a "gamble" on Microsoft as being the stayer.   If I felt it 
worthwhile, I'd give him a serve but why waste the energy?

Cheers,
Denis

[1] A couple of days after sending the e-mail, I had a 'phonecall asking 
for my postal address because they "could not reply by e-mail!"   Ahhh... 
the technology.   Maybe I should put my mechanical skills to use and offer 
my services to them as a sharpener of quill pens?   Typewriter repairer?