[plug] OSS too risky for Gov to make mandatory.

[James Devenish]

In message <d12e5c904090703503c8a8a87 at mail.gmail.com>
on Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 06:50:43PM +0800, Senectus . wrote:
> http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/0,2000061733,39158367,00.htm
> 
> I actually agree, but then I've never thought that it should be mandatory.
> But it should at least be mandatory to consider it.

Indeed. I assume it's possible to argue that open formats, protocols and
standards should be mandatory in a number of areas, but this stance of
"informed neutrality" for product selection sounds much more sensible
than a mandatory OSS criterion. On the other hand, there may be specific
applications where public source-code visibility *should* be mandatory.
I think election systems were discussed on this list with that view. Of
course, source availability doesn't ensure that the "the right people"
will discover the flaws.

As for the phrase "It would be a risky move if government were to
mandate open source software," I presume it would be equivalently risky
to mandate non open-source software. Another idea that was mentioned was
that of having government ensure that it have an explicit right to
obtain full (but confidential) access to the proprietary internals of
applications. Not that this would guarantee anything in practice.

By the way:
    OSS torpedoed: Royal Navy will run on Windows for Warships
    By John Lettice
    <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/06/ams_goes_windows_for_warships/>