On 19/11/11 21:03, Avi Greenbury wrote: > Chris Rowson wrote: > >> The bit that jumped out at me personally was the legal definition of >> open source as a product rather than a feature. I wondered if this >> might make it difficult to specify open source as a requirement in a >> tender (because it seems that as far as the legal definition in the >> UK goes, you're then specifying a product)? > > I suspect it's mostly down to government procurement not really > understanding software - there's little else that the government buys > which comes with a license other than standard copyright law. > > When government does buy software
One of the things that arose in the meeting I took part in was that experience had shown that procurement took place from a published catalogue. This contained such as proprietary software and iirc the libre software products would not be included at all in the catalogue because no one had funded the various approvals required (type testing?) The subsequent strategy documents I think included a method of correcting this oversight/difficulty. Also a recent statement asserted that FLOSS was as secure and worthy as any software: CESG asserts security of open source software: Senior information assurance official says new guidance dispels myths about security. http://bit.ly/rR33JH -- alan cocks Ubuntu user -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
