On the ‘Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: UK Government Action Plan’
As anyone interested in the politics and wider adoption of FOSS will know by now, the UK Government recently released an updated policy statement regarding “Open Source and Open Standards”. I made a brief comment on it when the news broke, but have now had more time to consider the document in more depth.
Firstly, It’s quite minor but nevertheless a shame that the pdf document was issued using Arial and Times New Roman embedded fonts that are not available on a free license. This leads me nicely to my second general point.
Why is there no mention of “Free Software“? There is a distinction between Open Source and Free software that, for some at least, is extremely important.
Anyway, having now read the pdf policy document in full, I want to air my thoughts on it.
After the preamble and introduction, in ‘The Way Forward’ we read this:
The Government considers that in order to deliver its key objectives a programme of positive action is now needed to ensure that there is an effective „level playing field‟ between open source and proprietary software and to realise the potential contribution open source software can make to wider aims of re-use and open standards. This programme needs to consist both of a more detailed statement of policies and of practical actions by government and its suppliers.
Notice how this is discussing a programme to generate policy statements and actions. I actually reckon this is really good stuff but am a little concerned about the fact there aren’t any demonstrable programmes or actions already created. In other words, it looks like we’ll have to wait for the bureaucrats to get their ink flowing before anything “real” happens. There are some actions at the end of the document, and although they are worthy in themselves they are rather broad and easy to spend years developing. Small, precise, tactical actions are what is required IMHO.
The objectives of the “programme” itself are pretty darn good from what I can tell. They read like a manifesto from RMS himself…
1. ensure that the Government adopts open standards and uses these to communicate with the citizens and businesses that have adopted open source solutions.
Nice – can I send documents to my MP or local council in ODF today then? (see toward the end of this piece) I don’t use any proprietary software in my business nor home (apart from my wife’s PC that is shortly to become Free too).
2. ensure that open source solutions are considered properly and, where they deliver best value for money (taking into account other advantages, such as re-use and flexibility) are selected for Government business solutions.
Once you do really take into account “re-use” it gets pretty hard to see how proprietary software represents value for money [“Sure Mr. Brown, just buy one copy of Office 2010 and re-use it across the country!”]. I look forward to seeing some detail here and the procurement guidlines for “properly” considering open source solutions.
5. ensure that there are no procedural barriers to the adoption of open source products within government, paying particular regard to the different business models and supply chain relationships involved.
Nice. Good objective.
The next section (6) is called “Policy” and stipulates the policy in broad but laudable terms:
(1) The Government will actively and fairly consider open source solutions alongside proprietary ones in making procurement decisions,
(2) 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.
(3) 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.
(4) 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.
These first policy item is sort of a catch-all but is quite vague and unmeasurable. I really want to see how they intend to implement, monitor and correct the bad procurement decisions.
The second and third points are indeed measurable and quite clear in their demands which is great.
The forth sounds very promising but again I’d want to know the detail; how the overall cost of the procurement can really be measured when you are comparing apples and oranges. This is a very difficult one to get right and the commercial vendors have many years of practice at coming up with exceptionally (ahem) creative pricing.
The Policy then goes onto non-open source software guidance:
Non-Open Source Software
(5) The Government will, wherever possible, avoid becoming locked in to proprietary software. In particular it will take exit, rebid and rebuild costs into account in procurement decisions and will require those proposing proprietary software to specify how exit would be achieved.
(6) Where non open source products need to be purchased, Government will expect licences to be available for all public sector use and for licences already purchased to be transferable within the public sector without further cost or limitation. The Government will where appropriate seek pan-government agreements with software suppliers which ensure that government is treated as a single entity for the purposes of volume discounts and transferability of licences.
Nice: “The Government will, wherever possible, avoid becoming locked in to proprietary software.” A fine objective if ever I read one.
I’m not sure about number 6 though. I guess it depends largely on existing contracts as to the flexibility they have with their current licenses but this must be sending shivers through Redmond right now.
Open Standards didn’t get much coverage. I guess it says what it must but open standards are one of the reasons we have FOSS today. The IETF who gave us amongst others RFC 793 and 791 (without which the Internet wouldn’t exist) and the W3C who protect and publish the open specifications for the world wide web are light-years ahead of the ISO as we have seen recently with the OOXML debacle. At least this part of the policy will be very easy to monitor. Send your Doctor, MP or Councillor an ODF document for example.
For IT and digital standards, the ISO is becoming totally redundant. Thinking back to when I was a lad, we had X.25, X.400, X.500, the ISO 7 layer reference model OSI and a ludicrously complex network management protocol known as CMIP. In their full specifications, these are all virtually obsolete now although some have been used in a cut-down form for modern standards like LDAP for example. But the reality is the ISO/ITU (CCITT) take too long, and try to be too clever. So Mr Brown and Mr. Watson, please do be careful – there are standards, and then there are standards…
The “Re-use” section gets really interesting and shows quite a good understanding of what FOSS is all about. But how on earth do they expect to achieve this
… look to secure full rights to bespoke software code or customisations of commercial off the shelf products it procures, so as to enable straightforward re-use elsewhere in the public sector.
without paying an arm and a leg for it. Can you imagine Larry or Steve agreeing to giving “full rights” (whatever that means) without a blank cheque? I can’t. In the same paragraph the following sentence is a really excellent policy:
Where appropriate, general purpose software developed for government will be released on an open source basis.
In the US public sector they have, for some time I believe, had a policy that basically means stuff created by and on-behalf of the public belongs to the public and is in the public domain. When I read stuff like this from what is the most draconian Government we have had in generations I am somewhat sceptical and really wonder how much actual input Number 10 and the policy makers have had in this document. The state that wants to restrict the citizen’s liberty whilst protecting the state itself so judiciously doesn’t feel like the same state that will write open source software. Time will tell on this one.
In the final section “Action Plan” there are 10 actions presented for the Government. These actions cover producing published guidance on procurement which will include words like:
a standard form of words for Statements of Requirements to state positively that the Government’s policy is to consider open source solutions on their merits according to total lifetime cost of ownership.
and
The CIO Council and the OGC, working with industry and drawing on best practice from other countries, will institute a programme of education and capability-building for the Government IT and Procurement professions on the skills needed to evaluate and make the best use of open source solutions . The aim will be to raise the level of awareness, skills and confidence in the professions in the different licensing, support, commercial and cost models associated with open source solutions.
Which is very interesting to an Open Source Consulting Business like my own 😉
As is the following which I feel is particularly strongly worded compared with the rest of the document:
Government Departments will challenge their suppliers to demonstrate that they have capability in open source and that open source products have been actively considered in whole or as part of the business solution which they are proposing. Where no overall open source solution is available suppliers will be expected to have considered the use of open source products within the overall solution to optimise the cost of ownership. Particular scrutiny will be directed where mature open source products exist and have already been used elsewhere in government. Suppliers putting forward non-open source products will be asked to provide evidence that they have carefully considered open source alternatives and to explain why they have been rejected.
Well, well, well:
The Government will specify requirements by reference to open standards and require compliance with open standards in solutions where feasible. It will support the use of Open Document Format (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) as well as emerging open versions of previously proprietary standards (eg ISO 19005-1:2005 (“PDFâ€) and ISO/IEC 29500 (“Office Open XML formatsâ€). It will work to ensure that government information is available in open formats, and it will make this a required standard for government websites.
Can I say that again… “The Government will support the use of ODF” and a lovely phrase for OOXML “open versions of previously proprietary standards”. That’s possibly the kindest description of the worst specification ever written. Kudos for the clear mandate for ODF.
The last action is probably the most important of the lot:
Government will communicate this policy and its associated actions widely and will expand it as necessary. It will engage with the Open Source community and actively encourage projects that might, in due course, develop into „Government Class‟ products. It will keep the policy and progress on the actions under review, and report on progress publicly.
Firstly, I want to see how this policy is going to be communicated to the huge oil tanker called the UK Government. Secondly, it is spot on to want to engage with the FOSS Community but they will have to put in place some mechanisms, resources, on-line locations etc. where this engagement can take place. And the Government will have to learn very fast that for FOSS to work, the community has to collaborate in all directions and its members must give as much, if not more, than they take to get real benefit. It’s a bit like love… The more you give, the more you get back.
My biggest concern with this is the executive. Over the last 10 years or so their insistence on draconian lawmaking and interference in our liberty does make me sceptical about the commitment from the top dogs and hence the drive to pull this off. But, I will support this effort in whatever way I can until that scepticism is either proved wrong or right.
To conclude this rather long post then, I think this could be a huge and historical turning point in the health of FOSS here in the UK and I am very excited about the tone and sentiment behind this policy document. The authors (Our Government) have started to roll a very large ball down a very long slope. If the current Government do not take this seriously, or should the administration change and turn away, then the ball will roll out of control. If they do what they say and keep close to the community then I honestly believe there could a very bright future ahead of us.
The Economics of Free: For Free
Remember the short piece I posted about the Radio 4 programme “In Business” a couple of weeks ago? Well, very kindly, the programme’s editor has provided me with a transcript of programme to
please use as you wish, but it has not been checked for accuracy. Good luck.
I have just read and listened again and didn’t find anything glaring although I did fix one rather amusing typo: “Linux Colonel” to “Linux Kernel”. It was sent to me as a Microsoft .doc file. I opened it in OpenOffice.org and exported it as a PDF so it should be readable by virtually everyone.
This programme does provide some excellent answers to the types of questions we repeatedly get asked in our day-to-day business:
- “How do they/you make money from Open Source”
- “Why should you/they give it away?”
So for those of you who get asked these sorts of questions and would like some non-technobable answers from a rather reputable source to use, the transcript can be downloaded in it’s entirety, for free, from our website here. On that page, there is also a link to the BBC’s permanent archive so the podcast can be retrieved too. As an interesting titbit, in his email with me, the editor said that about 600k people download the programme every month!
And just to whet your appetite, here is quite a nice quote from Chris Anderson – the editor of Wired…
… Microsoft’s financial success is about taking a product whose underlying economics are zero, the marginal costs of reproducing software is zero, and charging $300 for it. You know incredible net profit margins. Unfortunately, economics always wins. People recognised that the underlying economics of distributing software were zero and so they were like okay, so Microsoft is getting monopoly profits because they are in fact a monopoly. What we need to do is break the monopoly. Not, as it turns out, by regulation and regulator, but instead the marketplace broke the monopoly.
If you are involved in any way with the promotion of FOSS and/or CC then this really is well worth listening too and or reading,
And although the editor didn’t provide any specific license conditions with the document, I plan to repsect the BBC’s copyright, and provide suitable attribution when and where we use snippets etc; something like this http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/ perhaps.
Microsoft Holes Exploited Again
As if the last security hole in Internet Explorer was not enough, here’s yet another reason to drop Microsoft Software. This time it’s their cash-cow, Office:
Attackers are exploiting the just-patched vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) by hiding malicious ActiveX controls in Microsoft Word documents, according to security researchers.
“Inside the document is an ActiveX control, and in that control is a line that makes it call out to the site that’s hosting the malware,” said David Marcus, the director of security research and communications for McAfee’s Avert Labs. “This is a pretty insidious way to attack people, because it’s invisible to the eye, the communication with the site.”
This all reminds me of a sieve – full of holes.
If I was a small business using Microsoft application software today, I would be dropping it faster than a red-hot rock. If I was a CTO I would be planning now how to migrate away.
OpenOffice.org will protect you from malicious ActiveX in documents, Firefox for web browsing and Thunderbird for email will do the same whilst allowing you to continue to use the Windows OS as you plan the final step to freedom. Ubuntu will complete the process.
If you need help, there are companies out there who can provide support and technical assistance. 😉
A new social networking site just for Alans
I would like to announce the launch of a new social networking site, specifically catering to the needs of people called Alan*.
The idea came to me after a Friday night in my local pub, and being told by one of our colleagues at Canonical, that we are now simply known as “The Alans”. Funnily the chaps at Elonex usually call us that too…
If you are an Alan, or know one, then head on over to http://thealans.com where you will meet up with literally several like-named people. If you happen not to be called Alan then you can still register and take a look around, but we might just delete your profile after a few weeks. The site is based on the Elgg social networking platform. If you think your company could use facebook-like technology as an internal tool that you can control then give me a shout and we can help you get started with Elgg.
* Alternative spellings are of course acceptable as are gender alternatives such as Alana, Allana and Alanis.
UK Government Finally Sanctions Open Source! [Updated]
The Inquirer has broken the news that the UK Government, helped by BECTA, has finally approved at least two companies to be official suppliers of Open Source Software into our Education sector.
OPEN SOURCE companies have been granted official permission to supply software to the UK public sector for the first time in British history.
At least two Open Source software suppliers have been awarded places on the £80 million Software for Educational Institutions Framework, making them official suppliers to UK schools and scoring a victory in what has been a long and frustrating battle against favouritism shown to conventional commercial software companies in UK politics and procurement.
One of the suppliers is Sirius IT run by Mark Taylor.
Mark, here’s many congratulations from us at The Open Learning Centre. You have been a fantastic advocate for OSS for many years and this award to supply is thoroughly deserved. We wish your company every success.
Novell are apparently another “named” party to the supplier framework and having been long-time sponsors of the OSS eco-system also deserve congratulations. Now, if only they’d drop the deal-with-the-devil…
Novell didn’t make it; Becta have just announced and released the list of the 12 suppliers. And as Glyn Moody also considers, the “pact with the Devil” in which Novell sold its identity to Microsoft probably means that it isn’t such a bad thing in reality. By way of support, the article I wrote just 6 weeks ago “How to remove Mono from Ubuntu…” was, and remains, the most read piece on the whole blog. And almost all of the 50+ comments are in support of the objective. Clearly there isn’t much appetite for tainited code in FLOSS from the enlightened…
Our new website
I switched on our new website this morning. It has taken far longer than I anticipated, but these things always do don’t they?
The layout and general idea is my own design, although the colour palette itself came from here which I thought was a brilliant resource. Using the search tool, I had the main colour for our Logo (#D40000) and this site threw up several ideas which were very nice indeed. I liked Rich Choice Lighten the most.
The initial idea for the menu came from Stu Nicholls’ excellent site CSS Play. I tried to use this menu in my original design but it didn’t play well with Joomla! and the accursed IE6 browser – man that is one bad web browser. So I opted for the really great swMenuFree native Joomla! module instead.
The site is running on Joomla! 1.5 and is still a WIP (Work In Progress) but then it probably always will be to be honest. There’s quite a bit of content still to do – mainly around the technology section – adding and describing applications that we feel are important and deserve covering. But now the framework is in place we can add to it fairly easily.
I will be packaging the template up shortly. It’s GPL and will be available for download from the site, probably under the resources section somewhere.
Any comments about it are very welcome. Our old site badly needed a refresh and this is quite a big change, although I definitely think it is more professional looking.
