Living together BUT not married: RR/MC and Linux

[David Bovill]

On 22 Nov 2005, at 21:26, Marielle Lange wrote:

> David Bovill wrote:
>
>> Government contracts do not require that all tools and code used  
>> is open source (I think this would not even be legal).
>
> Unfortunately, this is not clear. I have been in discussion with  
> the guys of this project: http://eduforge.org/projects/exe/. I  
> tried to lure them into using revolution to develop open source.  
> They told me they couldn't because their current contract impose  
> the exclusive use of open source software and tools.

Did a little checking - interesting project!

Unusual policy / reply though? Even SourceForge is fine with allowing  
Revolution based open source projects (I have a couple of such  
projects registered but not used as moving to SVN - SourceForge is  
very slow).

It's a New Zealand based initiative? Also appears to have nothing  
much to do with government funding / contracts? If so it is entirely  
up to them how they set their own membership criteria for projects  
(law doesn't enter into the picture).

As for government based tenders - I have yet to come across one which  
rules out proprietary tools (even in the deliverables) - just an  
indicated preference. Admittedly this is mainly UK / EU based. In my  
discussions with people / funders with regard to this - there was  
some indication that this was because it was considered to fall foul  
of anti-competition laws. There was also a strong suggestion that  
this was largely in response to very strong Microsoft lobbying at EU  
level specifically targeted at minimising the impact of open source  
on government contracts.

Nothing really clear here - just gossip - so don't quote me on it.

But i would be interested in any examples of clear government  
tenders / explicit policies that do insist on only pure open source  
tools being used?

AFAIK this is rarely if ever the case, and if so it comes down to  
marketing / lobbying at the level of the jury. How many "open source  
zealots" are represented, and how well are we able to communicate  
that Revolution can play an important role in effective delivery of  
open source strategies / migration in government sectors? Being able  
to point to a successful open source project in which Revolution  
plays a key development role would swing many of these people.