Wednesday 25^th June 2003

Open Source Bill Gathers Momentum

"The Democrat Open Source Bill is looking likely to pass through the Upper House." Said Ian Gilfillan, Democrat spokesperson on Science and the Information Economy.

Mr Gilfillan has introduced a Bill compelling government purchasers to consider Open Source Software when making future software purchases.

The opposition have expressed interest in the Bill and Ian is negotiating with the Shadow Minister for Innovation and Information Economy for their support in passing the Bill in the Upper House.

Key independents in the lower house have also expressed interest, so there is a good chance that it will go forward.

Mr Gilfillan said: "The intent of the Bill is to increase the profile of Open Source Software to the point where government departments need to have good reason for buying proprietary software, rather than the old 'no one ever got sacked for buying Microsoft' approach that is more common at the moment.

The core of the Bill is as follows:

"A public authority must, in making a decision about the procurement of
computer software for its operations, have regard to the principle that, wherever practicable, a public authority should use open source software in preference to proprietary software."

Mr Gilfillan went on to say: "This Bill came about because the Democrats have a long history of fostering innovation in Australia. We could see that the Open Source Community was achieving good things, but kept hearing about individual efforts being frustrated at the local level. Meanwhile Peru, Germany, New Zealand etc... are making headway with major open source projects.

"South Australia has a reputation for ICT innovation and this is an area where small governments, and small companies can carve out a fertile niche for themselves.

"The whole Open Source Movement sits well with Democrat principles. It is inherently participatory, and provides for the common good, allowing each participant to leverage from the efforts of those who have gone before.

"Access to open source projects is vital for education and development of software architects in the future, and the Democrats see South Australia as having high potential in ICT development.

"Australia already has a good reputation in the Open Source Movement, with the Samba suite (that allows Linux boxes to seamlessly integrate within Microsoft Networks) being a good example of projects that are developed and maintained here.

"South Australia is hosting the Australian Linux conference in January next year, and it would be good to be able to report some major Open Source installations in government at that time.

"I also like the idea that one department can customise code to suit our environment, and then easily publish those changes for the benefit of the whole of South Australia, promoting code re-use and assisting in the achievement of value for money.