Re: [Fsfe-uk] OSS Pol.v2 redraft response redraft

[Lee Braiden]

On Tuesday 14 Sep 2004 20:08, Alex Hudson wrote:
> So, what I'm trying to say in the above is
> that when you're working out what "best value" is in the context of your
> procurement, you need to see all the other value free software gives
> you, not just look at the cost.

Oh, okay, cool.  All those Microsoft-sponsored cost-of-ownership charts must 
have convinced me that free software is always cheaper ;)

> Yeah. This is a difficult line to push. Being a hard-nosed git; I
> strongly suspect that any kind of "you should prefer free software"
> policy would be indefensible (for reasons of competitiveness at least),
> and generally Gov. steers away from prescriptivism (or, at least, tries
> to ;).

Yes, I suppose, despite myself, I agree.

We could look to the Peruvian response to Microsoft, for a defense of 
legislating in favor of free software.  They did just that.  But yes... it's 
probably a hard line to push, and it's probably best not to rush into 
something like that.  Perhaps, even if we did have a well-reasoned and 
articulte document covering those issues, it still wouldn't be appropriate 
for this response.

> This is something that we allude to in
> our response - maybe there are other suggestions along this line? Stuff
> like "being able to view & modify source is better for national
> security" (which is probably another winner, esp. since UKGov has access
> to MS source - that means they kind of buy that argument already).

Yes, security would be a good point -- perhaps with some links to 
authoritative studies.  In security debates, I always like to mention that 
the NSA works on Linux... but I'm not sure if we're officially allowed to do 
that ;)

Otherwise, I'm content :)

-- 
Lee Braiden