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November 7, 2008

The OSOR (Open Source Repository and Observatory), a new site sponsored by the European Commission to help the exchange of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) related information and software among European public administrations, recently published new guidelines on the procurement of open source software.

Public administrations in Europe have to follow public tender procedures and the new guidelines give practical and legal advice on how open source software and related services can be incorporated into the new procurement process.

As could be expected, not everyone in the Linux community agrees.

Rishab Ghosh, who presented the guidelines at the Open Source World Conference in Malaga, argued that the new procurement guidelines were needed because of two reasons. First, they studied recent tenders and found that about 16.1 percent of 3615 software tenders explicitly asked for products from top ten software vendors, such as Microsoft, Red Hat, SAP and Oracle.

This practice could be illegal since public tenders generally have to describe functional requirements in a general way instead of specifying specific products. Secondly, many public administrations don't have any experience with the procurement of FOSS. They simply don't know under which circumstances they are allowed to adopt and/or ask for FOSS solutions.

OSOR's newly proposed guidelines are specifically designed in order to clearly and simply explain how public administrations can acquire open source software and they don't assume that a country has adopted a specific policy regarding open source.

The newly proposed procurement guidelines describe two ways of acquiring FOSS: it is possible to go the usual route of publishing a tender for the supply of software, possibly with related services. But in the case of FOSS, it's also possible to download the software directly from the Internet. This is true since the software isn't just free of charge but it also comes with no contractual obligations.

If there were any obligations involved with the download such as fees, the agreement to an EULA or the requirement to purchase services in the future, software download isn't an allowed method. What some like about the proposed guidelines is that they explicitly say that downloading software has to be part of the formal procurement process.

You have to think about your requirements, look at various alternatives, and so on, and not just blindly download something from the Internet.

When it comes to the procurement of FOSS, the guidelines don't suggest that tenders should explicitly ask for FOSS. Instead, they should describe the functional requirements of the software as well as certain properties.

For example, a tender could specify that the public administration as well as third parties must have the right to study, distribute and modify the software. In a sense, the guidelines suggest that tenders should include the principles of the Free Software Definition along with justifications for these requirements.

OSOR's newly proposed guidelines include a long section about open standards, open source and how they relate with each other. Both open standards and open source align very well with the needs of public administrations who have an obligation to support interoperability, transparency and flexibility, as well as the economical use of public funds.

The guidelines argue that the exit cost, i.e. the cost incurred in moving to another IT system, is also an important consideration but one that is mostly neglected in many of the cases that have been observed in the recent past.

The overall adoption of a proprietary solution without open standards may limit the future choice, thereby increasing the long-time costs and giving the proprietary vendor an unfair advantage in future tenders.

Some in the open source community think there is a great need for these procurement guidelines. There are many public administrations that don't know how to acquire FOSS and these guidelines offer clear advice.

It will be interesting to see whether the new procurement guidelines will have an impact on FOSS adoption.

Source: OSOR.

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