17Mar 08
Tax Office needs to rethink open source objections
Posted by Munir Kotadia @ 12:58 6 comments
The Australian Tax Office CIO Bill Gibson claims that one of the reasons he hasn't deployed much open source software is due to security fears, with the code not subject to enough "technical scrutiny".
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"We are very, very focused on security and privacy and the obligations we have ... We would need to make sure that we are very comfortable through some form of technical scrutiny of what is inside such a product so that there is nothing unforeseen there," he told ZDNet.com.au in a video interview.
Will open source software ever become ubiquitous in government?
I find it interesting that Gibson trusts software from proprietary vendors who keep their code a secret but distrusts open source vendors, who lay out their code for anyone to see.
If this is the prevailing attitude among CIOs, it seems like the open source movement still has a very long struggle ahead.
The full interview with Gibson will be published today on the ZDNet.com.au CIO Vision Series page.
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You/re obviously unfamiliar with the way public service works....
When things go wrong, and they always eventually do, you need pass the buck.. i,e. its the softwares vendors fault, we weren't told, we'll sue...
You don't get that option with open source, i.e. you're responsible. This is why open source has a hard road to travel, unless you get it from Red Hat or Novell