Page III: Government departments have shed their initial reluctance to use open source technologies, but the problem persists -- how do you determine appropriate usage?
According to NOIE's Judge, such support issues need to be considered, but shouldn't constitute an automatic black mark.
-When you talk about the legal issues around open source, what you're really talking about is risk management," he says. -Indemnity and liability are only two elements of managing risk."
If suppliers are willing to commit to working on support issues, then contractual requirements can generally be satisfied.
The Federal Government is keen to see more collaboration between state and national agencies -- an approach which open source greatly simplifies. As a model example, Judge cites the national AusTender site, which is based around code developed for a NSW government agency but now maintained nationally.
Interestingly, such activity could pose a different kind of legal challenge. Professor Brian Fitzgerald told attendees at the conference that the impact of GPL regarding code sharing remained unclear for government agencies.
Under the licence, developers are required to make source code for any works derived from a GPL-licensed product freely available if that product is distributed to other parties.
-As a rule of thumb, distribution amongst government departments is not a distribution [for the purposes of the GPL]," Fitzgerald says. However, he notes that since each individual state in Australia has a separate constitutional status to the overall Commonwealth, it is not clear whether code shared between federal and state agencies should be subject to the GPL requirement to make source code freely available.
-The GPL is a very unique regulatory structure that has worked very well to this point," he says. -If the Australian government wants to operate within that framework for its open source software, it needs to understand how it operates."
Nic Suzor from the QUT School of Law says developers could sidestep the state/federal issue issues by only releasing source code directly derived from GPL-licensed products, while keeping entirely software in separate packages and thus free from licensing constraints. In this way, code could be shared between federal and state agencies without raising any concerns.
Despite such legal niggles, it seems clear that open source has now established a firm foothold in government IT. While the hardcore open source community might like to see it usurp proprietary software entirely, agencies appear happy to add open source to the menu of possibilities, and choose according to their particular needs.
7%
3%
