Federal parliament is unlikely to debate the Democrats' proposed open source software bill, according to the Senator shepherding the legislation, Brian Greig.

The Democrats last week saw similar legislation passed in the ACT Legislative Assembly, but Greig said bringing the private members' Bills forward for debate in the federal Senate is inherently more difficult.

"[I need to] win the support of either the opposition or the government to allow a full debate on this and it's going to be very difficult to do that," said Greig.

The legislation compels government procurement officers to "consider" open source software alternatives to proprietary software when making purchasing decisions.

At this stage, Greig could opt for a contingency motion asking the Senate to drop its all business to discuss the bill or present it during parliamentary time set aside to debate private members' Bills.

Greig said both strategies were unlikely to succeed, all but conceding that the Bill was unlikely to be made law in the medium term.

However Greig insisted that presenting the Bill hadn't been a waste of time. Greig believes the Bill will provide the Democrats with a rhetorical tool to pressure the government and demonstrate its policy to the public.

He added that the legislation might be adopted in some form in the future.

"I can't see a Howard government doing that, but we might see a future government making some steps in that direction and our Bill can remain on the notice board as being the catalyst for that," he said.

Meanwhile the push for open source continued in Victoria. One the states peak open source lobby groups, Open Source Victoria (OSV), called on the Victorian government to introduce similar legislation to that passed in the ACT last week.

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