ACT first to pass open source software laws

The bill, presented by Democrat member Rosalyn Dundas, was passed by a narrow margin after beating a motion by Australian Labor Party member Ted Quinlan to adjourn the decision to a later date.

The 15 members of the 17 seat Legislative Assembly passed the Government Procurement (Principles) Guideline Amendment Bill 2003, by eight votes to seven after it was amended in parallel with similar changes to legislation currently put before South Australian and federal parliaments by Democrat senators.

Rather than requiring ACT government departments to give preference to the use of open source software when making purchasing decisions, the laws only requires government departments to consider the use of non-proprietary software. The ACT is the first jurisdiction in Australia to pass such a law.

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Great now all we need is legis ...Anonymous -- 12/12/03

Great now all we need is legislation to require me to consider "Green and Gold" breakfast cereal when I do my shopping.

When it is cheaper and still does the job then it falls within the standard "Value for money" criteria of all Government purchasing. No legislation was required, what a waste of time.

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Paul Davenport. Do you know th ...Anonymous -- 12/12/03

Paul Davenport.

Do you know that many state governments already _mandate_ proprietary Microsoft 'Standard Operating Environments'? For example, the Victorian government mandates Microsoft platforms and applications for almost everything they use:

http://mmv.vic.gov.au/web/mmv/MMV.nsf/cc983b3d177fc0bc4a2567920046d852/06b403722788cadcca256c5100204008/$FILE/It34.htm

This bill just gives Open Source a fighting chance! After years of giving affirmatve action to Microsoft and other proprietary platforms, giving preference to Open Source is only fair.

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Actually, this law mandates no ...Mark Doherty -- 29/12/03

Actually, this law mandates nothing - it simply requires that ACT government-funded purchasers have to consider an alternative. So Paul Davenport should be happy: it means that if different alternatives are considered, there's a higher chance of getting a cost efficient solution than the usual approach of "Oh, what does MS sell for this task, or that's *somewhat* related to what we need? OK, buy that"

cheers, Mark

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Glad to see such well informed ...Anonymous -- 08/01/04

Glad to see such well informed commentary....
first off, most sane enterprise class organisations try to run a minimum number of platforms, and just because some government organisations have standardised on Microsoft (or Oracle, or IBM etc) doesn't make it affirmative action to the vendor.
Second, you obviously haven't navigated the various arms of Australian government's puchasing processes, which frequently define an approved list of products and associated suppliers (which is not always the manufacturer e.g. Microsoft/Oracle/IBM), and once defined are extremely difficult to get added to, so anything new (such as a version of open source which actually has a viable and enterprise class support infrastructure in place) might still have to wait years for the contracts to be reviewed.

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