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.
I'm not sure why the federal government wouldn't be interested in considering a proposal that would promote competition and help to increase choice while reducing spending with regard to software.
The changes to legislation that the democrats are proposing are far from preferential (as Microsoft seems keen to spin them) and simply require government IT buyers to consider the alternatives to proprietary software before making a decision. The don't have to prefer open source, but they might have to justify why they decided to send millions of Australian tax payer's dollars off-shore to non-Australian companies when suitable open source alternatives exist.
It's not that open source is not an international effort, it just that open source actually gives Australian companies of all size the opportunity to compete in the IT market, rather than fight an uphill battle with big international companies with marketing budgets that dwarfs the income of the local companies.
I'd love to see how the Australian government's IT buyers justify the use of Microsoft's servers for file and print sharing in light of recent comparisons which suggest that Samba on Linux is two and a half times faster than Windows 2003 and doesn't cost the Australian government a cent to purchase, and doesn't involve expensive Client Access Licenses which are required for each user who connects to the server. It's also worth noting that Samba is headed up by an Australian - Andrew Tridgell - so the federal government would also be supporting local talent.
The legislation proposed by the democrats would require government IT buyers to justify their choice of software, rather than simply allowing the continued use of software because "that's what we already use". It might also challenge government IT buyers to explain why they choose to purchase software that limits choice in the future by using closed file formats that lock the government into the continued use of one manufactures software, rather than promoting the use of open file format to would promote competition and server to lower costs.
I'd love to hear the government's explaination about why they aren't taking these issues seriously, and if they are how they intend to address them if they still aren't willing to support this proposed legislation