The Australian Capital Territory is set to become the first
jurisdiction in the country to adopt a bill which says that
public bodies should, as far as practicable, consider the
use of open source software when procuring computer
software.
The bill, which goes before the ACT Legislative Assembly
tonight, also specifies that public bodies should not use
software that does not comply with open standards or
standards recognised by the ISO or software for which
support or maintenance is provided only by an entity that
has the right to exercise exclusive control over its sale or
distribution.
The bill was introduced in July by Democrat Roslyn
Dundas, the member for Ginninderra. Amendments to the same
were suggested by a government member, Helen Cross, and
accepted.
"Since June this year, the ACT government has paid almost
$15 million to Microsoft for software licence fees. Open
source software was available that could have done the job
more cheaply and provided local jobs," Ms Dundas said.
"The ACT is already a world leader in open source
software. IBM's Linux Research Lab is here in the ACT, and
the Samba project that integrates Linux with Windows
networks was developed in Canberra. The specialist software
created to allow electronic voting in the last ACT election
was a locally developed open source product, and clearly
showed how well open source software can do the job."
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Ms Dundas said the government was on record as saying it
wanted to promote Canberra's IT industry. "If this bill
passes, it will encourage open-source software producers in
the ACT to develop new products suitable for use by the
government, because they will know they have a reasonable
chance of winning software tenders," she said.
The bill is similar to
the one introduced by Democrat Ian Gilfillan in South
Australian earlier this year.
