the Governmentality of Open Source by risa
Since Peru’s Parliament has approved their Open Source bill, I thought it might be nice to quote from the major proponent of the Bill, Dr. Edgar David Villnueva NUÑEZ- Congressman of the Republica of Perú. In his 2002 letter to the General Manager of Microsoft Perú he explains the Bill and offers one of the most clear, compelling and powerful explanations of the importance of Open Source for governments that I have ever read. Below is just a quote, and it’s right before Dr.NUÑEZ really gets going; go check out the letter in its entirety at The Register (scroll down past the article- it’s there.)
The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:
Free access to public information by the citizen.
Permanence of public data.
Security of the State and citizens.To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indespensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.
To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.
To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*.
In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.
In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.
From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:
-the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software
-the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software
-the law does not specifiy which concrete software to use
-the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought
-the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements reguarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.
We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.
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