I always get a little worried when politicians start actively mucking around in the operational details of government, but to be fair it is hard to put a hard black and white line between where policy stops and implementation begins. Is mandating open source a policy, or is it telling city workers how to do their jobs? Council could also pass a resolution not allowing the "q" key to be pressed on Fridays.
In this great debate, I think my position is this: mandating open data (basically an enhanced form of Freedom of Information) and open standards (without which Freedom of Information is moot) make sense as policy matters. Mandating open source crosses the line, dealing more with "means" than with "ends". City managers will eventually figure out on their own that the value proposition of considering open source is high. Council might be (hell, they are) right on this issue, but defining what tools are to be used to achieve operational goals is a slippery slope, and there's lots of places council will be wrong in the future on if they go down this path.For a great example of why you don't want legislators telling the executive precisely what to do, see congressional earmarks.
3 comments:
As much as I would like to disagree with you on this, I agree fully. I think people have to learn for themselves and choose what is the best tool for their job. Best we can do is to enforce some sort of standards compliance between the tools they do use.
Not to mention things like this done from high above have a bad habit of insuing admirable but nevertheless political suicide.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/Massachusetts-Fights-a-Losing-Battle/
I think that what the City of Vancouver is attempting to do is put open source on a level playing field with proprietary software in terms of procurement.
"Open Source Software - the City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles"
IMHO, they should use the term proprietary or closed source, not "commercial systems", because both closed and open source are commercial.
@Geoff, understood, I just think they are getting their fingers too deep into the pie, mandating that kind of purchasing behavior. I mean, I agree it's a good idea in particular (my political views showing), but it's a bad precedent in general.
Just because a councillor has been sold a bill of goods by some sandal-wearing open source advocate is not a good reason for council to muck with software purchasing protocol. Let the civil servants figure out purchasing protocol, they'll get the right answer eventually.
An old example of real-world political mucking with purchasing was the union-only rule for contractors building the Vancouver Island highway in the 90s. Was that a good idea? Whether you think so or not probably turns on how socially positive you think unions are. The government of the day thought they were very socially positive, hence the policy.
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