Selling free software
Rep. Teddy Casiño chats with the Venezuelan charge d’affiares Manuel Perez Iturbe at the Software Freedom Day celebrations at the Advanced Science and Technology Institute.
FREE software needs to be sold before it catches on.
Rep. Teddy Casiño is well aware of this, after his bill requiring the use of free and open source software in government offices didn’t make it to the first reading in last year’s Congress.
“The last time, Congress was ending,” Casiño says, noting that his bill had been filed toward the tail end of the 1egislative session. “Now there’s no excuse. We filed early so we have the whole three years to get it done.”
Speaking at a break during the Software Freedom Day conference at the University of the Philippines, Casiño acknowledges it will be a diffcult road ahead, and that more needs to be done to promote open source software.
“The problem in the House [of Representatives] is that the level of information is very low,” he says. “Not all congressmen do computers.” Not many of them will know or care if the software they use is proprietary or open source, he adds.
There are also strong lobby groups with significant clout in Congress that want to maintain the status quo and allow the use of proprietary software in the government.
On the other hand, Casiño says, there are more success stories to tell this time, inlcuding local governments that can be tapped to convince Congress to sign on to open source.
There are already a lot of initiatives in local governments. we plan to get local governments to help convince Congress.
“It’s already happening. The migration is already happening,” Casiño says. “What the law will do is institutionalize it and [set down] a clearcut policy.”
Like the bill before it, House Bill 1716 will require all government agencies and offices to use free and open source software after a transition period.
The bill allows the use of proprietary software in government only when no open source alternatives are readily available, or when a proprietary system is already widely in use.
The bill also prohibits any government agency from procuring technology goods and services that are locked into or dependent on a single vendor.
The biggest difference from last year, Casiño says, is that the new bill no longer requires schools that offer certification programs in proprietary software to also offer as similar certification programs for free and open source software.
“Some people felt that provision encroached on academic freedom,” he explains.
The new bill also puts stronger emphasis on open stardards.
Belonging to the left-wing Bayan Muna party-list group, Casiño recognizes the need to win mainstream support for the bill and has lined up Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco of the Nationalist People’s Coalition as a co-author.
There is also a shift in tone. Gone is the tip of the hat to the Communist Manifesto that spoke of “a spectre… haunting the global software giants.” In its place, the new explanatory note simply states that “the era of free and open source software has come.”
While the ultimate goal is to migrate the entire government to free and open source software, the timetable is fairly long.
For example, it gives government agencies three years to build up staff expertise in open source systems to 90 percent of their IT professionals. The bill also says 65 percent of the country’s IT professionals must be proficient in free and open source systems by this time, but it’s not clear how this will be achieved, since the law only compels public sector use of such systems.
Within five years, the bill says, 75 percent of all existing government systems should be open standards compliant and all government communication and research data intended for public consumption and access will be in open standard data format.
At the same time, 75 percent of all government systems should use free and open source software.
A machine must use an open source operating system and applications to be counted for this purpose.
The pace set by the bill seems almost languid compared to the rapid migration to open source that countries such as Venezuela have followed. At the same Sofware Freedom Day celebration, Venezuelan Charge d’Affaires Manuel Perez Iturbe related how his country moved from proprietary systems to open source in less than two years.
At the conference, the Venezuelan official spoke of liberation from the clutches of “Big Brother,” and how the entire government would be open source by October.
“Software is a form of socialism,” the envoy declared.
After the speech, Casiño winces when the quotation is read back to him. The Venezuelan example—with all its ideological underpinnings--probably won’t play well in Congress, he says, despite the country’s apparent success in migrating to open source. “They rather hear about the French Parliament going open source,” Casio adds.
This kind of pragamatic approach and a bigger push might yet get the open source bill through the legislative mill. Given the many benefits an open source law would bring, we can only hope Casiño’s efforts finally pay off.