Hi Paolo,
On 9/22/06, Paolo Alexis Falcone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, 2006-09-22 at 16:13 +0800, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
> Hi Rage,
>
>
> What I'm saying is that it's alright for government to say that "for
> all further ICT projects wherein software will have to be
> procured/acquired, that the software be licensed such that the license
> allows the Philippine government to get a copy of the source code,
> have rights to use the source code and resulting compiled binaries (if
> any) indefinitely across all government owned and controlled agencies
> and departments, and be able to modify the source code either through
> its ICT agencies/departments or by a third party.".
This is what FOSS licenses can do right?
Yes, along with other non-FOSS licenses -- or at least licenses not
recognized to be FOSS by the OSI or other international bodies.
> If the license disallows third party developers contracted by
> government from using the source code to the software product outside
> of the purposes of government use (i.e. covered by an NDA, or MOA,
> binding the third party developer to legal contract to promise to not
> use the source code for private purposes), then I don't care -- just
So you mean that the contractors should set additional conditions on how
the control of the source code should be governed? Or should it be the
government who'd set the conditions? This proposal of yours reeks of
arrogance on part of the contractors imho.
Not should: they _may_. And before scritinizing the license, the
government should look at the technical merits of the software first:
does it fulfill the functional and non-functional requirements that
the government requires. Only then when deemed fit (in the case of
existing software, or the design/implementation plan and budget in the
case of new software to be produced) will government look for the
stipulations I've stated above in the licensing agreement between the
authors and the government.
> as long as the above three conditions hold. If the license also
> requires that you send a post-card to the author for every
> installation of the software, it shouldn't matter. I just want
This matters a lot. Consider if the original developer tanks out of
business, without the original company being the copyright holder, no
one could legally do anything with the code.
What matters a lot, the post-card sending? Or that the government
already has a copy to the source code and has the rights to modify and
use it as it sees fit?
Your suggestion calls up for the drafting of YET ANOTHER LICENSE, which
is already done by FOSS licenses. Why reinvent the wheel? You do know
that drafting licenses (or any contract thereof) is quite laborious at
the very least.
No. My suggestion allows government to look for specific stipulations
in a software license, and not require the license be of any
type/class. If the contractor puts it under a FOSS license, then
that's all well and good: the legislation allows for FOSS to be used,
because the stipulations are already found in FOSS licenses. OTOH if
the contractor just gives the rights specifically to the Philippine
Government, then it works as well just as long as the given
stipulations are present in the license: that makes the license
non-FOSS but yet is still beneficial to government.
--
Dean Michael C. Berris
C++ Software Architect
Orange and Bronze Software Labs, Ltd. Co.
web: http://software.orangeandbronze.com/
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
mobile: +63 928 7291459
phone: +63 2 8943415
other: +1 408 4049532
blogs: http://mikhailberis.blogspot.com http://3w-agility.blogspot.com
http://cplusplus-soup.blogspot.com
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