This morning's policy workshop presented two of three points of view in the whole government open source policy discussion. On the whole, it was productive if a bit bland and uninformitive. The first few speakers were Feds who gave their perspective on what they want and need in terms of software acquisition policies and procurement contracts.
After a break, there was a panel discussion with representatives from Microsoft, IBM and the BSA.
The general feeling was that everyone in the room was mostly in violent agreement. No one was in favor of preference policies or manditory use or consideration of open source. The commercial interests at the table were obviously in favor of selling more software and services (occasionally pointing out that free software isn't free -- it still needs maintenance contracts, expensive certifications and support services).
The open source users who spoke had legitimate and well-founded reason for preferring open source and free software in certain circumstances, but were against "all open source, all the time" types of policies. Microsoft's position was pretty clear and a slightly toned down from a few years ago: it's goal is to co-exist with open source, it prefers BSD style licenses and strongly dislikes the GPL. It's also overhyping its shared source programs and some unnamed security package that it's "allowing third parties to review without signing an NDA." (Oh, and no one is really signing up for its shared source program; ergo, no one really cares about access to the source code.) Microsoft is also strenuously asserting that open source software will eventually be available and competetive at every level of the software stack, not just at the operating system. (Funny, I thought it was already like that...)
I also heard a few attacks from Microsoft and/or IBM that I hadn't heard before (I'm not sure who made this point): governments shouldn't legislate one development model over another, markets should choose which development model is best. I don't know if this was misinformed lawyerspeak, or a new position drafted to fight open source preference proposals. I haven't heard anyone to date making impassioned pleas for one development model or another. I have heard strong business cases for using open software, and situations where using open software is difficult to do when the software doesn't have a price tag or a vendor or fit into existing procurement processes...
Unfortunately, there was no "open source" perspective at this workshop. The Microsoft representative did do some name droping on behalf of the FSF ("Even Eben Moglen hates open source/free software preference mandates", just like Microsoft, IBM, CompTIA, ISC, the BSA and every other interest in commercial software). Many (most?) open source advocates are against laws mandating a preference for open source software as well. The real issue is updating procurement policies that put open source at a serious disadvantage and creating the level playing field that the commercial interests claim to support.
