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Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
21–30 of 67 posts
Re: Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
#22Well, yes and no. The law (which went into effect 2023 BTW) still has a lot of loopholes, e.g.:
> The federal authorities subject to this Act shall disclose the source code of software that they develop or have developed for the performance of their duties, unless the rights of third parties or security-related reasons would preclude or restrict this.
"unless the rights of third parties [...] would preclude or restrict this" pretty much says it all.
Re: Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
#23Should be an EU wide mandate at this point, as it's mostly pros with little cons. Since the options are 1), keep spending EU taxpayer money to boost Microsoft's and other US big-tech market cap, or 2), spend EU taxpayer money on FOSS and local companies implementing and maintaining that FOSS for local infrastructure, then the correct choice seems obvious to me. The only cons are the short term costs, teething issues…
The biggest con is IMO the most obvious one. What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on? And are companies going really source local maintainers for FOSS versus the standard maintainer? Eg, is Switzerland really not going to use Canonical for supporting Ubuntu because it is British?
I don't see this as a problem, at least not more than it already is even with proprietary software. Remember that announcement from just a few years ago that Japan will finally move away from using floppy disks as the official way to exchange data with some authorities? Or stories about government offices somewhere struggling to move away from windows 7?
I really don't see how it even still matters today. Even a Libre office from 5 years ago should have plenty features for the average tasks an office clerk needs to do. Heck probably even MS Word 97 would suffice. The rest is often specialized software written by contractors, so "make it OSS" will just be a new requirement.
Re: Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
#24Switzerland is so brilliant. I wish they spoke english, id consider moving there.
You'd get by just fine. It's not uncommon to speak three languages fluently in CH (given it has 4 official languages), and usually English is in the mix. I lived there for a couple of years and while not speaking French or Italian, I got by quite easily in the respective regions.
Re: Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
#25Switzerland is so brilliant. I wish they spoke english, id consider moving there.
Somewhat ironically, Switzerland has four official languages, none of which are English, but with so many regional dialects within those, English is quickly becoming the… ahem… Lingua Franca:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland#Engli...
Re: Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
#26Should be an EU wide mandate at this point, as it's mostly pros with little cons. Since the options are 1), keep spending EU taxpayer money to boost Microsoft's and other US big-tech market cap, or 2), spend EU taxpayer money on FOSS and local companies implementing and maintaining that FOSS for local infrastructure, then the correct choice seems obvious to me. The only cons are the short term costs, teething issues…
You can see how it worked it Munich: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i... Spoiler alert: it didn’t work well. The world is not perfect and decision makers are greedy. Edit: I see I am being downvoted. Is there an objective reason for moving back to Microsoft? Is there any objective reason to ditch implemented and working open source software project? As Wikipedia tells most of city computer…
>and decision makers are greedy
local decision makers in particular. Doesn't take that much to get some administrators in Munich to flip and to run into compatibility issues when every city does it independently.
Make it a five or ten year EU plan with some serious cash behind it, it's basically at this point an investment into security and autonomy of the continent.
Re: Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
#27Should be an EU wide mandate at this point, as it's mostly pros with little cons. Since the options are 1), keep spending EU taxpayer money to boost Microsoft's and other US big-tech market cap, or 2), spend EU taxpayer money on FOSS and local companies implementing and maintaining that FOSS for local infrastructure, then the correct choice seems obvious to me. The only cons are the short term costs, teething issues…
The biggest con is IMO the most obvious one. What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on? And are companies going really source local maintainers for FOSS versus the standard maintainer? Eg, is Switzerland really not going to use Canonical for supporting Ubuntu because it is British?
Switzerland wouldn't care either way because it's not in the EU to begin with.
Re: Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
#28Should be an EU wide mandate at this point, as it's mostly pros with little cons. Since the options are 1), keep spending EU taxpayer money to boost Microsoft's and other US big-tech market cap, or 2), spend EU taxpayer money on FOSS and local companies implementing and maintaining that FOSS for local infrastructure, then the correct choice seems obvious to me. The only cons are the short term costs, teething issues…
You can see how it worked it Munich: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i... Spoiler alert: it didn’t work well. The world is not perfect and decision makers are greedy. Edit: I see I am being downvoted. Is there an objective reason for moving back to Microsoft? Is there any objective reason to ditch implemented and working open source software project? As Wikipedia tells most of city computer…
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Re: Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest con is IMO the most obvious one. What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on? And are companies going really source local maintainers for FOSS versus the standard maintainer? Eg, is Switzerland really not going to use Canonical for supporting Ubuntu because it is British?
> What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on? That's almost the best side effect: in a place where open source is mandatory, they will have to fund the missing features and it will be available to everyone, once and for all. If everyone does that, we rapidly get great software, sharing the costs, very efficiently, and it's all open source. The alternat…
In theory, maybe. I think in practise, in the case of somewhere like Germany, they realistically just won't implement the hypothetical feature and let productivity of employees drop even further. There is no motivation or reward in the public sector here for anyone to do anything better or more efficiently. I'm maybe overly cynical about the public sector's ability to get anything done here, I would like to be proven wrong, though.
Re: Switzerland Makes Open Source Software Mandatory for Public Sector
#30Mandatory is a ridiculous rule if only for the self defeating nature of limiting yourself. I can understand the sentiment but maybe make the rule say to prefer OSS. That is when sourcing RFPs prefer OSS solutions that can fulfill requirements.