As I thought. When the Government declared that they will favor open source for their IT needs I was thinking whether they have thoroughly analyzed their plan. What I can clearly see is that all they understand is the word FREE. No more, no less.
It was published on The Star Online on 5 December that the OSS Master Plan Gets Pruned. Indeed, they can’t simply disable or abort the plan so they removed a sentence. Originally it states:
OSS procurement should be based on merits, value for money, transparency, security and interoperability, as well as in accordance with the Government procurement policies and procedures. In situations where the advantages and disadvantages of OSS and proprietary software are equal, preference shall be given to OSS.
Now that the second line has been removed:
OSS procurement should be based on merits, value for money, transparency, security and interoperability, as well as in accordance with the Government procurement policies and procedures.
This effectively imply a new policy: neutrality.
As OSS is no longer preferred, the master plan is now useless. Very rarely OSS software can market themselves, and proprietary software have the big guns who can do marketing and sales for them.
The new sentence can also be applied to proprietary software, don’t you think? The sentence is there just to ensure existence of the master plan which is now obsolete.
