Free-libre open source software as a public policy choice

Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) is characterised by a specific programming and development paradigm. The availability and freedom of use of source code are at the core of this paradigm, and are the prerequisites for FLOSS features. Unfortunately, the fundamental role of code is often ignored among those who decide the software purchases for Canadian public agencies. Source code availability and the connected freedoms are often seen as unrelated and accidental aspects, and the only real advantage acknowledged, which is the absence of royalty fees, becomes paramount. In this paper we discuss some relevant legal issues and explain why public administrations should choose FLOSS for their technological infrastructure. We also present the results of a survey regarding the penetration and awareness of FLOSS usage into the Government of Canada. The data demonstrates that the Government of Canada shows no enforced policy regarding the implementation of a specific technological framework (which has legal, economic, business, and ethical repercussions) in their departments and agencies

Towards an Expert Network in Open Standards and Open Source Software: Research, Expertise and Synergy for Open and Libres Standards and Software (RESOLL) - Version 2.0

CIRANO and its partners are proposing the creation of an Expert Network in Open Standards and Open Source Software (Research, Expertise and Synergy for Open and Libres Standards and Software-RESOLL), which would be a partnership between information technology research centres, government and private user organizations, and businesses working in the field. The network will conduct studies and pilot projects that integrate computer solutions based on open standards and open source software, mainly in e-government fields such as health, education, and scientific research, as well as municipal and quasi-public services and business processes for SMEs. The knowledge, expertise and tools thus developed will be disseminated in a number of ways in order to Quebec and Canadian expertise in the field. RESOLL will also have economic and strategic benefits in that it will put the new economic model to the test in terms of open standards and open source software as well as the reuse of software components by organizations. Background The development of on-line government services and e-business is a priority for governments and businesses of all sizes. It requires considerable spending and significant strategic and organizational changes. Of the many information technology solutions available, the use of open standards and open source software is often brought up by those in the know. Although the Internet and many world-renowned software programs were developed largely from open standards and open source software, there is still a need to study, and above all prove the advantages of this approach for public and quasi-public organizations as well as small to medium-sized businesses. It is essential to identify the needs of these organizations, document best practices, experiment with open source software solutions, evaluate the performance of the software and share the knowledge and know-how of Quebec and Canadian research centres and businesses. RESOLL Goals he main goal of the Expert Network on Open Standards and Open Source Software (RESOLL) is to give people an understanding of the benefits of open standards and open source software and suggest an intelligent and advantageous use of them for public and quasi-public organizations and SMEs. More specifically, the goals are as follows: Document and share government and industry policies, strategies, and practices with respect to the use and development of adaptive software and open source software, defining open standards, open source software, adaptive software, and proprietary software; Adapt these practices and share the different methods with partners and the IT management and development communities in government and business; Establish innovative prototypes and pilot projects in order to test and demonstrate the advantages and features of this approach; Develop the expertise of Quebec and Canadian organizations in the field and create synergy between them and their users; P ublish and share the findings of the work, contribute to the enrichment of a collective software asset base available to public and quasi-public organizations and SMEs while explaining the legal issues involved in the various types of licences and electronic services. Process ESOLL is a multilateral partnership founded on the excellence of partners in their respective field. The RESOLL process will be based on the needs of its partners and users. Once these needs have been identified, research will be conducted to identify available solutions, adapt them through an integration process and alpha test them. This would be followed by a pilot project as required by the organizations and businesses. The pilot project will be implemented and evaluated in order to learn from it and ensure that necessary adjustments are made. Solutions thus obtained will be implemented as electronic services either by the client organization’s IT department or by a business partner. It is up to each organization to select their service provider. RESOLL will encourage the transfer of developed tools and services to partners for complete autonomy. Each project will have its own budget, funded by client partners. RESOLL will use part of its operating budget to start projects and develop a start-up asset base for its activities. Expectations and Deliverables The expectations of RESOLL partners and the team can be expressed by the achievement of their goals. RESOLL’s actions will quickly lead to concrete results. The deliverables will be: Policy and position papers to help partners make clear and informed decisions; Needs analyses and suggested solutions; Software solutions based on open standards and open source software integrated into experimental electronic services; Pilot project experiments that combine strategies, plans, software solutions, project support, evaluation and recommendations; Studies and interpretation documents for different types of licences and software; Collaborative Web site for sharing documents and open source software developed in the context of RESOLL projects or available on the Internet, with comments and explanations; Information and knowledge sharing activities for RESOLL and its partners (conferences, workshops, training, etc.). Partners RESOLL is a multilateral partnership. The partners that have been asked to become involved are: CIRANO, CRIM, RISQ, the governments of Quebec and Canada, Industry Canada, university researchers, Canadian and Quebec software and information technology companies, and not-for-profit user organizations from the software and information technology fields. Budget ESOLL’s master infrastructure budget will make it possible to establish a small coordination team involving part-time resources seconded from their parent organizations. We plan to obtain general financing from government and the businesses involved. The individual projects will provide their own financing. Other Benefits RESOLL will contribute to Quebec’s and Canada’s world leadership by sharing the results of its work. It will contribute to the eventual creation of resources that will enable partner companies to commercialize services based on open source software.Open standard, free software, open software, FOSS, e-government, business process, small and medium enterprises,

Libre culture: meditations on free culture

Libre Culture is the essential expression of the free culture/copyleft movement. This anthology, brought together here for the first time, represents the early groundwork of Libre Society thought. Referring to the development of creativity and ideas, capital works to hoard and privatize the knowledge and meaning of what is created. Expression becomes monopolized, secured within an artificial market-scarcity enclave and finally presented as a novelty on the culture industry in order to benefit cloistered profit motives. In the way that physical resources such as forests or public services are free, Libre Culture argues for the freeing up of human ideas and expression from copyright bulwarks in all forms

The Information Commons: a public policy report

This report describes the history of the information commons, presents examples of online commons that provide new ways to store and deliver information, and concludes with policy recommendations. Available in PDF and HTML versions.BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE at NYU SCHOOL OF LAW Democracy Program, Free Expression Policy Project 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th floor New York NY 10013 Phone: (212) 998-6730 Web site: www.brennancenter.org Free Expression Policy Project: www.fepproject.or

The Information Commons: a public policy report

This report describes the history of the information commons, presents examples of online commons that provide new ways to store and deliver information, and concludes with policy recommendations. Available in PDF and HTML versions.BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE at NYU SCHOOL OF LAW Democracy Program, Free Expression Policy Project 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th floor New York NY 10013 Phone: (212) 998-6730 Web site: www.brennancenter.org Free Expression Policy Project: www.fepproject.or

Free and open-source software

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Enriching Discourse on Public Domains

Is there one public domain, or are there many public domains? The scholarly literature predominantly assumes there is only one, for references abound to “the public domain” in the singular. Yet, even a cursory review of this literature reveals that scholars sometimes define this term differently. So if there is only one public domain, but many definitions, perhaps one objective of scholarly discourse about the public domain should be to seek consensus on the one “true” definition.Professor James Boyle has provocatively suggested that there are many public domains, and has urged scholars to develop a rich vocabulary for distinguishing among them. He points out that the word “property” has multiple meanings, and discourse about property proceeds without confusion because legal professionals have learned to discern which meaning is intended from the textual context. Boyle urges intellectual property scholars to develop a similarly nuanced public domain vocabulary so that it will be possible to distinguish among its several meanings as well.This essay considers the potential benefits of accepting the existence of multiple public domains and ways in which discourse about public domains might be enriched thereby. Part II provides a synopsis of thirteen conceptions of the public domain found in the law review literature, explaining each, generally by reviewing the explication of it offered by its principal proponent or discoverer. Part III organizes the definitions by recognizing that they cluster around three main foci: 1) the legal status of information resources, 2) freedoms to use information resources, even if protected by IP rights, and 3) accessibility of information resources. Although it is common to think of information resources as either IP-protected or public domain, and as either publicly accessible or not, Part III shows that the public domain literature views these concepts not as binary opposites, but rather as points along a continuum. Part IV discusses the advantages and disadvantages of recognizing multiple public domains and recommends the use of adjectives to clarify discourse about the many public domains. The constitutional public domain, for instance, is distinct from the privatizable (although not yet, privatized) public domain. This Part differentiates among conceptions of public domains that should be accepted and those that perhaps should not. The principal advantage of recognizing multiple public domains is that it illuminates a range of important social values served by these domains and a plethora of strategies for preserving them and the values they serve

The Legal Issues Surrounding Free and Open Source Software: Challenges and Solutions for the Government of Québec

The Government of Québec is slowly but surely turning its attention to the issue of free and open source software in response to the interest shown by Québec’s software industry and the attention paid to the phenomenon by governments around the world. This openness is easy to understand given an environment in which online service provision to citizens must be enhanced while minimizing expenditures on technology, curtailing service providers’ control over the administration, and promoting the development of the information society in Québec. Nonetheless, as we see in the news, adoption of this new attitude toward to software development is not always immune to legal challenges. Consequently, the manner in which Québec law interacts with free and open source software, as well as the associated risks, assume a particular significance. The analysis we present here reveals that the law, as it currently stands in Québec, appears adequate to effectively address the various legal issues inherent in the use of free and open source software. First of all, no legal rule seems to be incompatible with the validity of free and open source licences, despite that fact that few of them were designed with the Québec legal system in mind. Moreover, both federal copyright rules and Québec regulations affecting contractual liability allow the authors and users of free and open source software to effectively preserve the freedom of computer code, which is typically the purpose of free and open source licences. Nonetheless, it remains the case that some legal risks are associated with free and open source software. These risks may arise from the formalism requirements included in the Copyright Act, prior violations of intellectual property rights by third parties, or simply from the broader contractual protection afforded to licensors. Consequently, integrating free and open source software into the technology strategy of the Government of Québec requires setting up some initiatives to allow these risks to be mitigated as much as possible and to enable the management of those risks that cannot be completely eliminated.

Governing by internet architecture

In the past thirty years, the exponential rise in the number of Internet users around the word and the intensive use of the digital networks have brought to light crucial political issues. Internet is now the object of regulations. Namely, it is a policy domain. Yet, its own architecture represents a new regulative structure, one deeply affecting politics and everyday life. This article considers some of the main transformations of the Internet induced by privatization and militarization processes, as well as their consequences on societies and human beings.En los últimos treinta años ha crecido de manera exponencial el número de usuarios de Internet alrededor del mundo y el uso intensivo de conexiones digitales ha traído a la luz cuestiones políticas cruciales. Internet es ahora objeto de regulaciones. Es decir, es un ámbito de la política. Aún su propia arquitectura representa una nueva estructura reguladora, que afecta profundamente la política y la vida cotidiana. Este artículo considera algunas de las principales transformaciones de Internet inducida por procesos de privatización y militarización, como también sus consecuencias en las sociedades y en los seres humanos

Contrasting Community Building in Sponsored and Community Founded Open Source Projects

Prior characterizations of open source projects have been based on the model of a community-founded project. More recently, a second model has emerged, where organizations spinout internally developed code to a public forum. Based on field work on open source projects, we compare the lifecycle differences between these two models. We identify problems unique to spinout projects, particularly in attracting and building an external community. We illustrate these issues with a feasibility analysis of a proposed open source project based on VistA, the primary healthcare information system of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. This example illuminates the complexities of building a community after a code base has been developed and suggests that open source software can be used to transfer technology to the private sector