Re: [Fsfe-uk] FLOSS in local government

[Alex Hudson]

On Sun, 2003-10-12 at 15:19, Richard Smith wrote:
> There is a very interesting thread on Slashdot regarding a Lib Dem
> Councillor (who used to work for Microsoft) and his reasons for
> recommending that Cambridge City Council should use proprietary rather
> than FLOSS software.

Actually, I read his argument as counter non-commercial software, rather
than pro-proprietary.

He's probably bang on, just doesn't realise that open source != non
commercial. If you replace the instances of 'open source' with 'non
commercial', it makes sense. But it's a fairly irrelevant argument to
FLOSS procurement, and even then seems overly licence-centric.

I would guess he's equating FLOSS with freeware, and then demonstrating
why freeware isn't something which you can put through standard
procurement tests. +1 Insightful indeed.... ;)

Cheers,

Alex.