> But I must still recognise that it does not serve our interests to
> insist on the vendor going open source, something they clearly will not
> favour, but insisting that they must publish the source and make it
> available for more general scrutiny.
The right of the State to redistribute the code is a misnomer.
The right of the State to change the code to fix it if necessary is a murkier
issue though.
The ability of the State to divest itself of Vendor (x) and maintain the code
base of necessary, while not pallatable to the company, *is* in the State's
interests.
That's probably the biggest argument for Open Source Software's usage in the
State, but, that's a seperate debate.
I'd certainly be in favour of an agreement with the Company where the State is
granted rights to maintain the code base, on the machines it bought, but, not
necessarily make the changes available to the world.
That's an easy compromise which covers our asses and doesn't leave the company
with a forked open source competitor derived from it's IP.
That's just my reflex thought on it though.
--
Bryan O'Donoghue
Embedded Software Engineer
Europlex Technologies Ltd
Clonshaugh Business & Technology Park
Dublin 17
Ireland
T:+353 (0) 1 2500500
F:+353 (0) 1 2500590
E:bryano at euoplex.ie
W:www.europlex.ie
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