TheOpenAnalyst

Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems was the first person The H called. He was pleased to see the updated policy, “It’s a great thing to see it published, as the 2004 policy didn’t help very much”. The new policy had “a lot of good things in it” such as the costing in of exit, or as Phipps calls them, sundown costs and the preference towards open source because of, as the policy puts it, “its inherent flexibility”. Phipps explained “Open source has inherent benefits in that it gives a CIO control of the complete life-cycle. The four freedoms put the CIO in control”.

Although Phipps is still disappointed by some aspects of the policy, he says he is “A little disappointed to see the loopholes in the area of open formats and I would have liked to have seen a timetable for the action plan. For this to succeed the government CIO needs to put an aggressive timetable in place”. The policy document omits any dates on the action plan items, and he felt that without that, the policy may not gain traction. Phipps also noted that without changes in how systems are purchased, open source may still find itself on an uneven playing field. Phipps preference is to move from “procurement led” buying and to an “adoption led market”.

Open Source Vendors welcome new UK Government policy, but want more action | heise online

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