[FSF India] [NEWS] Argentina Govt. Discussing Free Software Law

[Raj Singh]

Free Software Law for Argentina

There's presently (last week of April, 2001) a law being discussed at the
Congress in Argentina, that would make mandatory the use of and migration
to Free Software when possible within the government units.

That law was originally proposed by a Congressmen, but he contacted people
from the Free Software Community in Argentina (non-profit organizations,
LUGs, etc.), and we have already suggested many changes that are making
into the law.

This is a translation of the law being discussed. It's already in
discussion at the Argentina's congress, and moving on

Note: all uses of the "free" word are for Spanish "libre", i.e, free as in
free speech, not free beer.

Policy for Free Software use for the Federal State

Article 1: The National Public Administration, Decentralized Organizations
and corporations where the State is a majoritary shareholder will only use
free programs (software) for their IT systems and equipments.

Article 2: "free program (software)", will be understood as software with a
license of use that guarantees the user, without an extra fee, the
following rights:

1. Non-restricted use of the program for any purpose

2. Exhaustive inspection of the internal program operation.

3. Use of the internal working, and of arbitrary segments of the program,
to adaptate them to user needs

4. Production and distribution of copies of the program

5. Modification of the program, and free distribution of the modifications
and the resulting new program, under these same conditions.

Article 3: The source program of any free program must be the primary
resource used by the programmer for modifying and inspecting it. Therefore,
no program categorized as free can contain any restriction difficulting its
access, or intermediate stages as output from a non-free pre-processor or
compiler.

Article 4: Licenses for free programs used by the National Public
Administration, Decentralized Organizations, and corporations where the
State is a majoritary shareholder, will have, in all cases, to allow
explicitly modification and derived works, as well as non-restricted
distribution of these works with the same license as the original program.

Article 5: The Executive Power will set in a term of 180 days, the
conditions, timelines, and ways to implement the transition from present
systems to free programs as defined in Articles 1 to 4; and will move
future licitations and contracting of computer programs (software) in that
direction.

Artice 6: From the date established by the Executive Power on, Public
National Organizations mentioned in article 1 of this law, will not be
allowed to use programs that store data in non-public format, or with
licenses which:

1. Imply any form of discrimination to people or groups.

2. Don't fulfill of the preceding Article 2.

3. Are specific or exclusive for only one product.

Article 7: Once finished the transition term, with a duration regulated by
the National Executive Power as expressed in Article 5, there will be
exclusively contracting and use of free computer programs.

Article 8: The Public State Universities, the Provincial and the City
Governments, and the Autonomous Government of the city of Buenos Aires are
invited to adhere to this initiative.

Article 9: Communicate this to the National Executive Power.

====================== Some Comments =======================

The financial savings are not the biggest benefit. I realize that there
will be a huge price to pay in training and development, that could be
similar to the cost of propietary licenses.

But there are strong arguments for government use fo free software, like
"National Security" (because the ability to guarantee no backdoors),
"Technological independence" (remember that this is a 3rd world country,
and propietary software involves depending on a foreign corporation), and
"Control of information" (Citizens may be harmed when their public records
are stored ("kidnapped") into propietary file formats).

----

This law is very well written - with good intent behind it.

This law basically states that if the government or government owned
institutions are to use software, it must be examinable by the people of
that country. What a wonderful idea - one that most Americans are familiar
with.

We are allowed to observe almost all areas of government, comment upon it,
and change it as needed. I'm glad that at least some governments realize
that this should apply to software as well.

----

Laws that require the use of Free Software are about as inspiring as laws
that require the use of Windows 2000. IMHO, this doesn't seem to be an
appropriate use of government.

Choose the best software for the task, and may the best software win in the
marketplace.

----

This law as written is beautiful. It's a simple, to the point, expression
of the will of the legislature that the government convert to open software
wherever possible, as rapidly as is convenient.

In my opinion, any changes are more likely to break it than improve it. I'd
be inclined to leave it just as it is for now.

A rule of thumb for any system design - government law or software - is to
see what would happen if a deliberate attempt to misconstrue or circumvent
its intent were made by the operator or outside parties. (The only
operational difference between malice and mistake is that malice usually
exercises the bugs and crashes the system a little sooner - so you look for
system flaws as if you were looking for a way someone could deliberately
break things, without implying that malice is actually present even if the
system does crash later.)

The only potential hole I see is that the timetable is left open. So if
both a division head and the chief executive were opposed, or if the chief
executive didn't push subordinates who dragged their feet, the timetable
could slip out indefinitely.

But it's appropriate to leave the timetable to the executive, rather than
to try to micro-manage from the legislature. Execution is the executive's
job. And I'd bet the chief executive is also in favor of this, or at least
willing to go along with the will of the legislature. So I'd leave it as it
is for now and revisit it in a few years to see how the conversion is
coming.

If you're really concerned that something might fall through the cracks you
might have the executive branch report every few years on the progress of
the conversion, including a list of what hasn't been converted and why.
After five or ten years if there's anything unconverted that the
legislature hasn't been convinced SHOULDN'T be converted, then it might
want to make changes to the law to give them a push.

And I'd leave military systems up to the executive branch. Which I expect
will insist on having source code for everything they commission, and on
reverse-engineering any turnkey weapons systems they got from their allies.

----

In order to maintain an open and free government, the people must be able
to understand all governmental processes (including limitations with their
computers). It is not safe for any government to run software which it does
not know how it operates... being able to review the source code and
compile it yourself ensures security. Also, since the government pays for
all software with tax money, why shouldn't the people have access to that
software? If I pay for the government to use software on its computers... I
want access to that software I paid for.

Society has it embedded into its mind that "Corporations are always good,
they always have the best interests of the market in mind" when that is not
true. They instead have the best interests of their wallet in mind.
Software companies do take bribes to modify software to suit certain
people's needs... I would not doubt that the NSA has never paid MS for
certain code changes to Windows that make spying easier.

----

As a law that would force only the government to use Free Software, which
would give the government and the people full knowledge of the workings of
important government software, I think it is very reasonable.

----

Calling this a "law" is technically accurate, but misleading. To the
layperson, the word "law" implies a regulation that affects private
citizens, which this isn't. Really, it's just an internal government policy
decision, stating that the government will use free software whenever
possible (assuming it gets passed, of course). It doesn't regulate what
individuals and private companies can do.

----

Think about it: most of the countries in the world produce their own
weapons: they don't want to depend on others. The same starts to come true
about software, as it's importance in running the government/military is
understood.

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