Monday 9 February 2009

Canadian Government's RFI on Open Source

Interestingly enough, the Government of Canada's Public Works and Government Services offices have posted a request for information on the MERX website. While this doesn't actually mean that they are already looking for software for specific tasks, they are definitely taking a look at comments from the industry regarding the use of open source or free software. Some of the terms in this RFI may be slightly wrong, since it mentions free (as in money) software, but not software were the source code is necessarily freely available. Nonetheless, it does show how recent efforts such as the petition that was sent to the Government of Quebec regarding its policy on open source software, as well as FACIL's lawsuit targetted at the same government have been effective.

ArsTechnica speaks more about the RFI, which is among other things a nice idea on how to deal with cutting costs in these troubled economic times.

The RFI is up on MERX and open for response until February 19th.

Thanks to the guys on the Ubuntu-Quebec mailing list for bringing this to my attention :)