GITC4 inhibitor for local developers

Government contract rules around IT procurement are hindering open source adoption and impeding competition from smaller ISVs, said speakers at an Australian conference on open source in government.

A National Office of the Information Economy (NOIE) spokesperson and an independent software vendor (ISV) panned current government contracting requirements as running counter to the use of open source for government.

They were speaking at the Open Source in Government Conference in Adelaide, a mini conference running as part of the annual technical conference linux.conf.au.

IT lawyer Brendan Scott, principal of Sydney based firm Open Source Law told iTnews that contracting frameworks, such as the Government Information Technology and Communications (GITC), stymied open source adoption thereby impeding competition from small software developers that used open source technology.

Amongst many recommendations, the GITC4 stipulates that the contractor must provide a warranty for the product and, under an intellectual property clause, ownership of copyright in materials is vested in the customer.

In contrast, Scott told iTnews: "the nature of open source development means the developer may not be able to attest to those warranties in good faith."

"GITC4 requires all the intellectual property in code is assigned to the government. Therefore it effectively locks software developers out of the work they've done," he said. "Extensive provisions protect the government against risk and shift that risk to the vendor."

"GITC4 is designed for large organisations, providing large projects to government. As a result, [independent software developers] have trouble understanding the framework, let alone complying. As a result, [they] don't protect themselves to a sufficient level," Scott told iTnews.

Peter Bailey, a spokesperson from independent software vendor Synop, said GITC4 made it difficult for his company to supply open source solutions to the government.

Synop used open source technology when contracted, along with SecureNet, to develop new internet and intranet portals for the Australian Competition Consumer Commission (ACCC).

"Most open source software provides no warranties or any indemnities for breaches of intellectual property. Can an ISV do the same when using open source software for a government contract?" Bailey asked the assembled crowd.

Bailey added that under the contract, the ACCC had code independence, which meant they could, if they desired, switch from Synop as maintainer of the system.

Echoing Bailey, Avi Miller, NOIE web infrastructure manager, said: "GITC4 was not written with a lot of open source support in mind."

As a result, Miller said NOIE had tried to avoid telling developers what to put in products to reduce intellectual property in the final product, and to lower issues regarding intellectual property arising later down the track.

Siobhan Chapman travelled to linux.conf.au in Adelaide as a guest of Sun Microsystems.