21 August 2007
We received a petition asking:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to require that all publically funded software projects publish source code under a Free licence."
Details of Petition:
"Software written using public funds should have it’s source code published under a distribution licence that has been declared Free by the Free Software Foundation, rather than remaining a closed secret. This would allow for more of the public to benefit from the development of the software since the code would be available for anyone to use and improve. Furthermore, compatibility with other Free licences (such as the GPL) would promote rapid development and reduced costs through the reuse of existing code. An open development model would also allow the public to be more informed of the progress and quality of these projects, which so frequently seem to end up severely over budget."
Read the Government’s response
The UK Government champions open standards and interoperability through its e Government Interoperability Framework (eGIF) and through the publication of its Open Source Software Policy, which is available in the document "Open Source Software, Use within UK Government, Version 2.0, 28 October 2004". This and eGIF are available from www.govtalk.gov.uk (new window).
The relevant policy is set out on page 4 of the Open Source Software Policy document, and states:
"Publicly funded R&D projects which aim to produce software outputs shall specify a proposed software exploitation route at the start of the project. At the completion of the project, the software shall be exploited either commercially or within an academic community or as OSS."
Furthermore, it is recognised that there is a need to maximise returns on, and benefits from, public investment in publicly funded R&D software. Government policy helps achieve this by making clear that the ‘exploitation route’ for such publicly funded R&D software should be chosen with this objective in mind.
The policy on exploiting R&D software does not apply to software developed in areas of defence, national security or law enforcement or software developed by trading funds for reasons of national security and to protect government commercial interests.