March 21, 2009 by Akari Sano
Akari Sano is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course.
Open Source Software, the next vendor lock in?
A recent CBC article stated the federal government is seeking tenders on information about free software for the first time. It quoted Open Source software (OSS) will be considered. Two issues arose from this article for me. The article cited various reasons why the government has only started to consider OSS now. One reason for the delay, that licensees are restricted in their choice of complementary software, no longer applies given the recent advances within the Open Source community. Non- interoperability should not be a barrier anymore. The other concern is the government is seeking information on OSS, assuming it is free. But is OSS really free?
Follow Comments via RSS