parser librarian

CBC reports on the federal government of Canada’s request for information on open source – you can view the actual RFI as posted on Merx, the government’s tendering system.

The purpose of the RFI is:

to help the Government of Canada (GC) put together guidelines related to the planning, acquisition, use and disposal of No Charge Licensed Software (NCLS). While there is already significant interest for No Charge Licensed Software within the Government of Canada there are many questions being asked… There exists operationally a requirement to produce common guidelines that are fair, open and transparent and can be applied consistently across departments.

I have some quibbles about just what they’re trying to accomplish with some of the questions, but I’m happy to see some interest and hope that this RFI leads in some way to giving open source the visibility it deserves.

I can attest to the  “significant interest” reference. In the last year, I’ve both witnessed and experienced hands-on some incredible developments that would have been unthinkable a year to two ago. Yesterday, for example, I found out about a major government data centre running Ubuntu + Open VZ for a significant rollout of virtual servers – and this from a one of the “lead agencies” too.  Drupal is in used in at least half dozen departments that I know of, a federal government library is set to move to an open source ILS, and the list goes on…