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sjvn

Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source zdnet.com/article/switzerland- by @sjvn

Switzerland is one of the world's leading #opensource countries; now, if only the United States could follow its lead!

35 comments
Isaac Ji Kuo

@sjvn

I understand it's not the intent, but now I can't help but ponder cutting edge PC gamers flocking away from WASD and ESDF in favor of 7TYUH.

Charles U. Farley

@sjvn The US will be the last country to do this.

Oblomov

@freakazoid @sjvn given they haven't even switched to metric yet, it'll probably never happen ;-)

Jose Eight

@ste @sjvn they tried this in Munich a few years ago, didn't end well, returned to Windows 5 or 6 years later ☹️

Bruno Santos

@sjvn A few years ago, the #Portuguese government tried to do the same, starting with the official documents . All must be in open document format. It didn't work when the own government, who had issued the order, kept sending documents in Microsoft formats. At the time, there was no office in open formats (docx, etc..). LibreOffice was not a thing, only OpenOffice. The #Portuguese government is tight in with M$, more and more every year. It's a shame

sjvn

@feiticeir0 I believe the UK civil service is still using ODF by default, but it's an uphill battle.

Jose Eight

@turbobob @sjvn @feiticeir0 all big companies continue to use docx and xlsx so guessing governmentds tend to follow

SimonCHulse

@lightweight @sjvn recently the tech world has been following Europe at least in some ways so it bodes well.

Askier

@sjvn Huge win and congratulations to every Swiss citizen.

Henrik Hemrin

@sjvn Incredible many trackers on that ZDNET-page. In my settings, uBlock origin blocks right now 396 (steps up every time I flip to that browser tap) and EFF Privacy badger 15.

Dirk Bei der Kellen πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

@hehemrin @sjvn Well, maybe you`d just need to adjust your stance to what openess means to marketeers! Joke...

Yvan DS πŸ—ΊοΈ :ferris: :go:

@sjvn just to clarify:

This is for all custom software.
Off the shelves software / solutions can still be close source.

However this is great for us to ack that we have very bad custom software. Deprecated stack, most likely plagued with security holes, so this could ensure that custom software is shared among our states and can be audited by everyone.

So not all shining and rainbows. But progress nonetheless.

sjvn

@YvanDaSilva That's all in the story. I didn't choose the misleading headline.

MatthewToad43

@sjvn I've seen quite a few complaints about accessibility being less than perfect (though I'm a satisfied and not entirely able bodied Linux user, I have friends using e.g. screen magnification).

I wonder if they, or the EU when its OSS funding comes back, might be able to do something about that.

Marty Fouts

@sjvn @sjvn I have seen a lot of posts asserting that and they all leave out a major loophole: doesn’t apply to 3rd party software and has no provision discouraging 3rd party software.

We tried something similar at NASA by agency mandate in the 80s. A lot of creativity went into discovering reasons why a project had to use 3rd party resulting in no discernible increase in OSS.

I hope Switzerland has a better result but without mandates I doubt it will.

Yvan DS πŸ—ΊοΈ :ferris: :go:

@MartyFouts @sjvn this is indeed correct.

I don't think this is about increasing OSS usage increase at all.
We voted this for transparency mostly.
And because it's Swiss citizens taxes that build the software, it's therefore normal that any Swiss citizen can audit it and use it.
Specially across our cantons (states)

Glimmering of a Flowermob

@sjvn @POTUS How about open source? #USPS is still unavailable because of #CrowdstrikeFail

wayfinder
I wonder whether the person who did the key visual for the article knows Vietnamese...
Serge Droz

@sjvn This title is misleading: All, well, most government developed software must be opensourced. The article itself has it right.

Lerk

@sjvn That is pretty awesome. I assume that most governments are consumers instead of creators, but I wonder what type of contributions we can expect in a few years.

Raccoon Formality

@sjvn @sudaksis no offense but the US would literally never lol

Ema γ‚¨γƒž
I can confirm that for example the development of QGIS, ModelBaker and the Open Source Interlis tools are heavily funded by Swiss Federal, Cantonal and Municipial governments since a decade.
ferricoxide

@sjvn@mastodon.social

A government that got Microsoft to create private Azure partitions for at least three different data classification levels? Seems unlikely.

Dirk Bei der Kellen πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

@sjvn In Germany it appears that the federal free state of Thuringa has first established an open stack strategy in public administration.

David

@sjvn

That is very nice if Switzerland and any other country doing it realizes that open source programmers need to eat and pay bills. 🧐

Comming from a government with huge piles of cash inside the country sounds more like reduce costs with free labor. πŸ˜’

Oh the buts: "... the law not only allows the release of OSS by the Swiss government or its contractors, but also requires the code to be released under an open-source license "UNLESS the RIGHTS of THIRD PARTIES or SECURITY-RELATED REASONS would EXCLUDE or RESTRICT this."

@sjvn

That is very nice if Switzerland and any other country doing it realizes that open source programmers need to eat and pay bills. 🧐

Comming from a government with huge piles of cash inside the country sounds more like reduce costs with free labor. πŸ˜’

Oh the buts: "... the law not only allows the release of OSS by the Swiss government or its contractors, but also requires the code to be released under an open-source license "UNLESS the RIGHTS of THIRD PARTIES or SECURITY-RELATED REASONS would...

Elena ``of Valhalla''
@sjvn why am I this bothered by the fact that there is an Y instead of a Z between the T and U keys on that keyboard?
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