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- cross-posted to:
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Switzerland has recently enacted a law requiring its government to use open-source software (OSS) and disclose the source code of any software developed by or for the public sector. According to ZDNet, this “public body, public code” approach makes government operations more transparent while increasing security and efficiency. Such a move would likely fail in the U.S. but is becoming increasingly common throughout Europe.
According to Switzerland’s new “Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfillment of Government Tasks” (EMBAG), government agencies must use open-source software throughout the public sector.
The new law allows the codifies allowing Switzerland to release its software under OSS licenses. Not just that; it requires the source code be released that way “unless the rights of third parties or security-related reasons would exclude or restrict this.”
In addition to mandating the OSS code, EMBAG also requires Swiss government agencies to release non-personal and non-security-sensitive government data to the public. Calling this Open Government Data, this aspect of the new law contributes to a dual “open by default” approach that should allow for easier reuse of software and data while also making governance more transparent.
Really I’m not just talking about operating systems. I was trying to make a point about how using Windows instead of an open source OS wouldn’t violate this law.
The same could be said for any other software used by the Swiss government. They could be using Excel or other niche proprietary software. Hospitals in Switzerland could also be using obscure proprietary software for their patient databases, especially since that information would likely not be made available to the general public anyway.
According to my literal interpretation of the article, it would need to be made “by or for” the Swiss government. They could use any proprietary software they want based on this phrasing, as long as the software wasn’t made by government workers and the government didn’t hire any outsourcing company to make it.
Most software we have has been made irrelevantly to the Swiss government or any government in general. Even if they used Linux, Linux has nothing to do with the Swiss government. Unless Switzerland are gonna code their own extensive open source computer infrastructure, the law doesn’t really apply to almost any software used in their offices at all.
It seems likely that the Swiss will hire people to write a few open source pieces of software, like maybe an open source hospital software for doctors to put notes into their computers and have it on the database, for the sake of argument. But that might all be a bit of an empty promise from the people signing in this law anyway.
If reading that headline made you think the Swiss government is gonna start using mostly open source software, that might be true, but I don’t think the law enforces that as it’s explained in the article.
To me this seems to be somewhat of a soft law that could lead on to more laws phasing out proprietary software in Swiss government offices and public sector workplaces. That at some point could include Windows, but swapping Microsoft Office for Libreoffice would be a far easier short-term goal, and that in itself might be a bit of a headache logistically.
If you’re interested in what sort of software will be running on Swiss government-owned computers and how much of it will be open source, I think we can’t say at this point. You’d have to see what laws they pass in the future and how that software changes.
Anyway, government offices ideally shouldn’t use Windows on their computers, especially outside of the US. That is one of the most important things if they’re doing this because they think it’s more secure.
This would apply to lots of software other than Windows (or operating systems in general).
I think it would mostly apply to software other than operating systems, really.
Weird custom one-off databases that only a government would need, mostly.
The “third party rights” is a loophole you could drive a truck through, if you wanted to circumvent this law.