This past Wednesday, the examination of the “Bill for a Digital Republic” resumed. Despite speeches by a handful of Senators who wanted to renew the discussion of prioritizing free and open source software and formats in public administrations, in the end the bill would limit itself to encouragements.
On Wednesday, the Senate was the stage for the final act of the play on the future of open source solutions in the French Administration. Just a few days after DINSIC published the new version of the national interoperability framework describing all the open source software and formats recommended for the Administration in great detail, our Senators were studying the Bill for a Digital Republic.
A few brave souls did try to bring the prioritization of free and open source software and formats in French administrations back to centre stage “for the development, purchase or use of an information system”, a provision of the original bill that was deleted by the Law Commission in early April, in the name of the principle of equality and fair competition underlying public procurement. Arguing that this priority was an opportunity for the public higher education and research service, that there were no grounds for the other administrations to reject it, and that closed source software would still have its chance if it was better able to meet a procurement order’s specifications, their pleas in favour of Amendment No. 393 were in vain.
Instead, the Upper House decided to support Amendment No. 223 by which the administrations would “see to the preservation of the control, longevity and independent of their information systems” but also “encourage the use of free and open source software and formats for the development, purchase or use of such information systems, in whole or in part”. As this text presents no indications as to the constraints or incentives that this “encouragement” might generate, the open source community is left with the status quo in a further illustration of a backbone that is as weak as the consensus stemming from decisions made by representative houses tasked with ruling on the world of open source software.
Sources: Amendment No. 223 and Amendment No. 393