FOSS Act passed to the Philippine Congress

Cong. Teodoro A. Casiño passed an Act to the 13th Congress which will promote the use Free Open Source Software in the Philippines. The said Act will also ammend the current Philippine Republic Act 8923 also known as the "Intellectual Property Code of the Phillippines". The Act which will be called the "Free Open Source Software(FOSS) Act of 2006" will definetly encourage Open Source practices among Government bodies, which will be a great jumpstart to let the masses recognize the importance/gains brought about using FOSS. By enforcing policies such as limiting the use proprietary software on Government owned offices, operations such as Research and Development must utilize in 1st priority Open Source solutions over propriety ones. These will in turn benefit the state because the Government will take charge of the Source codes and be in full control of the over-all implementaion of IT-related processes. The following was quoted from the original house bill:

7.1. Use of Open Standards – The Government shall use only ICT goods and services that comply with open standards as defined in section 4 of this Act;

7.2. Open Formats – all government communication and data intended for public consumption shall be encoded in open standard data formats;

7.3. Clarification on the Use of RAND License for Open Standards – open standards licensed under “Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” (RAND) terms and hence are not free but are available for a reasonable fee shall be used only under extraordinary circumstances as defined in section 7.5 of this Act.

7.4. Use of FOSS – The government shall apply only FOSS or FOSS solutions, as defined in section 5 of this Act, in all ICT projects and activities;

The FOSS Act of 2006 of the Philippines will fully support the Open Source standards and criteria set by the world-known FOSS Advocate Body. This means that current widely recognized FOSS license and standards will be legally acknowledged by the Government of the Republic of the Phillippines.

This FOSS Act will enforce the migration from propriety software to Open Source software used by the Government institions in all levels with certain exceptions as quoted from the original house bill as follows:

7.1. Extraordinary Circumstances – The following are extraordinary circumstances which may exempt government from using open standards and FOSS:

7.5.1.Where there is no reasonably available ICT good or services supporting open standards and/or FOSS in the field, area or activity that the Government intends to enter or participate; or,

7.5.2.Where a particular government agency or office has an existing, widely-used and widely implemented proprietary ICT system and there are no reasonably available technology using open standards and/or FOSS that can be used with the said proprietary system.

7.2. Determination of Extraordinary Circumstances – The CICT, through the Office of FOSS Migration created under section 17 of this Act shall determine, through a public hearing, whether there exists extraordinary circumstances that will exempt a government agency or project from sections 7.1 to 7.4 of this Act.

I dearly hope that the above restrictions won't get abused by some government officials by resorting to propriety/commercial software and gain kickbacks (ok i'll shut my mouth, no politics.. :) ).

But being stated clearly, these exceptions on the enforcement of Open Source usage among IT-Related or IT-empowered Government instutions should not hinder the very goal of the Act itself. I am quite confident that the Philippine Commission on Information and Communication Technology(CICT) can handle this very well as even before the Commission has been promoting FOSS without direct intervention from the Philippine Congress. Once the bill is passed, the CICT will further have power promoting the application of Open Source in Government offices.