From OpenMuni Wiki

This evaluation only covers a few issue areas and is far from a comprehensive comparative look. Furthermore, it has yet to be fully updated to include the policies from California and Vermont. In other words, this page needs more work.

Case Studies

• Massachusetts Enterprise Information Technology Acquisition Policy
• Vancouver
• Portland
• San Francisco
• California Open Source Software Policy (PDF)
• Vermont Open Source Software and Open Standards Policy and Guidelines (PDF)

More:

• Comprehensive 2010 Study of Government Open Source Policies (PDF)
• UK Open Source & Open Standards Policy (PDF)

Definition

Vancouver

License any software applications developed by the City of Vancouver such that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses, and the public without restriction.

San Francisco

Open source software means that the underlying source code is not copyrighted and therefore available free of charge to read, modify, and build upon.

The Open Source Initiative

Both California and Vermont cite the Open Source Initiative (Bruce Perens') Open Source definition: http://opensource.org/docs/osd

Procurement

Two points to notice here are based on the words "equal" and "commercial." The word "equal" gives these policies some measurable way of ensuring and benchmarking open source as part of the procurement process. The use of the word "commercial" as the opposite of "open source" is misleading since it implies that open source software is by definition non-commercial. A more accurate term to serve as the opposite of "open source" would be "proprietary" but terminology should really be defined as part of the policy ("closed source" isn't quite right, because it implies that the source code is inaccessible, which is not always the case even with proprietary software).

Vancouver

The City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles.

Portland

Establish best practices for analysis of business requirements in software review and selection processes, identify existing commercial software systems with licenses that are scheduled to expire in the near future, and encourage the consideration of Open Source Software in the review, replacement and continual improvement of business solutions;

San Francisco

The Software Evaluation Policy will require departments to consider open source alternatives, when available, on an equal basis to commercial software, as these may reduce cost and speed the time needed to bring software applications to production.

Publishing Source Code

Vancouver

License any software applications developed by the City of Vancouver such that they may be used by other municipalities, businesses, and the public without restriction.

Other References

• http://topplabs.org/civichacker/2010/01/cities-powered-by-open-source/
• http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/commercial-floss.html
• Municipalities find it hard to adopt open source
• Open source adoption is often bottom-up, Ph.D study says
  • To Ven's surprise, the availability of the code or the potential cost savings are no reason for organisations to switch to this type of software. "It's reliability however, is considered a more important argument."