01891nas a2200121   4500008004100000022001400041245004000055210003700095260004200132520154200174100001701716856003601733       2008                        eng d  a1913-610200aEditorial: Procurement (March 2008)0 aEditorial Procurement March 2008  aOttawabTalent First Networkc03/20083 aEarlier this month, the European Commission issued a press release stating that it "will take a more pro-active approach to its own use of open source" and that "for all new development, where deployment and usage is foreseen by parties outside of the Commission Infrastructure, open source software will be the preferred development and deployment platform." While this is a strong stance regarding the use of open source, the European Commission still considers itself to be "an early adopter of open source".

Canada has yet to issue such a clear cut procurement policy towards open source. It has been five years since e-cology corporation made its recommendations in its fact finding study funded by the Canadian Federal Government. The current official position is that "departments and agencies base their decisions to acquire, develop and use software (including open source software) on their business needs and the principles set out in the government's Federated Architecture Program."

The Canadian Federal Government's position is wide open to interpretration and often leaves open source contractors to struggle against departments who are ignorant of and perhaps hostile to open source, and a bidding process that uses terminology which assumes a proprietary business model. Citizens are also affected, as can be seen in the example of Statistics Canada requiring the use of a particular proprietary operating system and software application in order to complete a mandatory Canadian Automated Export Declaration form.1 aLavigne, Dru  uhttp://timreview.ca/article/126