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08.26.11

Romania Under Pressure to Allow Free/Libre Software

Posted in Europe, Free/Libre Software at 10:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Romania scene

Summary: People of Romania stand up against corrupt procurement and the press is paying attention

FOLLOWING many complaints about rogue policy in Romania (Techrights motivated more exposure [1, 2, 3] as it may also be illegal), there are some news reports that apply more pressure for the Romanian government to get its thing together.

Fresh doubts have been cast over the Romanian government’s position with regard to open source. The minister for Communication and Information Society, Valerian Vreme, announced back in May that the government would recommend open source “wherever appropriate”; however, a tender from the government emerged in August that specifically prohibited the use of open source software in any offer made in response. Now, a report from OSOR.EU quotes several authoritative sources doubting the validity of the prohibition and whether “it would stand in court”.

The August tender concerned the development of an “Information System of Romanian Criminal Records (Rocris)”; this is in response to the EU initiative for the development of a European-level interoperable system, enabling the exchange of information on criminals’ previous convictions. The Romanian ministry maintained that it was this interoperability requirement that had forced it to ban the use of software published under a free software licence. It also stated that its own internal security policies “prohibit the existence of the possibility to amend the source code”.

Unacceptable policies cannot stand provided enough people know about them.

Someone from Romania sent us this bit of news a short while ago, saying that money for Romanian public IT projects does not go where it ought to. Let’s keep the pressure up. █

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