Switzerland has enacted the "Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfilment of Governmental Tasks" (EMBAG), establishing a mandatory requirement for open source software within public sector bodies.
I mean realistically what did you expect? I don’t think we’ll see a law mandating open source for everything in any country. That would effectively lay open the complete inner workings of all agencies including any intelligence services etc, no?
I think calling it useless is detrimental for the effort since FOSS experts call it a huge step forward and it’s certainly better to have this than not have it because it’s „not perfect“.
Bit useless, since every department can just say they won’t publish the code for security concerns. Obviously I am not saying that intelligence agencies and military should have to open source everything, but a law with an option to ignore it completely is a bit pointless.
I get what you mean. But there are a few independent organisations in Switzerland that regularly challenge these kind of bogus claims and also win, and so far multiple projects like the Covid vaccination app or the contact tracing apps for example are open source. So, it’s definitely not pointless :)
Oh ok. Thanks for clearing it up. I am not swiss, didn’t know they actually had systems in place to avoid this. If this was implemented here in Australia, they would never check the reason for keeping it closed and nothing would happen.
I mean realistically what did you expect? I don’t think we’ll see a law mandating open source for everything in any country. That would effectively lay open the complete inner workings of all agencies including any intelligence services etc, no?
I think calling it useless is detrimental for the effort since FOSS experts call it a huge step forward and it’s certainly better to have this than not have it because it’s „not perfect“.
Bit useless, since every department can just say they won’t publish the code for security concerns. Obviously I am not saying that intelligence agencies and military should have to open source everything, but a law with an option to ignore it completely is a bit pointless.
I get what you mean. But there are a few independent organisations in Switzerland that regularly challenge these kind of bogus claims and also win, and so far multiple projects like the Covid vaccination app or the contact tracing apps for example are open source. So, it’s definitely not pointless :)
Oh ok. Thanks for clearing it up. I am not swiss, didn’t know they actually had systems in place to avoid this. If this was implemented here in Australia, they would never check the reason for keeping it closed and nothing would happen.