Draft of free software bill (V5)
DEFINITIONS
Article 1.- For the present law, the following terms are defined:
a) Program or "software"; is any instruction secuence used by a computer to carry out a specific task or solve a particular problem.
b) Use of a program is the act of executing it on any computer to perform an assignment.
c) User is any person (real or juridical) who uses the software.
d) Source code, or source program, is the complete set of original instruction and digital files created and/or modified by the programmer, and all digital support files as data tables, images, specifications, documentation, and every other element needed to produce the executable program from them.
As an exception, this set can exclude those tools and programs usually distributed freely by other means, as compilers, operating systems, and libraries.
e) Free program (software) is any which use gives the user, without an additional price, the following rights:
e.1) unrestricted use of the program for any purpose.
e.2) unrestricted access to its source code
e.3) exhaustive inspection of all internal operating mechanisms of the program.
e.4) use of these internal mechanisms and any arbitrary part of the program, for adapting it to user needs.
e.5) production and distribution of copies of the program
e.6) modification of the program and free redistribution of these modifications and of the resulting program under this same conditions.
Besides these rights, the cost for obtaining a copy of the program or its source code can not be significatively higher than the usual market cost for materials, work and logistic required for making that copy.
f) "non-free"; or "propietary"; program is any which doesn't satisfies the requirements stated in the preceding article 1 section e).
g) Open data format is any digital information coding method whose complete technical documention and the entire source code of at least one reference implementation are publicly available, and for which there are no restrictions for producing programs that store, read, transmit or receive data codified in that way.
RANGE OF APPLICATION
Article 2.- The Executive Power, the Legislative Power, decentralized organizations and companies where the National State is a majoritary stockholder, will use for their systems and IT equipment only free programs (software).
Article 3.- The Application Authority for this law will be the Chief of Ministers Office of the National Executive Power.
EXCEPTIONS
Article 4.- If there is no free software solution that satisfies a specific need, state organizations mentioned in article 2 will be able to adopt one of the following choices, in decreasing order of priority:
a) If there is no non-free software solution that satisfies the specific need and, consequentially, the decision to develop a solution is made, the resulting solution must in all cases be free software, as defined in article 1 of this law.
b) If there is a non-free solution available and there are verifiable time constraints to satisfy the need, the organization requiring it can request from the Application authority a temporary authorization for non-free software use, with a selection criteria that must be established in the regulation of this law. Such authorization will be granted only if the requesting state organization warrants storage of data in open data formats.
Artículo 5º.- National Public Universities and other educational entities depending on the National State will also be allowed to request an authorization for use of non-free software to be used in research, as long as the research objective is directly associated to the non-free program requested.
PUBLICITY OF EXCEPTIONS
Article 6.- The exceptions authorized by the Application Authority must be fundamented and published by the means designed by the regulation.
Article 7.- If any state organization specified in article 2 is authorized to acquire or use non-free software or programs to store or process data of privacy or security critical for the State, the Application Authority must also publish, by the means designed by the regulation, a report explaining the risks associated to non-free software use in that area.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Article 8.- The highest administrative authority and the highest technical authority of each organization covered by the range of this law will be jointly responsible for carrying out this law.
TRANSITION TERMS
Article 9.- The Executive Power will rule in a term of a hundred and eighty days the conditions, dates, and ways for the transition of presently installed systems toward free programs characterized in article 1, and will turn in that direction future bids and contracts for computer software.
Article 10.- From the date established by the Executive Power on, state organizations will not be allowed to store digital information in non-open data formats, nor use programs which licenses imply any form of discrimination to persons or groups, or which don't satisfy all the requirements established by this law.
Article 11.- The Judicial Power, Provincial and City governments, and the Autonomous Government of the City of Buenos Aires are invited to join this initiative.
Article 12.- Comunicate this to the National Executive Power
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Translation by:
Daniel F Moisset,
May 29th, 2001
Last modified: Monday, 10-Nov-2003 22:01:25 ART |