I laughed when I read on Savio Rodrigues' blog that Canada's Green Party has added open source to its official platform. Save the environment! (And save me a little open source while you're at it.)
Canada's Green Party, which has apparently struggled to be taken seriously as a major political force in Canada, has some serious aims for open source:
- Ensure that all new software developed for or by government is based on open standards and encourage and support a nationwide transition to FLOSS [Free/Libre/Open-source software] in all critical government IT systems. This will make Canada's IT infrastructure more secure and robust, lower administration and licensing costs and develop IT skills.
- Support the transition to FLOSS throughout the educational system.
Personally, I find it a bit ironic to see open source on a liberal party's platform. Conservative politics tends to be about smaller, local government solutions, even Libertarian in nature. Open source is the same, favoring tight customization/systems integrator or customer-tailored solutions. Liberal politics? Big government solutions strike me as akin to proprietary software.
Maybe I should call the Green Party in Canada. Perhaps it can start fighting for Microsoft's rights, instead. :-)