The bill has the following main features:
1. It declares as state policy the use of open source software products developed by Filipinos (Sec. 2);
2. It defines open standards, open format and FOSS and mandates the government to recognize licenses in this area (Sec. 3,4,5,6);
3. It mandates the use of open standards and FOSS in the public sector, except in extraordinary circumstances as determined by public hearing (Sec. 5,6,7);
4. It gives preference for Filipino-owned ICT companies in the government’s procurement of FOSS goods and services (Sec. 8);
5. In the private sector, the bill promotes the use of FOSS and open standards through non-fiscal incentives (Sec. 10);
6. It promotes FOSS and opens standards in educational institutions and encourages schools to offer certification programs for FOSS (Sec. 9);
7. It bans the patenting of software (Sec. 11);
8. It mandates the CICT to oversee the law's implementation and creates the Office on FOSS Migration as an attached agency to ensure this (Sec. 13, 14,15).
9. It sets targets for FOSS migration for the first five years of the Act's implementations (Sec. 13) According to Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casino, "The FOSS world is a world where there are no need for pirates, software pirates, because the wealth of software technology becomes accessible to all. In fact, with the advent of cloud computing, the proprietary software model, one in which you have to pay an expensive license to use a software, is further becoming obsolete."
We hope you can write to your district congressmen to support the bill as well. We need all the votes we can muster in order to make the FOSS a reality.
3rd Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Week in Congress, North Wing Lobby, Batasan Pambansa.
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