Cabinet Office builds open source strategy on proprietary software

The Cabinet Office has chosen a proprietary software system to implement the keystone of its policy to create a level playing field for open source.

Under pressure to fulfil the government's election promise to eradicate systemic bias against open source software, the Cabinet Office rushed through a procurement for an asset register last month. But it raised hackles among open source suppliers it invited to bid. They discovered the same problems that inspired Cabinet Office open source policy hindered their bidding for its own work.   

Cabinet Office called a group of open source suppliers and systems integrators together in June and told them it wanted an asset register, a system on which its policy has been contingent ever since it published its Open Source, Open Standards and Software Re-Use Action Plan in January 2009...