The Open Source Threshold Escrow Program would create goodwill for software vendors trying to sell products to government agencies and large companies afraid of proprietary vendor lock-in, said Tony Stanco, creator of the program, known as O-STEP.
Corel, which Stanco used as an example of a perfect fit for the program, said Monday it might consider such an idea for its WordPerfect Office suite. "It's certainly an interesting proposal," a company spokeswoman said after being told of the program.
Stanco explained O-STEP Monday at a conference in Washington, D.C., called Open Standards/Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU.
Here's how O-STEP would work: A vendor puts a piece of software in escrow with Stanco's
Stanco, founding director of the government open source center, promoted O-STEP as a balance between current copyright law, which gives software vendors longer-than-lifetime rights to their creations, and open-source licenses, which give programmers no period of control over their software.
"Even though open source is creating a lot of software, giving some incentive, I think, will get more open source software," Stanco said. "That's the theory, that the incentive structure is important."
Open source advocates argue that the monetary incentive is not important for them; instead, the reputation they gain from creating freely distributed software is more important.
The foundation for copyright law is that producers should have monetary incentives to create, and Stanco admitted that "that's probably more right than wrong." Government agencies and large companies are scared of spending millions of dollars on software only to be locked into using that same vendor for years, he said, but the O-STEP program would allow the software they use to eventually be released as open source, allowing users to modify the software if they want to.
Stanco is counting on demand from government agencies, both in the
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