That’s a whistleblower in the purest form:  discovering government secrets of criminal and corrupt acts and then publicizing them to the world not for profit, not to give other nations an edge, but to trigger “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.”  That’s the person that Adrian Lamo informed on and risked sending to prison for an extremely long time.

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The reason this story matters so much — aside from the fact that it may be the case that a truly heroic, 22-year-old whistle-blower is facing an extremely lengthy prison term — is the unique and incomparably valuable function WikiLeaks is fulfilling.  Even before the Apache helicopter leak, I wrote at length about why they are so vital, and won’t repeat all of that here.  Suffice to say, there are very few entities, if there are any, which pose as much of a threat to the ability of governmental and corporate elites to shroud their corrupt conduct behind an extreme wall of secrecy.

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Any rational person would have to acknowledge that government secrecy in rare cases is justifiable and that it’s possible for leaks of legitimate secrets to result in serious harm. I’m not aware of a single instance where any leak from WikiLeaks has done so, but it’s certainly possible that, at some point, it might. But right now, the scales are tipped so far in the other direction — toward excessive, all-consuming secrecy — that the far greater danger comes from allowing that to fester and grow even more. It’s not even a close call. Any efforts to subvert that secrecy cult are commendable in the extreme, and nobody is doing that as effectively as WikiLeaks (and their value is not confined to leaking, as they just inspired a serious effort to turn Iceland into a worldwide haven for investigative journalism and anonymous whistle-blowers).
Glenn Greenwald, “case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks“, Salon, June 18th, 2010

“Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused…”

The article has the tantalizing title of “Quebec government sued for buying Microsoft software“, but the heart of the matter is that Quebec is being sued for not accepting other bids. This policy is an anti-competitive business practice, and by effect anti- open source.

Quite a few of the comments in the article try to scapegoat the issue saying the government also relies on other vendors that have Microsoft Windows only solutions, but no one is arguing flip the switch and suffer. A government’s needs aren’t short term, and the very job of these policy analysts and technology procurement specialists is to weigh the options and total cost of ownership over the long-term.

It’s frightening that not only do they think there are no other options, but they are standing behind a law that shuts down all conversations. Their own belief that they are locked in, should scream to work towards alternatives. For a public office, important measures are openness and public value.

Another argument used by commenters to defend the current policy is that open source has a different, often worse user interface and experience. This isn’t really the case. There are a large variety of open source solutions with some mimicking Microsoft products and others having focused task based experiences. With choice, with open source, they can best meet the needs of their customers.

The last favorite scapegoat is that open source is free, and that this means that it’s unsupported. Many companies have built or reshaped their business around providing world class support of open source including IBM, Sun, Novel, Oracle, RedHat, and Canonical (Ubuntu). This won’t be profitable if the software products themselves weren’t world class. Canonical’s Ubuntu Support is even headquartered in Montreal, Quebec.

This policy hints at Canadian goverment offices being behind the curve. They have a great opportunity to review and measure how many other countries are using open source, and demonstrate how open standards and open technologies is how industry and government are investing in themselves and their members.