Portugal's Association for Free Software (Ansol) is protesting two calls for tender, with a total value of nearly three million euro, by the University of Coimbra and the Bank of Portugal, requesting licences for proprietary software. The association not only wants the procedures cancelled, it also wants the country's ombudsman to rule that adding 'or equivalent' to such requests is a token gesture.
Rui Seabra, Ansol's president, explained that the association wants to explain to the ombudsman that simply by adding the words 'or equivalent' to tenders like these should not be considered sufficient. "It is impossible to replace the proprietary operating system by, for instance, a GNU/Linux distribution and then expect all applications on top of this operating system to continue to work."
Ansol claims that both calls for tender are illegal because they limit competition to suppliers of licences of a single proprietary operating system. Seabra: "We also contest the validity of the claim by both public institutions that they are purchasing software, where they are in fact renting licences."
The association points out that national and European rules on procurement prohibit specifying single suppliers or specific products. "Public administrations blatantly continue to violate these rules, avoiding competition with the economically more rational free software," Ansol said in its statement, published on 26 December.
The university of Coimbra on 14 November published a request for tender for the purchasing of software licences from one specific vendor worth 133 thousand euro. The Bank of Portugal on 9 December published a request for a supply and maintenance of licences, of the same proprietary vendor, worth 2.9 million euro.
Exorbitant
Ansol president Seabra: "It is nothing compared to the costs of building a free-way, but these public organisations are spending exorbitant amounts on software, difficult to justify in normal times and unacceptable during the current financial crises."
The organisation is asking the ombudsman to immediately pause the procedures, until it has investigated Ansol's claims. "We want to prevent the institutions to argue they already signed contracts, in case the ombudsman's investigation takes a long time."
The Bank of Portugal did not yet respond to repeated calls and emails requesting comments. The university did not yet respond to an email seeking its view.
More information:
Ansol press release
Call for tender by the University of Coimbra (pdf, in Portuguese)
Call for tender by the Bank of Portugal
Public Contract Code (pdf, in Portuguese)
Tek news item (In Portuguese)