Romania records criminal disregard of open source

According to the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MAI), domestic Romanian and European interoperability requirements are forcing it to ban the use of open source software in building a criminal records management system.

The explicit ban of software available under an open source licence is one of the requirements made by the ministry in the tender, which was published on 2 July. MAI is requesting an ‘Information System of Romanian Criminal Records (Rocris)’, for a budget equivalent to €2.85 million.

On page 64 of the ‘Specifications’, the ministry writes: “All versions of software that are part of the offer may not be published under a ‘free software license’ – GPL or similar.”

When asked to explain why open source software cannot be considered, the ministry replied: “Despite the fact the MAI administers GPL systems and encourages their use, for the time being all critical systems are implemented on Enterprise platforms, in order to be able to follow strict requirements for security and interoperability.”

“Because the present discussion is about implementing a critical national IT system, and given the necessity to remain interoperable with the other internal MAI and European IT systems, the new system must implement specific security requirements.”

This sounds like a cop-out to us… yet again (news passim).

For further reading, see the original OSOR post.