Choice
You need the freedom to grow your business through fair procurement, trade, and governmental policies that don’t place undue restrictions on your market reach or success. And your customers need the freedom to choose the technologies that best meet their business needs—including open source software, proprietary software, software plus services and/or a mixed-source combination. That’s why VFI actively supports:
- Fair procurement policies. Technology-neutral, transparent, and nondiscriminatory public policies open the doors for you to competitively bid on government and private-sector contracts that are based on real-world criteria such as ease of use, security, interoperability, and overall cost. Procurement policies should not favor any one type of technology development, licensing, or business model. Instead, they should ensure that the broad range of software, online services, and combinations of the two can compete.
- Online privacy and security policies. Online fraud and identity theft have prompted growing concern that threatens to erode customer confidence in digital commerce. Customer trust is crucial to the success of every web solution we build for our customers. That’s why we need industry practices and public policies that protect data collection, encourage development of privacy-enhancing technologies, and support implementation of baseline privacy legislation.
- Fair competition. Your business strategy may be to extend your services and solutions globally. Or you may choose to serve customers who do business right around the corner. In either case, there are still regions, despite fair-trade agreements, where special tariffs are applied to some technology products. And where technology standards rules favor local companies or technologies based solely on their origins.
- Policies that support interoperability. Software often needs to communicate and share data—to interoperate. There are many ways to achieve interoperability, including through vendor collaboration, by sharing intellectual property (IP), and by implementing standards. Public policies should promote interoperability, but not favor any one means of achieving it. In addition, public policy should maintain the long-standing, accepted definition of open standards, which promotes fair competition and IP protections. With both public- and private-sector purchasing dependent on approved standards, definition changes could prevent you from competing for—and winning—the contracts you need to build your business.
