Office this week trailed a series of programmes designed to break the open source deadlock. First among them was a promise to create an open source reference stack: a certified list of software that when put together could create an assuredly functional system. A meeting of the British Computer Society heard on Tuesday night how the government relied on reference stacks produced by the leading software vendors in preference of their own applications and those produced by their strategic allies. The practice excluded competitors and left procurement professionals across government ignorant of alternatives even when they were better and cheaper. The Cabinet Office was also working on a draft software assessment model after losing patience with systems integrators whose own assessments typically failed to approve open source alternatives to software produced by the dominant corporations. Rashid told integrators about the plan on Tuesday: "In my experience, when we've spoken to some of the integrators there's been a reluctance to work with some open source software that this department's wanted to work with. Systems integrators say the software isn't suitable." "Quite often, the refrain from the integrators is that the software is not appropriate, not mature enough and not suitable based on their internal assessment approach." One way we can try and help that is if the Cabinet Office starts producing an assessment model to separate good software from bad software, looking at things like support, how established is it, is there good governance around development, these sorts of things. That