John:
The papers on this matter can be found at : http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/rfc/rfc_document.asp?docnum=429 http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/interoperability/egif_document.asp?docnum=430 those members who have an opinion on this mater now have an opportunity to make it known to the UK government.
Please, before you reply, take note of the arguments put forward at http://www.alex.uklinux.net/Documents/
The author is willing to accept improvemnts and I think this may form the basis for a combined response. The QinetQ report is badly flawed and misses the point of Free Software. It's not very surprising that the proposed policy carries these flaws through.
Although it calls it Open Source, please remember: there is very little difference between the Open Source Initiative definition and the Debian Free Software Definition. Many of us prefer the less ambiguous term "Free Software", while we wish to see the original idea behind both implemented.