Open-source advocate Bruce Perens said that Software Choice's policies are a deceptive campaign designed to lock open source out of the public sector. "Their policies are written to maintain an unfair bias for proprietary software in the market," Perens wrote on the Web site Sincere Choice, which he created to oppose Software Choice's lobbying efforts. "Legislation tends to favour proprietary software over open source, since open source has only recently attained a significant role in business," Perens stated. The arguments used by Software Choice, he pointed out, closely mirror those used by Microsoft in lobbying against a Peruvian open-source bill earlier this year. In a March letter from Juan Alberto Gonzalez, general manager of Microsoft Peru, to congressman Edgar Villanueva, Gonzalez said the bill would break the law by establishing "discriminatory and noncompetitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies." Gonzalez also said that the bill would "discourage the local and international (software) manufacturing companies" by favouring open source over proprietary development models. "Open-source software... tends to have an ever-weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector," he wrote. In a recent speech delivered to the Government Leaders' Conference in Seattle, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates likened the concept of open source to anti-capitalism. Warning developing countries against using software based on the GPL, Gates said those who put development time into it are denying themselves the benefits of essential taxes. "The so-called (Free Software Foundation)... says that these other countries other than the US should devote R&D dollars in the so-called open approach, that means you can never commercialise that software," said Gates. Gaining ground in Europe
Despite such rhetoric, European governments have become increasingly interested in open-source software as a way of reducing costs and maintaining independence from monolithic software suppliers such as Microsoft. A recent European Commission report recommended that European administrations should share software on an open-source licensing basis, to cut soaring e-government information technology costs which, it says, are set to rise by 28 percent to 6.6bn euros (about £4bn) this year. (The report is available on the EC Web site.) In July the UK government said it would consider open-source software in a bid to avoid getting locked in to proprietary IT products. The policy affects central government, local governments and the wider public sector, including non-departmental public bodies and the National Health Service. In June, the French government contracted with Linux vendor MandrakeSoft to increase the use of open-source software and support at all levels of government. This followed a deal between the German government and IBM to promote open-source software at the federal level. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ZDNet UK's Matt Loney contributed to this report.
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