Members of the European Parliament representing the Green Party and the European Free Alliance (EFA) believe that Europe's software industry would get a substantial boost if the EU and the European Parliament migrated their IT systems onto free and open-source software.
Such a move, the Green-EFA group claims, would also reduce costs and improve security.
The Green-EFA group will argue its case at a press conference in Brussels on Wednesday, having already written to the secretary general of the European Parliament, Julian Priestly, to explain their reasoning.
"We would like the Parliament, in liaison with the other European institutions, to plan to either begin phasing open source software into the IT system, or to give the choice between open source and proprietary software of the Microsoft type to the people who use software in the institutions," wrote Monica Frassoni and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, co-presidents of the Green/EFA group.
"We truly believe that by taking a step in this direction, the European Parliament could demonstrate its desire to respond to the expectations of its constituents while still remaining in touch with technological developments," Frassoni and Cohn-Bendit added.
The European Free Alliance is a collective body of MEPs who represent stateless nations.
Efforts to increase the use of open-source software by government agencies have come under intense criticism from representatives of proprietary software companies and analysts.
In Australia, efforts to pass laws to encourage the use of open source software by the government have been blasted by Bruce McCabe, a veteran IT researcher and managing director of Australia-based research firm S2 Intelligence. McCabe said: "Legislation for open source is ridiculous. Why should open-source software get preferential treatment in government?" According to McCabe, government agencies need to be educated about their software options, not have it forced upon them.
The Office of the e-Envoy (OEE) in the Cabinet Office and the DTI announced in June that to encourage publicly-funded software development, they were considering establishing open-source licence terms as the default for government-funded software.
The move met opposition from Intellect, an industry body that represents about 1,000 UK IT companies and is backed by developers including Microsoft, IBM, Intel and BAE Systems. According to the group, increasing use of open source software development by governments could have a negative impact on competition for contracts, the quality of the resulting software and even the confidentiality of government departments.
Talkback
What a rediculous comment from Intellect: "According to the group, increasing use of open source software development by governments could have a negative impact on competition for contracts, the quality of the resulting software and even the confidentiality of government departments."
Increased use of open source software would serve to impact positively on competition, quality and confidentiality rather than negatively as Intellect suggests. However, this may indeed have a negative impact on it's members - like Microsoft - where the current arrangement is heavily loaded in their favor.
By using open source software government can choose who they use for ongoing services, including improvements to the software.
Open source software allows users choice. If they aren't happy, another party (or parties) can be engaged to continue the work, instead of being tied to the current vendor. For example, if government is unhappy with the security of their software and believes that the party producing it could have done a better job - a fairly reasonable example given current circumstances - government could choose to engage another party to work throught the existing code base to make suitable improvements.
Another advantage is that having initially tendered for software, government would remain free to choose who continues to work on that software in the future, instead of being faced with the decision of continuing to use a sub-standard product because they feel tied the a single vendor, or going to the effort of moving to another similar product.
Of course, with choice and competition come lower prices and the need for vendors to justify their products and services. This is never good for the vendor if the vendor has in the past had a monopoly on the supply of such software. Then again, if government can get better service and prices through improved competition, that should be what government is interested in.
SO, Bruce McCabe, a veteran IT researcher and managing director of Australia-based research firm S2 Intelligence. asks: "Why should open-source software get preferential treatment in government?"
I would suggest that if he can't answer his own question, he must not be much of an IT researcher.
Cheaper, better quality, faster response to bug fixes and enhancement requests.
Ownership of data and content that can be used independent of the software used to produce it.
Openess of source code to public reviev, comment, and even improvement!
That will be free, complenents of Second Century Software, an IT research firm in Detroit MI, US