Deciding what lies at the heart of some countries' almost-zealous uptake of open source is not as simple as looking at the cold, hard costs — politics, national security, anti-Americanism and innovation all have a part to play.
Despite the hype generated by Microsoft's unavoidable 'Get the Facts' ad campaign, the reality is that government agencies often see the actual cost of open source software as less important than other factors — such as adopting open standards, avoiding vendor lock-in and encouraging the local software industry.
The actual cost of software is less important in the West than in the developing world. Experts claim that proprietary software fees are relatively low compared with the potential labour costs associated with migrating to open source software. Licence fees generally account for 5 percent to 10 percent of the total cost of ownership in wealthier countries, while maintenance, integration, support and training represent 60 percent to 85 percent of total costs, according to Rishab Ghosh, programme leader of an open source research project at the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) in Holland. The remaining costs are due to the cost of related hardware and software, he claims.
So, if it's not about the money so much, why have governments in Europe, particularly France and Germany, apparently leapt on the potential of open source so enthusiastically?
One reason may be that governments are tired of being held to ransom by proprietary software makers and armies of consultants. Open data formats are more open and avoid vendor lock-in, says Ghosh. "It is no longer considered to be acceptable for the public to pay money to read information from the government," he says. "Also, with proprietary software, organisations tend to be locked into vendor-driven upgrade cycles. This is something that governments and IT managers are increasingly unhappy about."
Also open source is often way below the governments' radar, but promoting its use can be a relatively simple and populist measure. "Politicians love open source — they can make a lot of statements without spending any money," says François Bancilhon, the chief executive of Linux distributor Mandriva.
When it comes to the apparent gulf between US and European adoption of open source, things are not clear cut. Red Hat, the largest open source player in the market is, after all, American. But so far high-profile uses of open source software in US government have been isolated, with Massachusetts leading the charge most recently.
Some analysts claim the French government's interest in open source is driven by anti-Americanism but French officials claim that it's actually down to a fundamental difference in philosophy.
A good look at how different states in Europe have approached open source, compared with the historically technically advanced US, reveals that "getting the facts" isn't as straightforward as some companies would have us believe.
- The UK: Confused but enthusiastic
- United States: Open source too close to socialism?
- France: Liberté, égalité... open source?
- Germany: Munich leads the desktop charge
- Norway: Fjording the open source rift
- Spain: Extraordinary Extremadura
- Poland/Eastern Europe: Community equals communism?
Talkback
Good research.
Oh, yes the "Old Europe" countries above all France and Germany OF COURSE switch to Linux motivated by anti-Americanism. Oh, gee give me a break, will ya?
Did Dubya force you to write such a complete bullshit?
It's not Holland, but The Netherlands. :-)
The allegation that TCO is smaller in the case of proprietary software is absurd and completely false. It's based exclusively on Microsoft's so-called "ge the facts" campaign, nobody can take that as a fact without being ridiculous. In fact, independent studies show that TCO is less than half for Linux and open source than for Windows and Microsoft.
My my my. France using Opensource softwares because it's not American? Gimme a break!
Fact is, a few well-known Open-Source elements originated in a French speaking environment... Let's see: gzip, http, divx (ProjectMayo, anyone? Gej?), the decision for OOo to go multilingual (ok, so maybe that one can be discussed...)
Note: recently started, France's numeric television broadcasting uses MPEG-2 - for public channels. Private, paid-for channels use MPEG-4...
Although it's gotten out of fashion, France also was the first country to have a state-wide telematic client-server architecture open to anyone: Minitel.
So, is it so hard to understand that a country with a culture where one is supposed to think about the society's welfare in general at the same time he thinks about his own, that has gotten used to everyday use nation-wide communication systems 15 years before the rest of the world got something similar, where all credit cards carry advanced securised microchips (and have been doing so for a long time) and where software has traditionally been developed in large quantities of ideas but never easily sold, got enthusiastic in the use of F/OSS?
Actually, does anyone remember that the personal computer has been created in France, but never got past a few prototypes due to lack of funding?
So, why would France's decision to go with F/OSS, that matches its methods much more closely than pure US liberalism, just be a way to spite the Americans? Why would anybody want to do things just like the Americans do them?
As a matter of fact, has anyone tried a French-translated piece of proprietary software? Microsoft's have content mistakes, language abuses, can't spell-check worth a damn, don't consider layouts other than QWERTY... Others usually don't even bother.
So, yeah, why would French technicians (who can code quite well, but not sell it because they don't consider the financial aspect when developing something they need) endure such crappy softwares when they can just modify other softwares to suit their needs, or just make it themselves?
You can whine about it all you want, just consider one thing: French people are usually quite the 'do-it-yourself' type (systeme D is a French expression - D stands for débrouille); what better software development model than F/OSS for that?
As far as I remember, Americans started making fun of 'froggies' because France didn't agree with the war in Iraq - which was supposedly a matter of days, and should squish terrorism instantly. Now let's see...
Just a little correction:
Software libre = free software
open source = codigo abierto
The French use Pays-Bas and most English speaking people in Canada and the USA say Holland. If you want to be correct you should sat :Nederland!