United States: Open source too close to socialism?
Spotlight Project:
The commonwealth of Massachusetts recently decided to standardise its desktop applications on the open file format OpenDocument. State agencies must now migrate to OpenDocument-compliant applications by January 2007, a change that will affect about 50,000 desktop PCs. Microsoft Office does not support the open file format, but OpenOffice.org does, which means that Massachusetts is likely to migrate to an at least partially open source desktop.
Summary:
Every state across the US uses some form of open source, although some states are "more progressive" than others, according to Tom Rabon, a vice-president at Linux vendor, Red Hat.
The central US government also uses open source, but primarily the operating system Linux, says Michael Goulde, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.
"At the Federal level you have to draw a distinction between Linux and open source software — a lot of organisations [in the Federal government] are using Linux, but are not using other open source software," he says.
Recent examples of open source public sector deployments include the educational sector in Indiana, which is trialling the use of desktop Linux in schools in a project that could lead to 300,000 Linux PCs being deployed across the state. In the state of Mississippi, three counties and 30 agencies are reportedly using an open source management system to administrate all law enforcement and homeland security forces.
Both the federal and state governments in the US have neutral policies regarding open source. But some states are encouraging the increased adoption of open source indirectly, says Goulde.
"State governments will generally not mandate that open source is used, but are setting policies that agencies must provide equal consideration for open source software. There are also policies that encourage agencies to demonstrate that they have made best-value decisions," Goulde says.
Two years ago, the state of Oregon discussed a bill that would have mandated state agencies to consider open source software when deciding to procure new software, but the bill was pulled after pressure from industry lobby groups. The states of Texas and California also tried to pass similar laws, but neither was successful.
Although Massachusetts has mandated open file standards rather than open source, it could have a similar impact, as Microsoft has said it will not implement OpenDocument.
Goulde claims that there is a "growing recognition" among state governments of the benefits of sharing applications or code. Last year, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and several other US states launched a software repository to let government agencies make more efficient use of open source software. A number of states and Federal government agencies are using the repository, known as the Government Open Code Collaborative.
The main reason for the adoption of open source in the US government is open standards, although avoiding vendor lock-in and driving down cost is also important, according to Goulde.
Rabon from Red Hat attributes the varying level of adoption between US state governments to the different attitudes of senior government officials towards open source. "A lot of it depends on the progressiveness of people who run organisations in states. Every cause needs a champion," he says.
For example, the chief information officer of Massachusetts, Peter Quinn, is a well-known advocate for open source software.
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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!