Spain: Extraordinary Extremadura
Spotlight project:
The Spanish region of Extremadura is using Linux on 70,000 PCs and 400 servers
in schools and is now deploying the open source operating system on
14,000 PCs and 34 servers at hospitals and health centres across the
region.
Summary:
Open source software is more popular in Spanish local authorities than
in any of the other European countries surveyed, according to the MERIT
survey. The survey found that 98 percent of Spanish local authorities
are using open source software.
Although Extremadura was the first Spanish region to migrate to open source on a large scale, a number of other regional authorities have also started migration projects including two of the largest Spanish provinces, Andalusia and Valencia, as well as one of the smaller provinces, Castile-La-Mancha. Valencia reportedly plans to migrate its entire regional administration to open source software. Spain's second largest city, Barcelona, is running an open source pilot project in its social services department and plans to migrate other departments at a later stage.
The Spanish central government has also adopted open source, including the Ministry of Public Administrations, the Ministry of Housing and the Ministry of Justice.
Although there have been a number of large-scale public sector implementations of open source software, the Spanish government's policy towards open source is neutral, according to Gartner's DiMaio. "The policy is similar to the UK — it says consider open source alongside proprietary solutions and make a decision according to TCO," he says.
The political support for open source within Spanish regions is greater, for example, the regional president of Extremadura has shown "strong political support" for open source, according to Ghosh.
The main reason for the Spanish regional government's interest in open source is to bridge the digital divide. "They want to provide access [to technology] to all and the only way to provide access to everyone is by having open source software," says Ghosh.
Extremadura's regional government has repeatedly stated that open source software is key to the region's economic and social development. "The time of the industrial era, when discoveries were abusively capitalised and unfairly monopolised, is over," they declare. "A new model is necessary; a model which would allow the improvement of the lives of all citizens in Extremadura."
Other reasons for the widespread adoption of open source in the Spanish public sector are cost and the encouragement of local businesses, according to Pop Ramsamy, a project officer at Fundecyt, one of the organisations supporting Extremadura's use of Linux. Cost was more of an issue in Extremadura than in other European regions as it is one of the poorest regions in Europe.
Francisco Huertas Mendez, the technical coordinator of Extremadura's Linux project says that proprietary software was not an option due to cost. "For us, software libre (open source software) was the only choice. We were able to stretch our budget very far," he says.
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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!