Governments, Beyond the Open Source Hype

An anonymous reader writes "ForeignPolicy.com takes a look at Open Source as it applies to governments and some of the reasons that a governing body may or may not like OSS. From the article: 'Governments around the world are enchanted by open-source software. Unlike proprietary software, for which the code is kept secret, the open-source variety can be copied, modified, and shared. [...] Trouble is, the benefits of open source are not always so clear-cut. Software is too complicated a creation to be captured in rhetoric, and assertions about some of the technical benefits of open source fail to tell the whole story.'"

Comments

Its the money, first and foremost

[rob_squared]

Tell your citizens that its cheaper and they'll thank you for it. The details about where the saved monegy goes usually become obfuscated however.

Re:Its the money, first and foremost

[Bogtha]

More importantly, not only is it cheaper, but the money that is spent on it goes back into the local economy rather than straight into the pockets of a foreign company, because the government have the option of hiring any local firms willing to do the work instead of simply whoever holds the copyright.

Re:Written by an ex-Microsoft employee.

[jmorris42]

> Caroline Benner previously worked as policy researcher for Microsoft's Geopolitical
> Policy and Strategy Group

Ya know, I knew something like that was coming before I clicked into this article. The summary alone smelled of astroturf. But they do it because they realize while we will spot the paid 'independent scholarship' almost instantly the intended audience either won't.

If I were a foreign government

[MarkEst1973]

Why the hell would I want to entrust all my gov't operations, all my military, all my businesses' computing needs to a closed source, foreign (from my point of view) vendor... like, say, MS?

Ok, so your military doesn't run windows. Our military runs (or at least used to) Solaris and HP-UX... but those are closed source, too, and owned by a foreign entity.

In the end, open source provides me -- as a sovereign nation -- the ability to control the critical pieces of my own infrastructure.

That's how I (as a person) see it, anyway. Whether or not foreign governments agree, I don't know.

OSS isn't everything

[linvir]

In practical terms OSS is only relevant as a part of a wider policy. Brazil's Digital Inclusion (Google translation) is a good example. OSS barely even figures in the rhetoric for this. It's just one enabling factor.

This is how it's always going to be as well. Example: People don't move to Firefox because it's open source. They move to it because they're told it's better than IE, and they then stick with it because it's demonstrably better.

At the end of the day ideology is irrelevant to most people.

Re:Your average computer user

[AuMatar]

THen they should be coming to Linux in droves. My last Windows install took 4 hours and required me to hunt for drivers all over the web, and reboot a dozen times. My last Linux install worked smoothly with all hardware recognized.

Penny-wise and future foolish.

[jbn-o]

Proprietors agree with you, which is why they're interested in cutting their prices or giving away gratis copies of their software to large-seat clients in exchange for locking government users into something that will pay off (both monetarily and in terms of control) in the future. Money is not and should not be the chief rationale by which these decisions are made or else more valuable points that pay off now and in the future will be lost.