Posted on 06/28/2005 9:27:09 AM PDT by N3WBI3
Open source software gets bureaucratic backing
Simon Jeffery Tuesday June 28, 2005
The use of open source software on public sector IT networks was today endorsed by a report from the parliamentary office of science technology.
It said the use of open source alongside existing proprietary systems was increasingly accepted and had the potential to "stimulate creativity and innovation".
The differences between the two systems are down to who has rights over software and the operating system. In the closed model, where Microsoft is the biggest player, customers buy a product but are forbidden from improving it by making alterations to the source code.
In open source systems, both programmes and their source code are freely available - sometimes at no cost - on the condition that developers share their improvements and bug fixes with other users.
Companies that make money from open source - including Sun and IBM - do so by managing large open source systems.
The report, which serves as a reference point for ministers and senior civil servants, follows a Treasury report in October that said open source was a "viable desktop alternative for the majority of users".
The Treasury's Office of Government Commerce (OGC), set up to get better value from government procurements, said there were no longer major compatibility problems with Microsoft products. Also, by delaying hardware replacement, open source software could have green benefits if it meant less machines were bought and discarded.
It said the use of open source could generate "significant savings".
The parliamentary report said Beaumont hospital in Dublin had projected savings of €8m (£5.3m) from the use of open source by eliminating software licensing costs for an x-ray system and giving it the ability to re-use hardware.
The British government is Microsoft's biggest customer outside the US and has less apparent interest in open source than its European counterparts and many commercial enterprises.
Open source use among British businesses is estimated at 20% but its use in the public sector stands at 1%.
The parliamentary report said open source advocates argued that the rapid fixing of bugs and errors by developers meant the systems were more stable and more secure, but detractors believed their complex development structure made for weak project management.
It highlighted examples of successful government use of open source, including the Ministry of Defence's Defence Academy, where open source was chosen for its functionality, and Powys council, which had "dramatically reduced" the number of its servers.
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Strictly speaking this is not true, the BSD license is opensource but does allow you to modify without publication..
Thanks for clarifying that. My definition of Open Source is that the end user can examine, modify and re-compile the source code. The license itself is a side issue.
As a mainframe programmer, source code was part of the purchase price of software. End users (large corporations) were expected to take care of their own tech support. While I understand that is not realistic in a market of everyone, source code should still be part of the purchase price.
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