Government policies favoring open-source software adoption should be wildly popular within the open-source crowd. Yet, at an open-source conference in Amsterdam today, I kept hearing the opposite. Despite the Dutch government's best intentions to foster open-source adoption, some people think it may actually be doing the opposite.
By many measures, the Netherlands is a great place for open-source software. In 2007, the government started to phase in a policy that gave preferential treatment to open-source software in IT purchasing decisions. Initially, at least, the policy seems to have been a success, with a July 2009 study highlighting a wide array of open-source software in use by government.
Sounds good, right?
Maybe not. According to sources within the government and others that sell to the government (both proprietary and open-source vendors), the government's rigid definition and management of the policy has more often than not thwarted its attempts to go open.
At its core, however, the problem derives from a mismatch between ends and means. The government's goal--"to increase the sustainability of information and innovation, while lowering costs through the reuse of data"--is not always best achieved by open source. A proprietary program with a broad community that is fully open standards-based could actually be a better solution to achieve this end than an open-source solution, particularly if it has a small community and smaller adoption.
That's because "openness" is not simply a measure of software's licensing. That's not even necessarily the most important consideration, as Tim O'Reilly reminds us.
But the government's policy doesn't look beyond whether the software in question is licensed under an OSI-approved license. This is what we thought of open source five years ago, but these days, this line of thinking is increasingly outdated.
An OSI license is a fruitful beginning to an open-source policy, but if it's the end, then the Dutch government's policy begins and ends with lawyers, who are almost certainly not the best equipped to evaluate IT solutions.
Indeed, the commentary I heard today confirmed that inbound software is first reviewed by the Dutch government's lawyers. If there's not an OSI-approved license attached to it, even if the software is provided by an open-source vendor with full rights to view and modify the software (but not redistribute it), it's out.
This wouldn't be so bad if there was a plethora of alternatives in each given product category for the government to choose. But there isn't.
Hence, more often than not the government ends up buying an established proprietary solution. It's very difficult for most products to run the legal gauntlet that the government has established. The vendors that do are either too small to effectively service the government's requirements, or they're Red Hat, which focuses on a limited infrastructure product portfolio.
Having painted itself into a legal corner, there's one easy thing for the government to do: buy the same proprietary software it always has.
Given that the policy allows for selection of a proprietary product if a suitable open-source alternative doesn't exist, the stated preference for open-source solutions is turning into a minor speed bump on the way to continued acquisition of proprietary software.
This is silly.
The Dutch government should focus on the end: open, interoperable solutions. True, doing so requires more thought than a binary decision based on a license. But it's a much smarter policy to balance a range of factors (freedoms and constraints of the license, community associated with the product, open standards, payment model [license fee vs. subscription], etc.), in order to reach a more thoughtful position on a given piece of software.
Such a policy would result in more open-source software adoption, not less. It would let open-source software compete on broader criteria than the license. Open source, and the trends it has inspired, are much more than a license. Other considerations, such as open data policies, take precedence in our networked age.
The Dutch have the right intentions. But the way they're managing their open-source policy is not helping them most effectively reach the goals they seek.
The open-source community has a long tradition of looking for and hounding away at the very thought of Microsoft influence from government IT policies.
For example, Open Source Initiative President Michael Tiemann rightly decries an alleged tie between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's charitable donations and Microsoft's "cabinet-level access to inform policy."
Apparently, however, Tiemann has no problem proudly displaying a picture of Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, wearing a Red Hat fedora, declaring...
Would that all Presidents and all ministers of all countries were so concerned about the sovereignty of their nation and the fiduciary care of their people!
...that they'd openly stand behind one vendor? That doesn't sound much like a sovereign act to me.
In fact, it sounds exactly like the sort of bias that the open-source community routinely inveighs against. Imagine the outcry if President Lula would have been seen posing with Bill Gates, wearing a Microsoft t-shirt?
Mark Taylor, president of the U.K.'s Open Source Consortium, lashed out against the U.K. government "pay(ing) lip service" to open source while "actually pursuing policies that are exclusive." Presumably it would be better if those "exclusive" policies actually favored a particular open-source vendor or technology?
That seems to be the message coming out of Europe, too, in its proposed policy changes around the purchase of standards-based technologies, which some suggest amounts to a built-in bias for open source. Policies that promote openness, generally, are good, because they help to protect a country's sovereign interests.
But when a country's leaders are seen to be supporting a particular vendor, even a vendor of open source and open standards, that strikes me as just the sort of favoritism that we disparage when the beneficiary is Microsoft. Just because it's bias in our favor doesn't make it right.
Back to Brazil. Sun Microsystems' Simon Phipps also posted pictures of President Lula wearing the Red Hat fedora, but also a Sun Java ring. (The president apparently said it made him feel like "James Bond.") At least Java is a technology, not a vendor, which makes this act of Lula less...loony.
Simon Phipps and Lula show their open-source colors
(Credit: Simon Phipps)That said, the ironic thing is that while Phipps points to the benefits Brazil derives from its commitment to open-source Java, he neglects to note that Brazil had this same commitment to Java long before it was actually open source.
Regardless, in describing Lula's affection for open source Phipps unwittingly makes him sound like an open-source groupie, which is hardly how I'd want my president to act, either for proprietary or open-source interests.
A sovereign nation should be just that: sovereign. Its leaders shouldn't bow to particular vendors or even particular development practices, nor should they be perceived to do such. For Brazil, it's immaterial whether the company is Sun, Red Hat, Microsoft, or SAP: it is a sovereign nation and should act as such.
A government tasked with the protection of its people should never look like a cheap infomercial for any vendor--either open source or proprietary.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Steve Ballmer needs to brush up on Roman history. Otherwise he seems doomed to repeat it, as two recent Microsoft campaigns suggest.
Microsoft has been dominant for so long that it has grown soft. As Edward Gibbon wrote in his exceptional "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," it is not outside enemies that crushed Rome so much as its own effete greatness:
The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.
Two new Microsoft directives suggest that the writing is on the wall for the once-great company. And this isn't even to mention Microsoft's tactics to squash Linux's growth in the Netbook market.
First, Microsoft has kicked off a "Get the Facts" browser campaign that is long on hyperbole and short on facts. Reading Microsoft's browser comparison chart, one would think that using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome is a fast track to leprosy: IE apparently dominates in security, privacy, ease of use, healing the sick, and causing the lame to walk.
Speaking of "lame," IBM's Savio Rodrigues warns us to not be fooled by comparison tables that dramatically favor one product over others. Internet Explorer has gotten better over the years (It only had one way to go), but Microsoft's claims aren't even credible when it skews the results so dramatically in its favor.
Mozilla's own marketing for Firefox is very, very different.
Not content to let false advertising do the trick, Microsoft has also resorted to paying people to use its browser and calling users "idiots" if they opted to try something else. As TechCrunch reports, Microsoft has backed down from the ad hominem attacks, but the company is starting to look desperate.
(In need of charity itself, Microsoft is contributing to charities for every download of IE8. Awww....)
As if this browser desperation weren't enough, Microsoft has kicked off a second initiative that reveals just how unloved its "innovation" has become. Microsoft has confirmed its 18-month Windows 7 to XP downgrade policy.
There are very good reasons for software vendors to prod customers into staying current with software releases, but it is amazing just how hard Microsoft has had to work to convince Windows customers to leave XP. Apple and Linux customers seem to upgrade to their latest and greatest operating systems, while Microsoft customers seem to be pining for the good ol' Windows days.
It's one thing to have an upgrade policy. Having to articulate a downgrade policy is a signal of Microsoft defeat, not victory.
Gibbon wrote that "instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long." I feel the same way about Microsoft. It has done so much for the software industry--some very negative, much very positive--but it seems to have lost the plot. It is telling when the company's best product in years is the XBox, a hardware platform, as Bob Rosenberg noted to me over email.
Microsoft is a victim of its own desktop success, a fact that Google is using against it. Unless Microsoft can break out of its downward spiral of negative advertising born of stifled innovation in its products, it will fall. Sort of like Rome. Because of immoderate greatness.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
It's fascinating to see governments around the world embrace open source as a way to boost local economies and improve sovereignty. It's even better when the policy process itself is laid bare, allowing outsiders to see the partisan meddling that goes into a publicly articulated policy.
The European Commission is in the midst of preparing a report entitled "Toward a European Software Strategy," (PDF) with a draft released on Tuesday to Wikileaks. The draft is fascinating for all that it says about how open-source software affects the European software industry, but it's equally intriguing for all that some of its editors want it to unsay about open-source software.
One such editor is Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology, a lobbying organization with strong ties to Microsoft. There is nothing wrong with Microsoft making its voice heard in the software strategy development process, as it stands to gain or lose much in the process, but it does make for some interesting political gamesmanship in the document.
While the draft doesn't make it obvious who is saying what, there are numerous instances where editors have tried to soften the appeal of open source or downplay its significance, repeatedly trying to insist that open source not be called out as more significant than proprietary software.
In one area, an editor crossed out this section:
Proprietary vendors charge their users twice, once at the deployment phase (through support contracts), and once at the procurement phase (through licensing fees).
And replaced it with this comment:
PAPER SHOULD FOCUS ON OSS AND NOT DWELL INTO UNSUPPORTED AND UNNECESSARY STATEMENTS AGAINST PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE.
This commentator further suggests that European companies may be more prone to open source because they lack the capital to start "real" software businesses:
European IT companies also have fewer alternative growth strategies than their US counterparts due to smaller/more risk adverse venture capital community and fewer IPO opportunities.
Fascinating. It somehow overlooks the European origins of venture-backed open-source companies like MySQL, JBoss, Alfresco, Trolltech, etc. But who needs facts?
The redlines (literally, comments and additions in red) seem to come from Jonathan Zuck, and demonstrate an attempt to deny any unique nature to open source, and turn it into something that the European Union need not do anything in particular to foster. As edited, the policy paper remains a strong endorsement of open source, but highly diluted from its original intent.
Again, there's nothing wrong with Microsoft protecting its interests in a market where it stands to gain or lose much. Microsoft competitors, however, would do well to analyze how it seeks to influence both IT buyers and policymakers with respect to open source.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Barack Obama has promised change. In his first day in office, however, he discovered that change is easier said than done.
Take his team's operating-system preference. Obama's team was dismayed to discover that the White House runs Windows, not Macs, according to The Washington Post. I'm a Mac fan, but I'm somewhat surprised by the naivete of this response:
The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with 6-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing...Senior advisers chafed at the new arrangements, which severely limit mobility--partly by tradition but also for security reasons and to ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential Records Act.
I'm sure that this will be the first of many roadblocks (which, incidentally, the Bush White House also endured--it's the nature of the beast). Guess what? That's life...and government. There are very good reasons for the locked-down environment that Obama's personnel are chafing over.
Click image for CNET News' Mac
anniversary special coverage.
So, while we may cheer President Obama's interest in open source, the reality is that he is too smart to try to disrupt the U.S. software economy with grand orders around open source. Any executive decisions around open source need to be heavily couched in caution: it's not the U.S. federal government's place to try to legislate fundamental software policy changes, changes which are happening just fine without government intervention.
Fortunately for his fans, President Obama isn't stupid, and not simply in the matter of technology policy. He's not rewriting foreign policy, either. In fact, his cabinet reflects more continuity with President Bush's policies than change. He'll tweak what he doesn't like and maintain that which he does (and apparently, despite campaign rhetoric, he seems to like more than he dislikes which, again, is consistent with the Clinton-Bush transition and, indeed, all presidential transitions).
For those who have looked upon President Obama as their savior and agent of change, well, just be prepared for more continuity than disruption. That's a good thing. It reflects Obama's intelligence: when things aren't broken, don't fix them, or fix them incrementally. That's not to say that things couldn't improve through change - they can.
It's just that President Obama's change is going to be much more gradual and incremental than his acolytes would like. Be patient. The Macs will come, as will open source. Just not overnight.
Facil, a Quebec-based open-source organization, has sued the Quebec provincial government for buying Microsoft software without considering open-source software, as CBC reports. The problem, it seems, is that Quebec has an "open markets" policy that it is supposed to follow. In practice, however, the Quebec government IT buyers have been shoveling money into Microsoft and other proprietary vendors without any real consideration for open source:
In [the lawsuit], the group says the provincial government has refused to entertain competing bids from all software providers, opting instead to supply public-sector departments with products bought from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle Corp.
Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.
Perhaps most egregiously, nearly $80 million has been spent on Vista licenses this year. Now we know who is buying Vista. :-)
While I think the government should absolutely live up to its policy obligations, I also believe that good software, including open source, eventually finds a home, even despite Microsoft's lobbying. I have some experience selling open-source software into Quebec: the government buys when the price and functionality is right.
In my recent travels to Latin America, I heard much the same: companies and governments are buying into open source in droves, but not necessarily because they are legally required to do so. In fact, I heard the opposite: the governments buying into open source are often those where they are not forced to do so. Ultimately, a purchasing decision is a human decision. You've got to reach the humans before you can sell the software.
I'm sympathetic to Facil's cause, but I believe it should be spending more money on educating buyers on the merits of open-source software, not of open-source software government policies.
Last week there was a minor ruckus over Jason Matusow's suggestion that governments should not legislate IT policy, whether for or against open-source software. He wrote:
I think technology mandates are not good policy in any country....Technology providers want their current and future technologies considered on the merits of the technology and the value those technologies bring to those who choose to consume it. If a government mandates a specific technology and/or class of technologies, they are unnecessarily restricting their own choices. Inevitably statue moves more slowly than technology, and mandates subsequently lead to sub-optimal choices.
Jason's perspective is actually one that I've shared, but my viewpoint has been changing. A recent article by Jack and Suzy Welch actually pushed my thinking more than the "mandate" debate did.
In the article, the Welchs discuss how to help local businesses compete locally, and deride the practice in some countries of propping up local companies against outside competition:
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