Governments like open-source software, but Microsoft does not (Economist)

[Posted September 11, 2003 by ris]

The Economist examines reasons for governments to prefer open source. "If Microsoft is indeed squeezed out of the government sector by open-source software, three groups stand to benefit: large consultancy firms and systems integrators, such as IBM, which will be called in to devise and install alternative products; firms such as Red Hat or SuSE, which sell Linux-based products and services; and numerous small, local technology firms that can tailor open-source products for governmental users." (Thanks to James Heald)

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The governments themselves also stand to benefit.

Posted Sep 12, 2003 3:51 UTC (Fri) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> "[...] three groups stand to benefit: large consultancy firms and systems
> integrators [...]; firms such as Red Hat or SuSE [...]; and numerous small,
> local technology firms[...]."

Unmentioned in the article is what benefit the governments themselves will see from going with free software. Not a single link to numerous studies showing that projects are cheaper to implement, and far, far cheaper to maintain, when free software is used rather than non-free.

Their citizens also stand to benefit even more greatly, as government information and services become available and interoperable using free software.

This seems to be typical for The Economist and similar journals. Never examine *why* something is occurring; and the only definition of "benefit" is seen in asking "how can we make money from this?"

The governments themselves also stand to benefit.

Posted Sep 12, 2003 7:22 UTC (Fri) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link]

They do touch on various benefits of open source though. Like the reasons Münich is choosing Linux.

I personally think it is a pretty okay (and positive in regards to open source) article - you can't fit everything into a single article.

The governments themselves also stand to benefit.

Posted Sep 12, 2003 15:08 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Yes I think it's a good article too. The Economist tends to be somewhat right-wing and pro-big-business by British standards, but they have been quite supportive of linux.

Off-topic: that umlaut you use ("Münich") isn't quite appropriate: not only is there a standard transliteration "ue" for ü, but Munich is an English name for the city. The German name is Muenchen (or München).

The governments themselves also stand to benefit.

Posted Sep 13, 2003 17:14 UTC (Sat) by jdthood (guest, #4157) [Link]

> The Economist tends to be somewhat right-wing and pro-big-business

The Economist itself would beg to be characterized as pro-freedom and
pro-free-markets. It is an important distinction.

The governments themselves also stand to benefit.

Posted Sep 12, 2003 10:28 UTC (Fri) by jonth (subscriber, #4008) [Link]

I disagree - the Economist is pretty good for a non-technical mainstream journal. I subscribe to it because it's just about the best print media publication in the UK if you want to have a good general view of the world. It does make mistakes, sure, but usually they're errors of omission rather than factual inaccuracies.

By comparison, if I read an article in most UK newspapers where I know something about the subject, more often than not the article is wrong. I don't just mean "slightly inaccurate." I mean, plain wrong. And I include the broadsheets in this.

Anyway, I have the article in front of me and the first paragraph says exactly why Munich went for Linux: "the municipality wanted to control its technological destiny" and "Microsoft even dropped its prices to match Linux - a remarkable feat since Linux is essentially free and users merely purchase support services alongside it." I'd say that covers "free as in speech" and free as in beer" pretty well, don't you?

One last thing: they don't have links largely because the Economist is principally a weekly print publication, not a web publication. The website is mainly a repository of the printed articles.

cheers,

Jonth

The governments themselves also stand to benefit.

Posted Sep 16, 2003 11:21 UTC (Tue) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

Unmentioned in the article is what benefit the governments themselves will see from going with free software.

I saw the sentence you quoted as the high point of the article. Because so many people seem to miss the point that, if proprietary software loses marketshare, it does not mean that X number of IT people are therefore out of a job. It means X number of IT people are redistributed from writing code in a software house to writing bespoke software and deploying it for individual clients - and related services.

You like workin' nine to five (ha!) churning out proprietary software? Tough, your job might have to change with the times. But it's not like free software, even if it approaches 100% market penetration, will ever spell an end to all careers in computing - and I wish people could understand this point. And I thought the article did a good job pointing that out.

All local people benefit

Posted Sep 12, 2003 7:26 UTC (Fri) by gerardm (guest, #7388) [Link]

Another beneficiary is the local economy. The system integrators, consultancy firms are likely all to be having offices in the country. They earn their money locally and pay taxes locally so unlike with licenses money stays in the country.

In the case of countries like Brasil this makes a hell of a difference. The balance of payments will be less of centre and as a consequence all the people in that country benefit.

Thanks,
Gerard

Good stuff

Posted Sep 12, 2003 9:19 UTC (Fri) by alspnost (guest, #2763) [Link]

Come on guys, this is pretty damn good stuff. It may not cover everything, but it's a fairly intelligent article which is strongly in our favour, from a highly respected mainstream publication. - one that's read by some seriously influential people. I don't think we can ask for much more than that.