Governments and open source: never the twain shall meet

By Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 03 March 2009 04:46

Opinion and Analysis

It's interesting to see the reaction from various corners of the FOSS community when any government announces a policy that is seen as friendly to open source and one which could, possibly, help to spread its use.
The most recent such pronouncement came from the British authorities last week with a statement that the use of open source software in the public service would be accelerated.

The more significant statement about this policy was that open source software would be adopted "when it delivers best value for money". You can be sure that companies like Microsoft are already doing the sums to make the right offer which offers "best value for money."

It amuses me to some extent to see proponents of free code and free software relying on dictates from governments to spread the use of FOSS.

What concerns me is that people fail to see that governments will never be able to meet these promises and have no intention of doing so. If one sat down and thought it through, it would be glaringly evident that these are blind avenues.

Any politician has one thought uppermost in mind when he/she gets elected to office - and that is to get re-elected. The mind is focused on just that one thing and any activity/policy that can increase the individual's chances of winning a second/third/fourth term is undertaken.

But the same politician needs money to get re-elected. That's the first requirement. And where does that come from? Why, from companies, and other organisations which donate money in the hope that a few of their interests will be promoted in return.

Proprietary software companies are thus miles ahead when it comes to making politicians see their point of view. I don't think the Debian GNU/Linux project is in a position to donate money to the Republicans or Democrats.

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