Govts urged to promote Open Source: Study

CIOL Bureau

BANGALORE: A new report that was carried under the auspices of the Danish government recommends open source software as a "serious alternative" to proprietary products. The study says that governments should take an active role in promoting alternatives to dominant proprietary applications in order to help break a "de facto monopoly".

Governments should not just look at open source for cost benefits but also for ensuring fair competition in the software market. It is a tool to open up software markets to more competition. "Open-source software represents a serious technical and economic alternative to proprietary software, even where there are proprietary industry standards," the report says. Open-source software licenses such as the GPL allow modification and redistribution the source code of the applications, by any individual or company, thus ensuring that no single company controls the future of that software.

"A strategy for e-government should not be based on a closed, proprietary standard in a key technology. There is no genuine competition at present in the desktop area, largely due to the fact that Microsoft formats also represent de facto standards for electronic document exchange", says the report.

The report also accepts that the shift from proprietary to open source is not going to be an easy task but would require a series of trials to test the feasibility of introducing open-source software such as OpenOffice.

The report says "it is not sufficient for us in Denmark to follow Britain and Germany, for example, in merely recommending that open source should be 'considered'. A more active decision must be taken in those areas where there is a de facto monopoly."