ENTERTAINMENT
Brainstorming ways to push open source
Having the latest computer technology is great. But what e-government users from the public sector as well as citizens really want is software interoperability. Unfortunately IT managers still only pay lip service to such interoperability, concludes a European project assessing today’s open-source movement. 
“Open standards provide independence, not traditional vendor lock-in. They are good for users, purchasers and government from both the economic and competition standpoint,” says Rishab Ghosh, from the Merit/Infonomics research institute in The Netherlands. Ghosh coordinated the IST project FLOSSPOLS. It aimed to fill in some important gaps in the understanding of open source, with a view to maintaining the European Union’s lead in this field. It was also a direct follow-on to the FLOSS project, which developed the single largest knowledge base on open-source usage and development worldwide. Open source is in keeping with European goals for free software development and deployment, and the model for collaborative research and development. It is also directly relevant to the European Research Area. So, one project goal was to evaluate government policy towards open source. “Our study revealed that preference is often given in business tenders to certain vendors with mostly proprietary software at national and international levels,” says Ghosh. “Whether explicit or implicit, this preference is illegal under EU rules. Hardware preference is already outlawed, yet the use of specific software can often limit competition even more.” Yet the outlook for open source in Europe is rosy. “It is more mature and popular here than elsewhere else and has plenty of take-up,” notes Ghosh, even though there are few policy initiatives for it. That said, the European Commission’s IDABC Programme has decided on a definition for open standards, though the Commission has not officially approved it. Having the right definitions for open source and open standards will help governments to move forward. “We believe standards should be defined in terms of economic impact on technology and that they should only be ‘open’ if they allow competition into a market,” he adds. One positive sign is the Open Source Observatory, launched in 2003 by the Commission. The observatory sees itself as a ‘clearinghouse’ for information on the use of open-source software by public administrations in Europe. Another is the Commission’s Good Practice Framework which documents many European cases using open source. Half of the project’s work was devoted to producing the world’s first ever study of gender and open source. It found that women made up only two per cent of those involved in open-source development and production, although only one in five developers of general software is a woman. This under-representation has nothing to do with women showing a lack of interest in open source, the project concluded. “They are actively excluded from the area,” says Ghosh. “For example, men involved in open source are typically unaware of gender discrimination.” FLOSSPOLS came up with recommendations for change here, while emphasising that momentum must come from the open-source community rather than European authorities. For instance, since women often have less free time than men, extra funds and facilities would enable women to devote at least several hours a week to open-source software development. Other project ideas include helping girls to learn about open source, supporting all-female open-source groups such as GNOME Women, adapting the commissioning and funding practices of EU authorities, and arguing that more gender diversity will lead to better technologies. Assessing open source’s potential for collaborative problem-solving, the project was very positive. “We learned from the F/LOSS community that 80 per cent of open source is about learning, developing and sharing skills as well as knowledge,” says Ghosh. He emphasises that employers in Information and Communication Technologies, banking and finance also view open source as a strong environment for skills development, whether technical, managerial or legal. The coordinator notes that some employers prefer to hire people with open-source skills over people with university qualifications. This has policy implications. “Policymakers should first recognise F/LOSS as a skills-learning environment – one which can be cost-free, since it is equivalent to a technology transfer,” he says. The project also calls on educational establishments to provide more access to and be more involved in the F/LOSS development community, as is happening in Indian universities. Lastly, employers should be made more aware of the F/LOSS skills-training environment, taking their lead from firms in countries such as France, Belgium and the UK that already recognise how relevant open source is to their work.
“Open standards provide independence, not traditional vendor lock-in. They are good for users, purchasers and government from both the economic and competition standpoint,” says Rishab Ghosh, from the Merit/Infonomics research institute in The Netherlands. Ghosh coordinated the IST project FLOSSPOLS. It aimed to fill in some important gaps in the understanding of open source, with a view to maintaining the European Union’s lead in this field. It was also a direct follow-on to the FLOSS project, which developed the single largest knowledge base on open-source usage and development worldwide. Open source is in keeping with European goals for free software development and deployment, and the model for collaborative research and development. It is also directly relevant to the European Research Area. So, one project goal was to evaluate government policy towards open source. “Our study revealed that preference is often given in business tenders to certain vendors with mostly proprietary software at national and international levels,” says Ghosh. “Whether explicit or implicit, this preference is illegal under EU rules. Hardware preference is already outlawed, yet the use of specific software can often limit competition even more.” Yet the outlook for open source in Europe is rosy. “It is more mature and popular here than elsewhere else and has plenty of take-up,” notes Ghosh, even though there are few policy initiatives for it. That said, the European Commission’s IDABC Programme has decided on a definition for open standards, though the Commission has not officially approved it. Having the right definitions for open source and open standards will help governments to move forward. “We believe standards should be defined in terms of economic impact on technology and that they should only be ‘open’ if they allow competition into a market,” he adds. One positive sign is the Open Source Observatory, launched in 2003 by the Commission. The observatory sees itself as a ‘clearinghouse’ for information on the use of open-source software by public administrations in Europe. Another is the Commission’s Good Practice Framework which documents many European cases using open source. Half of the project’s work was devoted to producing the world’s first ever study of gender and open source. It found that women made up only two per cent of those involved in open-source development and production, although only one in five developers of general software is a woman. This under-representation has nothing to do with women showing a lack of interest in open source, the project concluded. “They are actively excluded from the area,” says Ghosh. “For example, men involved in open source are typically unaware of gender discrimination.” FLOSSPOLS came up with recommendations for change here, while emphasising that momentum must come from the open-source community rather than European authorities. For instance, since women often have less free time than men, extra funds and facilities would enable women to devote at least several hours a week to open-source software development. Other project ideas include helping girls to learn about open source, supporting all-female open-source groups such as GNOME Women, adapting the commissioning and funding practices of EU authorities, and arguing that more gender diversity will lead to better technologies. Assessing open source’s potential for collaborative problem-solving, the project was very positive. “We learned from the F/LOSS community that 80 per cent of open source is about learning, developing and sharing skills as well as knowledge,” says Ghosh. He emphasises that employers in Information and Communication Technologies, banking and finance also view open source as a strong environment for skills development, whether technical, managerial or legal. The coordinator notes that some employers prefer to hire people with open-source skills over people with university qualifications. This has policy implications. “Policymakers should first recognise F/LOSS as a skills-learning environment – one which can be cost-free, since it is equivalent to a technology transfer,” he says. The project also calls on educational establishments to provide more access to and be more involved in the F/LOSS development community, as is happening in Indian universities. Lastly, employers should be made more aware of the F/LOSS skills-training environment, taking their lead from firms in countries such as France, Belgium and the UK that already recognise how relevant open source is to their work.
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