The philosophy and practice of collaboration in open source software forms a win-win model for developers, vendors and users alike. Fundamental economic drivers are changing the nature of competition in the software industry. The competitive landscape is transforming from a few high peaks where monopoly product vendors dominate the market to a more varied terrain of participants collaborating on basic technologies and tools while competing on value-added services.
By implementing fair ICT procurement practices informed by a government policy that promotes the larger economic welfare and social benefits, we can begin to rephrase “may the best product win” into “may the most beneficial product win”.
Governments are choosing Open Source Software (OSS) to encourage competition while keeping costs low and quality high - so let’s examine what OSS is all about.
Open source is key to IBM’s vision of computing. User empowerment is key to Microsoft’s.
Government is the largest user of software in a society. But just as importantly, it also must promote, build and protect a country’s indigenous software industry.
Governments can neither create nor destroy successful technologies. They can, however, promote the welfare of a healthy and competitive software and technology industry and in turn benefit from increased revenue.
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