Europe and the US philosophically divided on open source?

Deciding what lies at the heart of some countries' almost-zealous uptake of open source is not as simple as looking at the cold, hard costs — politics, national security, anti-Americanism and innovation all have a part to play.

Despite the hype generated by Microsoft's unavoidable 'Get the Facts' ad campaign, the reality is that government agencies often see the actual cost of open source software as less important than other factors — such as adopting open standards, avoiding vendor lock-in and encouraging the local software industry.

The actual cost of software is less important in the West than in the developing world. Experts claim that proprietary software fees are relatively low compared with the potential labour costs associated with migrating to open source software. Licence fees generally account for 5 percent to 10 percent of the total cost of ownership in wealthier countries, while maintenance, integration, support and training represent 60 percent to 85 percent of total costs, according to Rishab Ghosh, programme leader of an open source research project at the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) in Holland. The remaining costs are due to the cost of related hardware and software, he claims.

So, if it's not about the money so much, why have governments in Europe, particularly France and Germany, apparently leapt on the potential of open source so enthusiastically?

One reason may be that governments are tired of being held to ransom by proprietary software makers and armies of consultants. Open data formats are more open and avoid vendor lock-in, says Ghosh. "It is no longer considered to be acceptable for the public to pay money to read information from the government," he says. "Also, with proprietary software, organisations tend to be locked into vendor-driven upgrade cycles. This is something that governments and IT managers are increasingly unhappy about."

Also open source is often way below the governments' radar, but promoting its use can be a relatively simple and populist measure. "Politicians love open source — they can make a lot of statements without spending any money," says François Bancilhon, the chief executive of Linux distributor Mandriva.

When it comes to the apparent gulf between US and European adoption of open source, things are not clear cut. Red Hat, the largest open source player in the market is, after all, American. But so far high-profile uses of open source software in US government have been isolated, with Massachusetts leading the charge most recently.

Some analysts claim the French government's interest in open source is driven by anti-Americanism but French officials claim that it's actually down to a fundamental difference in philosophy.

A good look at how different states in Europe have approached open source, compared with the historically technically advanced US, reveals that "getting the facts" isn't as straightforward as some companies would have us believe.

1. The UK: Confused but enthusiastic


2. United States: Open source too close to socialism?


3. France: Liberté, égalité... open source?


4. Germany: Munich leads the desktop charge


5. Norway: Fjording the open source rift


6. Spain: Extraordinary Extremadura


7. Poland/Eastern Europe: Community equals communism?

Spotlight Project:
Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, is moving 1,500 desktops and all the associated back-end servers in its library service to open source software for a year-long trial.

Summary:
The UK public sector has generally been slower to adopt open source than some neighbouring countries. Only 32 percent of UK local authorities use open source software, which is less than half the figure for France and Germany, according to a survey by MERIT.

There have been few high-profile adoptions of open source by local authorities, although this may change if the pilot project at Birmingham City Council proves successful. The London Borough of Newham considered migrating from Microsoft to open source desktops, but later changed its mind and was accused of using a Linux trial purely to force a better contract from Microsoft.

At an event earlier this year, MERIT's Ghosh described the UK government's policy towards open source as "confused". He points out that an OGC report said that using open source can generate "significant" cost savings in government, but many government departments are still determined Microsoft users. The NHS, for example, awarded a nine-year software contract, worth £500m, to Microsoft last year.

One area where the government has been more supportive about the use of open source software is in schools. Earlier this year, the British Educational Communications and Technology Association (BECTA) said that primary schools could cut computer costs by nearly half if they stopped buying, operating and supporting products from proprietary software vendors. The government is also supporting a number of projects to encourage the adoption of open source, including a wide-ranging initiative known as the Open Source Academy.

The UK's Labour government is to blame for the limited open source adoption by the public sector, says James Governor, an analyst at RedMonk. "We've been pathetic as a nation in supporting and understanding open source. [Tony] Blair's Labour has dragged us away from it — there was more support for open source products such as Apache [Web server] before Blair," says Governor. "In the UK, Bill Gates has been given a knighthood, I can't imagine him getting a Légion d'honneur in France."

Ghosh agrees that there "seems to be less political support" in the UK. There is little impetus for the government to support open source as the UK has a strong economy, according to Andrea DiMaio, a research director at Gartner.

In August the Central Scotland Police force decided to migrate from Linux to Microsoft due to "interoperability issues". Ghosh says this example shows that public sector organisations need to collaborate to increase the adoption of open source in the UK.

"Interoperability is important — organisations are not just locked in individually, but are also locked into networks of organisations. That requires a push that is beyond the level of individual organisations, which is not happening in the UK," says Ghosh.

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United States: Open source too close to socialism?

Spotlight Project:
The commonwealth of Massachusetts recently decided to standardise its desktop applications on the open file format OpenDocument. State agencies must now migrate to OpenDocument-compliant applications by January 2007, a change that will affect about 50,000 desktop PCs. Microsoft Office does not support the open file format, but OpenOffice.org does, which means that Massachusetts is likely to migrate to an at least partially open source desktop.

Summary:
Every state across the US uses some form of open source, although some states are "more progressive" than others, according to Tom Rabon, a vice-president at Linux vendor, Red Hat.

The central US government also uses open source, but primarily the operating system Linux, says Michael Goulde, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.

"At the Federal level you have to draw a distinction between Linux and open source software — a lot of organisations [in the Federal government] are using Linux, but are not using other open source software," he says.

Recent examples of open source public sector deployments include the educational sector in Indiana, which is trialling the use of desktop Linux in schools in a project that could lead to 300,000 Linux PCs being deployed across the state. In the state of Mississippi, three counties and 30 agencies are reportedly using an open source management system to administrate all law enforcement and homeland security forces.

Both the federal and state governments in the US have neutral policies regarding open source. But some states are encouraging the increased adoption of open source indirectly, says Goulde.

"State governments will generally not mandate that open source is used, but are setting policies that agencies must provide equal consideration for open source software. There are also policies that encourage agencies to demonstrate that they have made best-value decisions," Goulde says.

Two years ago, the state of Oregon discussed a bill that would have mandated state agencies to consider open source software when deciding to procure new software, but the bill was pulled after pressure from industry lobby groups. The states of Texas and California also tried to pass similar laws, but neither was successful.

Although Massachusetts has mandated open file standards rather than open source, it could have a similar impact, as Microsoft has said it will not implement OpenDocument.

Goulde claims that there is a "growing recognition" among state governments of the benefits of sharing applications or code. Last year, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and several other US states launched a software repository to let government agencies make more efficient use of open source software. A number of states and Federal government agencies are using the repository, known as the Government Open Code Collaborative.

The main reason for the adoption of open source in the US government is open standards, although avoiding vendor lock-in and driving down cost is also important, according to Goulde.

Rabon from Red Hat attributes the varying level of adoption between US state governments to the different attitudes of senior government officials towards open source. "A lot of it depends on the progressiveness of people who run organisations in states. Every cause needs a champion," he says.

For example, the chief information officer of Massachusetts, Peter Quinn, is a well-known advocate for open source software.

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France: Liberté, égalité... open source?

Spotlight Project:
The French tax agency has migrated to the open source application server JBoss, which runs a number of mission-critical applications, including an online tax return application that was used by 3.8 million people last year. The agency is using a total of 150 open source applications at present and has mandated the use of open source in future projects, according to Jean-Marie Lapeyre, chief technical officer at the French tax agency.

Summary:
The French public sector has enthusiastically adopted open source, with three quarters of French local authorities using open source software, according to the MERIT survey. A number of ministries are also using open source, including the Defence, Culture, Agriculture, Equipment and Finance ministries.

"In the central government in France the open source phenomenon is very strong," says RedMonk's Governor.

For example, the police are migrating to OpenOffice.org on up to 80,000 PCs and the French military is planning to install a high-performance Linux cluster for technical and scientific work. The Ministry of Equipment has replaced Windows NT servers with Linux equivalents and have issued a tender for the replacement of 65,000 desktops with Linux, according to Mandriva's Bancilhon.

The French government does not have a policy that advises organisations to give preference to free and open source software, according to Gartner's DiMaio. But the Prime Minister's IT agency, ADAE, has issued guidelines for using free and open source software, which include information on how government authorities can issue tenders mandating open source without violating competition laws. Adullact, which is an association of French local authorities, aims to develop a community around open source in the public sector for example, allowing local authorities to share open source applications.

Gartner's DiMaio says the French government's enthusiasm for open source is partly driven by the desire to boost the local software industry. "The countries that are most vocal about open source are those who have had troubles with own software industries, such as France and Germany — they are trying to recreate their software industries," he said.

Another reason for using open source is cost-cutting. Last year, the French civil service minister Renaud Dutreil said the agency wanted to use open source software on some of its almost one million state computers to save money. "My estimate is that we can cut the state software bill at least in half," he said at the time.

But, part of the reason for the French government's interest in open source is anti-Americanism, according to RedMonk's Governor.

"There is a mistrust of American companies in the French government and they are doing what they can to support anything that's not American," says Governor.

Lapeyre, of the French tax agency, disagrees and claims the main reason for the difference in the French and British governments' enthusiasm for open source is cultural.

"It's not anti-American; it's a cultural difference — we think differently," says Lapeyre. "The English focus is on action, while we [the French] are more reflective. Open source needs a long term policy to be economically credible. In English countries this is not a natural way of doing things — they do things with short- or mid-term objectives. In France we are not focused on immediate action."

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Germany: Munich leads the desktop charge

Spotlight project:
Munich, Germany's third largest city, is migrating 14,000 desktops from Windows NT 4.0 to Linux and from Office 97 and 2000 to OpenOffice.org. This migration was considered so important by Microsoft that its chief executive, Steve Ballmer, reportedly interrupted a ski holiday in Switzerland to visit Munich's mayor to dissuade him from migrating.

Summary:
The German public sector has embraced open source with a similar level of enthusiasm to the French, although the majority of the deployments have happened in local rather than central government. Nine out of every 10 German local authorities are using open source software, according to the MERIT survey, and OpenOffice.org is being run on more than 50,000 PCs in the German public sector, according to Erwin Tenhumberg, a product marketing manager at Sun.

A number of German cities are using, or planning to use, open source software, including Schwäbisch Hall, Mannheim, Treuchtlingen, Leonberg and Isernhagen. Schwäbisch Hall switched to Linux on more than 400 workstations and Mannheim plans to deploy Linux on 110 servers and 3,700 desktops.

Some German ministries are also using open source software, including the Federal Finance Office at the German Ministry of Finance, which has shifted its back-office operations to two large mainframe computers running Linux, and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is using a predominantly open source system for the global German embassy network.

The German government promotes the use of open source through migration guidelines that have been published by the Ministry of Interior. These guidelines are in favour of open source, suggesting that government agencies should consider open source where it is feasible.

The government's enthusiasm for open source is for similar reasons to the French government — anti-Americanism and to encourage its software industry, according to analysts Governor and DiMaio.

Florian Mueller, a software developer and political campaigner, says that one of the main reasons for the German government's support of open source software is due to its political leaning and warns this may change in the newly elected government.

"The German government took a lead in OSS adoption in recent years under a Social Democratic and Green coalition. Those parties have an ideological affinity with OSS," says Mueller. "There's a good chance that the German government's favourable perspective on OSS will continue [under the new administration], but it will depend upon the level of priority that this has to the Social Democrats. In a coalition you have to enter into compromises all the time."

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Norway: Fjording the open source rift

Spotlight project:
Bergen, Norway's second largest city, is partway through a large-scale migration to Linux. It has migrated many of its city administration and educational servers to Linux and is moving to open source desktops in 100 schools across the city. These desktops are used by a total of 32,000 pupils and 4,000 teachers. Once this project is completed, it plans to migrate all desktops in the city administration to the open source operating system.

Summary:
The adoption of open source software in the Norwegian public sector originated in the educational sector, due to the lack of local language support in Microsoft products, according to MERIT's Ghosh.

"The move to open source started off in the education sector and is now increasingly formalised by the Norwegian government," he says. "A few years ago all the schools in Norway threatened to boycott Microsoft if it didn't support Nynorsk [Norway's second language]. Microsoft supported it, but many schools moved to open source anyway."

Over 100 schools in Norway use Skolelinux, a version of Linux that has been customised for schools. Although Bergen is one of the best known cities in Norway to migrate to open source, the city of Sarpsborg, in the southeast of Norway, is already running Linux on all its systems, according to Ole-Bjørn Tuftedal, the chief technology officer of Bergen.

The Norwegian government announced in June that all public sector organisations must have a plan for how they will use open source software by 2006, although Gartner's DiMaio says this does not necessarily mean that the organisations will migrate to open source. "The plans may well be, 'we're not going to use open source,' but they must have clear plans," says DiMaio.

Eirik Chambe-Eng, the president of Norwegian software company Trolltech, says the Norwegian government's adoption of open source has been stimulated by the introduction of new IT systems over recent years.

"There has been a big push to modernise the way the government uses IT in Norway," says Chambe-Eng. "Starting fresh means that there is a possibility to change course and look at the advantages of new approaches."

MERIT's Ghosh says the Norwegian government's encouragement of open standards has impacted the adoption of open source in the public sector, as open source applications often use open standards, while proprietary applications may not.

The announcement in June by the Norwegian government also spoke about open standards, calling for all public sector IT systems to use open standards for documents by 2009.

"Proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government," said the Norwegian Minister of Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer, at a press conference in Oslo, according to an EU news site.

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Spain: Extraordinary Extremadura

Spotlight project:
The Spanish region of Extremadura is using Linux on 70,000 PCs and 400 servers in schools and is now deploying the open source operating system on 14,000 PCs and 34 servers at hospitals and health centres across the region.

Summary:
Open source software is more popular in Spanish local authorities than in any of the other European countries surveyed, according to the MERIT survey. The survey found that 98 percent of Spanish local authorities are using open source software.

Although Extremadura was the first Spanish region to migrate to open source on a large scale, a number of other regional authorities have also started migration projects including two of the largest Spanish provinces, Andalusia and Valencia, as well as one of the smaller provinces, Castile-La-Mancha. Valencia reportedly plans to migrate its entire regional administration to open source software. Spain's second largest city, Barcelona, is running an open source pilot project in its social services department and plans to migrate other departments at a later stage.

The Spanish central government has also adopted open source, including the Ministry of Public Administrations, the Ministry of Housing and the Ministry of Justice.

Although there have been a number of large-scale public sector implementations of open source software, the Spanish government's policy towards open source is neutral, according to Gartner's DiMaio. "The policy is similar to the UK — it says consider open source alongside proprietary solutions and make a decision according to TCO," he says.

The political support for open source within Spanish regions is greater, for example, the regional president of Extremadura has shown "strong political support" for open source, according to Ghosh.

The main reason for the Spanish regional government's interest in open source is to bridge the digital divide. "They want to provide access [to technology] to all and the only way to provide access to everyone is by having open source software," says Ghosh.

Extremadura's regional government has repeatedly stated that open source software is key to the region's economic and social development. "The time of the industrial era, when discoveries were abusively capitalised and unfairly monopolised, is over," they declare. "A new model is necessary; a model which would allow the improvement of the lives of all citizens in Extremadura."

Other reasons for the widespread adoption of open source in the Spanish public sector are cost and the encouragement of local businesses, according to Pop Ramsamy, a project officer at Fundecyt, one of the organisations supporting Extremadura's use of Linux. Cost was more of an issue in Extremadura than in other European regions as it is one of the poorest regions in Europe.

Francisco Huertas Mendez, the technical coordinator of Extremadura's Linux project says that proprietary software was not an option due to cost. "For us, software libre (open source software) was the only choice. We were able to stretch our budget very far," he says.

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Poland/ Eastern Europe: Community equals communism?

Spotlight project:
Warsaw, capital of Poland, is running the open source operating systems Linux and FreeBSD on a total of 30 servers and plans to adopt open source software for more servers and to run services related to its intranet.

Summary:
There have been few well-publicised open source migrations within the Polish government. As well as the Warsaw administration, the Polish Ministry of Finance and the Polish city of Gdynia are reportedly using open source software.

No country in Eastern Europe, including Poland, has developed an official policy on open source software yet, according to Gartner's DiMaio. The Polish government has shown tentative interest in open source through funding research, which will be used to produce an open source migration guide for the public sector and through funding a translation of OpenOffice.org documentation.

DiMaio says that Poland is "very unlikely" to come up with its own policy on open source and is more likely to simply follow any EU policies that are formulated.

The situation regarding open source software is unclear in Eastern Europe, according to MERIT's Ghosh. He says that some Eastern European companies have already decided to go with Microsoft, such as Macedonia, which recently signed a contract with Microsoft for it to equip the entire public sector at a cost of $300 per seat.

"Countries where there is a relative lack of awareness about technology can get swayed by sales forces," says Ghosh.

Overall, cost is a "strong driver" for the adoption of open source software in Eastern Europe, due to budgetary constraints, according to DiMaio.

But Governor says many Eastern European countries are likely to opt for Microsoft as they "don't want to be seen as commies [sic]". "A lot of Eastern European countries look to UK and US for guidance," he says.

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