Open-source economics

Back in November the EU looked at the economic impact of open-source software. It’s a mammoth report, but it’s also an extremely important one – FLOSS software doesn’t have the lobbying power of the monopolists who peddle proprietary software.

It’s uncompromisingly positive about the benefits of FLOSS, going as far to suggest that they’re so great that FLOSS developers should be able to write off their code contributions as charitable donations.

I wonder how many people know that the UK government has a policy on open-source software. It’s a brief document with little or no commitment to FLOSS. According to the policy, open-source software is considered alongside commercial software with a final decision made on the basis of value-for-money.

I notice though that according to the EU report, some 72% of firms report that open-source software has provided them with “total cost of ownership” savings over commercial software. If you do decide to read through the report, the case study of Beaumont Hospital is enlightening – an enormous saving through the migration to FLOSS. Case closed?

Not at all, and certainly not while government departments are ludicrously suggesting that propriety software allows the Department to benefit from industry standards and trends. Thanks go to Conservative MP David Gauke for asking those questions; the extract is from the Department for Work and Pensions’ answer.

It’s about time that the government revised their 2004 report, to take into account the benefits of FLOSS pointed to in the EU report.

They must also commit to releasing as open source a much higher percentage of the software that they commission. But that’s the topic of a future post…