Andrea Di MaioEarlier today an article about the role of open source software in difficult economic times made me reflect about whether government organizations will become more or less interested in open source with the budget cuts and cost saving targets many of them are being or will soon be faced with.
I know, this is a controversial topic. Do you really save money with open source and where? Can one come up with a set of criteria that would allow to make a decision between open source and proprietary solutions purely from a cost (or – better – total cost of ownership) perspective? While there are many large scale deployments of open source software on both servers and clients, the “open source market” has undergone major transformations since when governments started showing their interest. Many large vendors today sell and support open source software, and very few (if any) government organization would consider using unsupported open source, unless in very mission-specific application areas where there may be a lack of vendor support (and that represent the new battlefield for vendors).
Now, how does the recession play into this? It is likely that interest in open source throughout the technology stack will be re-ignited by three factors combined. First of all, the lower cost of entry. Secondly, the fact that this cost is often below the threshold for competitive procurement, which implies that the whole purchase process is faster and – what’s more important – happens below the radar screen of those who scrutinize agency budgets. Finally, in difficult economic times some vendors may be at risk and – at the same time – there will be a propensity (or a necessity) to preserve and possibly create jobs in the public sector: therefore some of the key resources needed to support open source software may be available to government IT organizations themselves.
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Category: open source in government Tags: open source, recession
