Yes We Can…
“Yes We Can.” The chants have hardly faded and one of the first things the Obama Administration is interested in doing is exploring how the United States government can use open source software rather than rely on proprietary software. The economic downturn that started in October 2008 led to increasingly growing awareness of open source software solutions and how they might be considered as alternatives to proprietary business applications. This awareness and visibility has been given another boost by the publicity being provided it by Obama and his technology team which includes co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNeally.
Government agencies using open source software is not unheard of – it is actually much more common in Europe. I do not advocate government mandating open source software. On the other hand, I believe that open source can stand on its own merit and I cannot fault the government, or any other organization for that matter, for looking to get the best value for their money.
Open Source has much to offer this President, the nation and enterprises in general and I welcome the growing awareness and popularity of open source software. Open source is increasingly being adopted by enterprise IT—with even more widespread adoption on the horizon. In less than five years, many open source vendors have moved from marginal positions to being players worthy of consideration and influential in their own right.
The debate rages on. I am an advocate of open source software, not because it is cheap or free, but because in some cases it stands head-to-head with proprietary software solutions on value and functionality while typically offering greater flexibility and control. That being said, I think we all agree that there is plenty of room in government for technological improvements – if open source is a good fit for any of the improvements or for that matter any projects generated out of the stimulus package, then it should be considered and evaluated on value and functionality. I have yet to meet an enterprise decision-maker who purchased open source just because it was open source. The value a software solution provides is multi-faceted and being open source is only one of them.