SAN FRANCISCO, 4 JANUARY 2008 - Linux and Open Source solutions are growing. The growth is not just within commercial enterprises. It is also within state, local and federal governments, within the United States and abroad.
To get a sense of this trend looking forward, we spoke to two persons engaged in developing Open Source solutions for the public sector: Mark Taylor, President of The Open Source Consortium, whose tag line is "Bringing Free and Open Source Software to the Public Sector," and John Weathersby, founder and executive director of the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI), a U.S.-based non-profit organization whose mission is to promote adoption of Open Source software solutions within government IT environments.
LinuxWorld: The city of Munich, Germany has converted to Open Source Software for their operating system. Can you comment on this conversion and discuss any other public sector entities who are doing the same?
Mark Taylor: The Munich migration is the largest public sector complete migration in Europe. Approximate size is 16,000 users, 14,000 desktops, 300 pieces of software including 170 business applications.
It is a complete migration, both server-side and desktop side. The server-side is built around Open LDAP and Samba. The desktop, around Debian and KDE.
The migration has now reached the halfway stage, and is due to complete in 2009. 5000 workstations are running Open Source on top of Microsoft Windows, 660 have taken the next step to Linux, and almost a third of all users are now trained to use Open Source.
Public sector authorities all over Europe are engaging in partial or complete migrations. To name merely a few: UK - Carmathenshire, Bridgend, Powys, Wrexham, Hertforshire. Germany - Munich, Schwäbisch Hall, Lower Saxony and Goettingen, Vienna; Spain - Extremadura, Andalucia; France - French parliament, French National Assembly, Paris, Arles; Italy - Rome, Cremona.
According to an EU-funded study, half of local government authorities already use at least some Open Source. An additional 29 percent do not explicitly report using it, but mention Open Source software (Linux, MySQL, Apache) by name when asked for programs they have implemented.
While many public administrations use "some" Open Source, very few use it exclusively or even as dominant software. Partial use on servers is the most common scenario (40 percent) followed by partial use on desktops (16 percent). 20 percent report experiments through pilot projects. This study is now a few years old and uptake has continued to accelerate since then.
In short, it is happening everywhere, and even Microsoft playing King Canute in the UK is only slowing the project down.
LinuxWorld: Can you talk about local governments. What has been their interest in Open Source, and what is the prospect of open source becoming their primary platform? What is behind your reasoning?
Mark Taylor: Cost reduction. Increasingly, in Europe we are seeing the 'Open Standards' driver - the prime example of this being the increasing number of European Governments mandating the Open Document Format, which is an ISO approved international standard, as opposed to Microsoft's file format, which isn't.
[Also] encouragement by the European Commission. For example, Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for information and society, makes public statements to the effect that an Open Source industry in Europe is a desired outcome for the Commission.
LinuxWorld: With reference to open source conversions, are there successful projects where governments are repurposing old hardware?
John Weathersby: Government entities, primarily state and more specifically municipal [and] local government entities are more prone to re-purpose old hardware as their budgets are not as robust as federal budgets (within limits, of course). One of the greatest strengths of open source software is that it is generally more flexible in that is does not require the latest, greatest, newest and most expensive hardware to run effectively. In addition, open source solutions tend to be developed and deployed with open standards in mind. This is an important element in enabling software to be and remain compatible on a variety of hardware(s) and platforms.
LinuxWorld: In 2003, a research report cited CIO Weekly as saying that "within 5 years 54% of CIOs said that open source will be their primary platform." Are we there? Why or why not?
John Weathersby: 2003 was a long time ago...what's that like nearly 25 years in "dog years" and nearly 50 years in "computer-years" considering the speed of technology development and adoption. (See Moore's Law!) I do believe that this specific prediction was at least moving in the right direction. I know that open source has grown and matured a great deal in the past several years - even more so than even some of us "advocates" thought possible and much more so, to the chagrin of those who wished that Open Source had never been devised!
Adoption rates continue to grow at a fantastic rate and I think this can be accredited to several things:
1. The technology works and works well!
2. There are many very good companies out there who have recognized and adopted open source solutions not only for their internal solutions, but are offering all types and levels of service and support for nearly everything you can imagine as open source.
3. As the market matures, more and more of the "more pragmatic" CIOs are becoming comfortable with the idea of "open source" so they are putting their toes in the water and openly adopting the technology. You have to admit when you have nearly all the world's leading technology companies offering an Open Source solution of one kind or another; it is hard to argue that the technology is not ready for prime time! It is here and becoming more ingrained in every type of solution on a daily basis.
LinuxWorld: One area that has gained importance is bringing a Linux based system into a local government to communicate with Homeland Security's requirements and other emergency crisis software. Is this likely to be a leg up for Linux? Can you comment on local security needs being in sync with Federal security policy and program?
John Weathersby: Federal adoption of open source definitely has a positive trickle-down effect for state and local government entities. What I've seen is that local government entities have a lot of the same basic concerns regarding security as their federal cousins. Security is: a) not something that will take care of itself or happens automatically; b) requires smart planning and wise use of limited resources; c) usually comes down to protecting data regarding individuals - whether that be information on people you're trying to protect or people you're trying to find. Open Source is playing an important role in all these areas.
Remember though, that Open Source is much larger than just the Linux operating system. Open Source is widely used in areas of encryption, web services, data storage and management, everything...even satellite information gathering and processing. Open Source is everywhere within the government and security systems.
LinuxWorld: What do Open Source developers need to know about Linux and Open Source being adopted by more governments worldwide and its effect on adoption by U.S. Governments?
John Weathersby: The primary government vendors are now starting to really ramp up their open source product, service and support offerings to their government clients. Working with the government, at any level, and specifically with DoD, is a bit different from working with regular businesses. That is a completely different interview there...
But general, independent open source developers, are doing a bigger and better job than anyone could have ever imagined and my advice is to keep on doing what you're doing. Open source is now an integrated part of both commercial and government systems and it is only going to grow in importance...so again, keep on keeping on. We will all get there together.
