How government can support open source

Found this clever piece from Philip Greenspun's site, one of my heroes from the software world.

Should the government be suing Microsoft for violating antitrust laws? Perhaps. But doesn't it seem kind of odd for government lawyers to be typing Microsoft Word documents about how bad Microsoft is?

I couldn't agree more. Greenspun wrote this at the height of government suing Microsoft for unfair monopolistic practices. I think this is as relevant as ever, since the Philippine government has also recently passed an Open Source Law, which ironically was drafted and distributed for review in MS Word .doc format!

Greenspun goes on to say that if government is really serious in helping open source (ie, to help break the monopoly by increasing competition against Microsoft), then the best strategy is to simply go open source and direct its IT employees to help add features to open source software. This makes a lot of sense!

... The cost of hiring a programmer to add a feature or two to Linux or Open Office, for example, can't be recovered if you only have five employees to use the feature. But the U.S. Government has millions of employees. Whatever it costs to improve the open-source software that the feds use will be much less than the government currently pays to Microsoft in license and upgrade fees. And, by releasing those improvements back to the community, the U.S. Government will greatly strengthen the market for open-source software and support.

The short essay is curiously posted under Greenspun's humor section, but it really rings true, don't you think?

Microsoft's strong base is its installed base of MS Office and Windows (pirated or not, it doesn't matter -- in fact, piracy has helped entrench MS Office in our workplaces). This means that most government employees are used to, and even spoiled by, the look and feel of MS Office.

Trying out Open Office will reveal that the word processor and spreadsheet are okay so far. But the presentation software and database are not. Any plan to migrate to Open Office in an environment spoiled by MS Office will fail without viable substitutes to Powerpoint and Access.

Now consider this. What if, for one or two years, the Philippine government pooled some of its excess budget (there's a lot of that in Senate and Congress, I'm sure) and funnelled it to an event? Let's say a competition that would reward individuals and small companies who make a significant contribution to Open Office?

Government could reward contestants who make highly needed feature improvements like a Tagalog, Cebuano or other vernacular dictionary/grammar checker; good document and presentation templates; pro-forma accounting spreadsheets with macros to automate most tasks; etc.

One million pesos will do the trick. Just imagine: Half a million can be awarded as a major prize and the rest can be divided among the runners up. This is peanuts compared to the multi-million-peso projects of our congressmen and senators.

Read the original post.