According to the BBC News and others, newly elected US President Barack Obama has requested a document detailing the benefits of open source technologies. The BBC article indicates Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has been asked to contribute to the project.
With the economy currently in as much turmoil as it is, the move to investigate open source is not surprising – indeed it makes perfect sense. So too would such a technological shift be in keeping with the promises of openness that the President seems keen to foster.
According to reports, Obama intends for this administration to be the most transparent in history, with as many documents as possible shared publicly and the Change.gov website being released under a Creative Commons-Attribution license. In light of these policies, a thorough investigating of open source technologies makes perfect sense.
The Washington Post indicated (Cohen, 2009):
“One of Obama’s memos says: “The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”
McNealy (Shiels, 2009) has been quoted as making an interesting statement however, saying (emphasis mine):
“The government ought to mandate open source products based on open source reference implementations to improve security, get higher quality software, lower costs, higher reliability – all the benefits that come with open software. “
I’m a staunch advocate of the freedoms and opportunities afforded to users of open source software – and the free as in freedom and free as in beer idealism that accompanies it, but mandating its use is not the right course of action.
In my view, the adoption of any technologies should be based on merit, not mandate. The open source community has produced some solid, very useful and user-friendly offerings through their altruistic, idealistic endeavors that stand up strongly to their proprietary counterparts. Such inherently unfree tactics – such as mandates – are not in keeping with FOSS culture. Indeed, forcing people to use them is just out of phase with long-held, strongly affirmed beliefs.
If we truly respect freedom, surely this should extend to recognising the right of others to choose proprietary lock-in and un-freedom.
Instead of mandating use of open technologies, what should be done is mandate its consideration in decision-making processes, and ensuring that needs- and cost-benefit analyses reflect holistic considerations of all available options – both proprietary and open source.
If the FOSS community is ever to achieve the recognition and widespread adoption it truly deserves, it needs to do it on merit, not mandate. Otherwise I fear we’d be compromising the core ideals of the movement in the pursuit of adoption statistics.
References:
Shiels, Maggie (2009). “Calls for open source government”, BBC News, 21 January 2009. Accessed 23 January from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7841486.stm
Cohen, Sarah (2009). “Obama Orders Could Open Records”, Washington Post, 21 January 2009. Accessed 23 Jan from http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2009/01/obama_orders_government_record.html
I don think that open source will ever become a mandate in the USA. As much as I love the idea on a personal level I am forced to agree that some things need to be kept closed, for securities sake if nothing else. As technology (like IM’s and email) grow to be used more in the business world there are people who want to get to things they should not with malicious intent. That is why we have tools like passwords and encryption (like Brosix for IM’s) that are designed to keep things out. Sometimes keeping things inside the walled garden is the only way to keep things from ending up badly. Even Obama knows that. He may be open, but I doubt that he will be sharing the locations of our nuclear facilities with hostile nations anytime soon.