Open Source : Adoption Guide Inside Governments

Across the world, some governments are trying to promote the usage of opensource software - am hearing the push efforts being undertaken from dozens of nation capitals and different agencies. I have not heard great implementation success stories though from govts - corroborated by agencies outside of the implemetation team/sponsors. It is a pity though as governments are amongst the best places to implement opensource holistically. We covered recently the decision of Ethiopian government to not use opensource. The australian government has come out with A guide to open source software for Australia government agencies. The guide, while not throwing any great light about opensource to someone who knows what opensource is all about, is aimed at assisting government agencies by providing practical information and approaches for agencies to consider when assessing open source solutions. Risk management procedures and the different contractual considerations that can apply to open source software issues are addressed in the Guide, as are cost of ownership issues. The guide says, understanding cost of ownership issues for open source software is important because, under an open source model, costs are incurred at different phases of the implementation and operation of an information technology system.
The key tenets adddressed( as frameworks for evaluation) in this guide includes amongst others:
- True Cost Of License
- Support available
- Software reliability & security
- Legal concerns
My views on opensource - I have spelt out several times in this blog - Perspectives, seriousness issues in adoption, costly & litigatious, reality check, not ready for enterprise still hold valid in my view - would be activley looking at answers for the issues raised.