Europe and the US philosophically divided on open source?
Published: 08 Nov 2005 11:15 GMT
Poland/ Eastern Europe: Community equals communism?
Spotlight project:
Warsaw, capital of Poland, is running the open source operating systems
Linux and FreeBSD on a total of 30 servers and plans to adopt open
source software for more servers and to run services related to its intranet.
Summary:
There have been few well-publicised open source migrations within the
Polish government. As well as the Warsaw administration, the Polish
Ministry of Finance and the Polish city of Gdynia are reportedly using
open source software.
No country in Eastern Europe, including Poland, has developed an official policy on open source software yet, according to Gartner's DiMaio. The Polish government has shown tentative interest in open source through funding research, which will be used to produce an open source migration guide for the public sector and through funding a translation of OpenOffice.org documentation.
DiMaio says that Poland is "very unlikely" to come up with its own policy on open source and is more likely to simply follow any EU policies that are formulated.
The situation regarding open source software is unclear in Eastern Europe, according to MERIT's Ghosh. He says that some Eastern European companies have already decided to go with Microsoft, such as Macedonia, which recently signed a contract with Microsoft for it to equip the entire public sector at a cost of $300 per seat.
"Countries where there is a relative lack of awareness about technology can get swayed by sales forces," says Ghosh.
Overall, cost is a "strong driver" for the adoption of open source software in Eastern Europe, due to budgetary constraints, according to DiMaio.
But Governor says many Eastern European countries are likely to opt for Microsoft as they "don't want to be seen as commies [sic]". "A lot of Eastern European countries look to UK and US for guidance," he says.
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7 comments
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Good research. Arthur B. -
Oh, yes the "Old Europe" countries above all Franc... Anonymous
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It's not Holland, but The Netherlands. :-) Anonymous
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The French use Pays-Bas and most English sp... Jacob -
The allegation that TCO is smaller in the case of... Gabriel Voinea
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My my my. France using Opensource softwares b... Mitch 74
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Just a little correction:
Software libr... Diego Alcorta
