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Äàòà 10.05.2006 02:06:11
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Switching from proprietary to free/open source software

Âûäåðæêà èç:
http://www.iprcommission.org/papers/word/study_papers/sp5_story_study.doc
Commission on Intellectual Property Rights / Study Paper 5

Study on Intellectual Property Rights, the Internet, and Copyright

Alan Story / Lecturer in Intellectual Property / Kent Law School, University of Kent / Canterbury, Kent

2.6 Switching from proprietary to free/open source software

There is a long list of other organisations, governments, and other bodies across the developed, developing and least developed world which have decided, for a variety of reasons, to switch to open source and free software. A short list includes: four Brazilian cities (Amporo, Solonopole, Ribeirao Pares, and Recife) have passed laws giving preference to or requiring the use of OSS ( including from service suppliers); China has a policy commitment to use Linux across all government departments; researchers in the computer science department at Brazil’s Federal University of Minas Gerais have created a US$250-300 computer called the “Popular PC”; Mexico has announced a five-year programme to install Linux operating systems in the computer labs of 140,000 elementary and middle schools; by 2003 ( see 2.4 a) , it is expected that all Mexican government database systems will be Linux-based and the results of the recent Mexican election were computed with OSS; the Computer Science section of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science’s uses Linux software; Banco Mercantile, one of Argentina’s largest banks, is in the process of switching to Linux systems; IBM has invested $US200 million in Linux ventures in Asia and is now essentially a Linux- based company.

A number of national and municipal government have debated or passed resolutions favouring OSS, including France, Florence Italy, Mexico, and Argentina. And if any further convincing is needed that open source software is neither “an experiment” nor the software simply for “nerds”, “ geeks”, “ hackers” or “Microsoft phobes”, consider the following:
a) The European Commission’s initiative “ eEurope – An Information Society for all” states that “during 2001, the European Commission and Member States will promote the use of open source software in the public sector…” (Cabinet Office ( UK)
b) In December 2001, the UK Cabinet Office released a document calling for public consultation on the use of open source software within all branches of the UK government. At the same time, it also released a detailed study that recommends far greater use of open source within government and predicts, for example, that “within five years, 50 % of the volume of the (global) software infrastructure market could be taken by OSS.” (Peeling)
c) Some sections of corporate America are also starting to break away from the hold of closed source proprietary software on their operations and are growing increasingly concerned how the “software vendors’ revenue model --- with its perpetual licences, forced upgrades and pay-up-front maintenance contracts ---- actually encourages buggy products.” (Festa, Matthan interview; White, Rebeto, Levinson)