|
Should Obama Give Stimulus to Open Source Initiatves? |
|
|
Recently, there has been some discussion about how open source software initiatives should be embraced and given equal
time in the federal stimulus plan as a tool to help the US federal government pull us out of the current economic
recession.
Bill Synder of InfoWorld sent a letter to the Obama administration calling for broader open source
adoption. Critics of the proposal ( namely lobbyists and proprietary software vendors ( think Oracle, SAP, etc ) argue
the many forms of open source software lack the proper security features and rigorous testing to enable their
adoption at the federal level.
Synder argues, "Once the government expands its use and support of open source, venture money — which is drying up in the current recession — would again start flowing to those small companies, allowing them to hire or
rehire some of the tens of thousands of unemployed IT workers".
This is a strong argument which makes sense as we all know that the majority of all new jobs that are created
by an economy come from small start up type organizations. We need to create longer term jobs and careers not just short term initiatives. At the recent governors convention in D.C many suggested that the short term stimulus dollars being sent to states is a good short term fix but the initiative will lack funding in year two or three after stimulus dollar stop flowing.
There is a sharp division in the IT community on this one. If you are a software developer and work for a commercial company to provide software goods and services to the Fed you may not want to see your tax dollars being spent
on competing projects that may undermine any competitive advantages your organization has.
Personally, I believe it would be good for the US if the development of the new on-line health care system was based
on an open source platform and components. This would stimulate the economy through innovation beyond the basic custodians
of the new US Health care portal.
Embracing open source enables small and large companies to become more competitive in the global economy because of the ability to leverage the collaborative work of tens of thousands of developers for the greater good of all.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of working on the CIOZone.com portal and working with Joomla, Linux, PHP, and MySQL has been the experience of deploying contributions from all over the world. So embrace open source and bring on the stimulus Obama!!
Please read more on the IT Industry and the Economic Stimulus plan here in CIO Conversations.
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
