Open Source Today

Having the latest computer technology is great. But what e-government users from the public sector as well as citizens really want is software interoperability. Unfortunately IT managers still only pay lip service to such interoperability, concludes a European project assessing today’s open-source movement.

So reads the lead paragraph of an article called Brainstorming ways to push open source at a European Website, reporting on the conclusions of a project called FLOSSPOLS, launched to support Free/Libre/Open Source Software policy support in Europe. The summary continues as follows:

“Open standards provide independence, not traditional vendor lock-in. They are good for users, purchasers and government from both the economic and competition standpoint,” says Rishab Ghosh, from the Merit/Infonomics research institute in The Netherlands.