Computing Canada, March 16 2007, Vol. 33, No. 4
Open source has always been the underdog on the software scene, but it continues to draw intense interest from users and vendors alike in North America. Users want to avoid vendor lock-in and are attracted to potential cost savings. And vendors and value-added resellers see opportunities for innovation in the software marketBecause of differences in the two markets, what works south of the border may not work here, at least in some respects, according to Michael O'Neil, managing director of Info-Tech Indaba. In a survey of 1,180 respondents in the U.S. and 557 in Canada, the research firm found that, in general, Canadians are more likely to leave the door open for open source software (OSS) than their American counterparts – though only a small few in either country would be willing to rule it out completely.

Only 15 per cent of Canadians and 19 per cent of Americans said they would never use open source. In specific industry sectors, Canadians appear much more willing to consider OSS than Americans. In business services, for example, some 60 per cent of Canadians are willing to consider OSS, compared to only 45 per cent of Americans. Canadians in the education, transportation, utilities and communications sectors are also more receptive to OSS. In other sectors, such as manufacturing and other primary industries, there isn't much difference between the two countries. And, when it comes to open source, they're both equally concerned about copyright and stability issues.

But there was a reverse gap in health care, where Americans were more willing to adopt open source. “On the one hand, health care itself is administered differently in the two countries – it's the one sector that's most different compositionally between the two countries,” said O'Neil. “On the other hand, health care, from a Canadian IT market perspective, has always been a tough market.”

GOSLING's growth
For the most part, however, North American organizations are not rejecting OSS and, in fact, many see a place for it within their organizations. Vendors promoting open source may find a receptive audience in certain verticals, said O'Neil, and down the road we'll likely see more open source integrated into solutions by value-added resellers.

This could particularly apply to government, which, in Canada, was substantially more receptive to open source than in the United States.

The Canadian government will play a role in the development of open source in this country, said Russell McOrmond, an open source consultant and policy coordinator for Canadian Linux Users Exchange (CLUE). He's also the private sector coordinator for Getting Open Source Logic Into Government (GOSLING), which is a voluntary, informal knowledge-sharing community.

The Treasury Board Secretariat, for example, is creating a source code repository for the federal government so it can release and work on open source projects. “The Government of Canada is going to be a big player in creating, not just using, open source software,” said McOrmond.

GOSLING is also working on a project to coordinate open source software for report automation and statistics on expenditures, and turning all those spreadsheets into a single database. “All of that is being done in open source, but that's not very well-advertised,” he said. “With bureaucrats (in Canada), part of their whole motivation in life is to make sure they're not ever mentioned in a press release.”

But because this “knowledge-should-be-charged-per-copy” philosophy originated in North America, we've been slower to move forward with OSS than the rest of the world. “In Europe, there are cities that are switching all their desktops to Linux,” said McOrmond. “Outside of North America, it's just happening and governments are getting actively involved."Page Navigation 1) GOSLING's growth
2) Questions around standards

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