A Fool’s Wisdom

Peter Nowak wrote a CBC article yesterday about Quebec being sued for not accepting software contract bids:

“Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused…”

The article has the tantalizing title of “Quebec government sued for buying Microsoft software“, but the heart of the matter is that Quebec is being sued for not accepting other bids. This policy is an anti-competitive business practice, and by effect anti- open source.

Quite a few of the comments in the article try to scapegoat the issue saying the government also relies on other vendors that have Microsoft Windows only solutions, but no one is arguing flip the switch and suffer. A government’s needs aren’t short term, and the very job of these policy analysts and technology procurement specialists is to weigh the options and total cost of ownership over the long-term.

It’s frightening that not only do they think there are no other options, but they are standing behind a law that shuts down all conversations. Their own belief that they are locked in, should scream to work towards alternatives. For a public office, important measures are openness and public value.

Another argument used by commenters to defend the current policy is that open source has a different, often worse user interface and experience. This isn’t really the case. There are a large variety of open source solutions with some mimicking Microsoft products and others having focused task based experiences. With choice, with open source, they can best meet the needs of their customers.

The last favorite scapegoat is that open source is free, and that this means that it’s unsupported. Many companies have built or reshaped their business around providing world class support of open source including IBM, Sun, Novel, Oracle, RedHat, and Canonical (Ubuntu). This won’t be profitable if the software products themselves weren’t world class. Canonical’s Ubuntu Support is even headquartered in Montreal, Quebec.

This policy hints at Canadian goverment offices being behind the curve. They have a great opportunity to review and measure how many other countries are using open source, and demonstrate how open standards and open technologies is how industry and government are investing in themselves and their members.