“The software industry has performed extremely well with little government interference. There is not significant market failure -indeed, production and innovation are both robust – that cries out for a government fix” (Evans, 2002, p.35).
Dr. Evans was right. Open Source Software is taking its place in the economy basically with little help from the public sector. In one of his last books (Dr. Evans has published more than six books and 70 journal articles) Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries, Dr. Evans et al. wrote this insight about Linux:
“One wouldn’t have thought that an un-owned platform that is free to all sides of the market could have taken almost 20 percent of the server business in competition with Microsoft, Novell, and Sun in about a decade. ” (Evans, Hagiu, Schmalense, 2006, p.112).
Therefore, the decision of using OSS solutions in the public sector does not seem now as senseless as five years ago. From this scenery you could think of two explanations of why some governments decided to take the OSS’ side:
- Some governments were trying to fix the market, and they have helped to do so without destroying the software industry.
- Some governments were trying to take into account “long term” benefits of the OSS solutions in terms of independence, security, and economy.
In the two cases, those governments were right or (if you prefer) maybe they got lucky.
