[ILUG] FLOSS in Irish National ICT Policy and in R & D

[Andrew Clarke]

Kuda Dube wrote:
> Clarke,
>
> Thank you.
>
> So, could we say that the Irish Government does not seem to have any
> formal FLOSS policy in existence and that current state of FLOSS in IRL
> is solely due to individual efforts of members of the community? Would
> that be the case for FLOSS support infrastructures such as
> ftp.heanet.ie, i.e., these arise mainly as a result of decisions that
> seem not to have any policy baking ... more like the way ILUG resources
> arose?
>
> Regards
> --
> Kuda
>
>   
Hi Kuda,

I would certainly agree with this. There is no formal national policy
that I know about.

I would suggest that Heanet and many others make strong use of Open
Source because they simply need reliable and flexible solutions that can
scale well and are proven. Open Source infrastructure provides this and
can compete strongly against proprietary solutions which are generally
inflexible, have arbitrary business-model based restrictions and lock
customers in to their technologies.

The decision making is key - You hit the nail on the head with "..
mainly as a result of decisions that seem not to have any policy baking".

If decision makers are to evaluate solutions based on genuine criteria,
Open Source is always in the picture. However in reality, many IT
decisions are made by management personnel and without a strong
independent IT expertise on board. In a lot of situations, the only IT
expertise taken into account is that of the software vendor who stands
to gain from a sale. This is obviously flawed.

The point I'm trying to make is that the decisions are due simply to the
superior solutions that Open Source can provide.

Andrew Clarke