An Empirical Look at the Problems of Open Source Adoption in Finnish Municipalities

摘要

This article starts by considering the global framework of current open source migration. We show that the fight against software piracy is most likely speeding up the adoption especially in the developing countries. The situation is somewhat different in those parts of the world, which have lower piracy rates. There, political lobbying seems to offer the major push for open source software. This brings us to study the actual open source software adoption in the Finland, which is both the home of Linux and also one of the most advances information societies with little piracy. The outcome is rather surprising - the Finnish government is currently ignoring open source. The results we have got from our a survey to all Finnish^ municipalities and from additional expanded interviews shows that there is currently high demand and growing interest for open source solutions within the Finnish municipalities but the government (by ignoring the issue) and the private sector (being mainly committed to proprietary solutions) are not able to fill the needs. We propose that the governments in the rich countries should in fact learn from developing countries and have a more proactive policy approach to open source software.