Open source: UK dragging its heels

The UK is lagging in the use of open source, even though it is now established as the best way to produce and consume software, according to speakers at the Open Source Forum, sponsored by Red Hat and its partners, in London.

Graham Taylor, director of industry body OpenForum Europe, said: "The UK is crap. It is the laggard in Europe in the use of open source." He put the blame not on any religious conviction but on poor business decisions, which had led to vendor lock-in, particularly among public bodies."

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He said: "According to our research, up to 90 per cent of public administrations have lost the ability to freely choose their next IT solution." This is because they have committed to applications which are not supported on other operating systems, or have no way of moving their data to other applications. Three years ago, Taylor said, an Office of Government Commerce study reached the same conclusion: a lot of government departments had signed up for an open-source project, only to leave when they found they were locked in.

The UK government has failed to support open source both as a user and in policies to offer citizen access, Taylor said. He gave the example of the government initially offering the Government Gateway only to users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Despite the UK's poor record, however, open-source adoption is continuing to accelerate, Taylor said, quoting a Standish Group report that claimed proprietary vendors are losing £30bn per year to open source. "The open-source movement is no longer the anti-software-industry establishment. It is the software-industry establishment," said Taylor.

Delegates agreed with his upbeat assessment of open source and disappointment with the UK: "People are no longer afraid of open source. They see the [intellectual property] problems are no worse than those in proprietary software," said Gianugo Rabellino, chief executive of Sourcesense, an Italy-based systems integrator with a UK subsidiary. "But what is happening with open source in Britain?"

Original article: OpenForum berates UK record on open source from ZDNet UK