OStatic

The European Commission will soon announce that it plans to use more open-source software. A spokeswoman for Siim Kallas, the Commission member responsible for administrative affairs, audit, and anti-fraud, told the International Herald-Tribune that "open-source software should be pursued provided it does not cost more and is in the best interest of European citizens."

This is not the first time that a public or government agency has announced its intention to use more open-source software. But the Commission is not just any government agency. It functions as the executive branch for the European Union's 27 member states and nearly 500 million residents. The Commission's actions will undoubtedly influence government policies around the world; other governments and public agencies will undoubtedly scrutinize the success or failure of this new program over the coming years.

There are numerous arguments in favor of government use of open-source software: It almost always costs less than its commercial counterparts, saving public money. It adheres to open standards, meaning that there will be easier interoperability between any other software that might be purchased down the road. And it increases the potential for competition for extensions and maintenance, rather than providing a monopoly to the company that initially wrote the software.

There is also an element of transparency in government: When a government pays a commercial software provider, the public doesn't know exactly what the software does, or how it works. By contrast, open-source software allows citizens and government officials alike to examine, and even modify, the software. While it's hard to make a moral argument in favor of the commercial use of open-source software, I believe that it's pretty easy to understand, and even favor, the use of tax money on open source.

There is a counter-argument, of course: Microsoft and other commercial companies argue that without their profit margins and proprietary technologies, the software will have more bugs and fewer functions, and also have more usability problems. History seems to have debunked the first two claims; open-source software has generally had fewer bugs than its commercial counterparts, and often has a great deal of functionality.

But open-source products have often lagged behind commercial software in their attention to design and usability. We can hope that as the EU and other governments begin to buy open-source products, they demand that usability play a central role as well. This will benefit the sponsoring government and its citizens, but will also raise the bar throughout the open-source world, encouraging programmers on a variety of projects to consider the end user more than they have before.

Do you think Europe's interest in open source software will last?

• Microsoft
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• government