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Public impediments to Open source |
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Recently, the Israeli lottery association (a legal monopoly for gambling in Israel) which is the main sponsor of educational, cultural and social projects, instructed its vendors to supply equipment only to institutes which work with Microsoft operating system and office software. This instruction prevents all vendors for the educational and cultural sectors which seek to enjoy the lottery sponsorship from exploring competing operating systems or open source software alternatives.
This instruction conflicts with the Israeli government’s explicit policy to support open source projects and to subsidize competing operating systems and open office software which were developed in Hebrew.
When public procurements or subsidies favor proprietary software and close code, the competition in the software market is stifled.
I am willing to assume that the Israeli lottery association’s instruction was drafted in good faith without an hidden interest, but still if fails any reasonableness scrutiny. The public and educational sectors should lead the campaign to open the code layer. They should use their procurement power to encourage competition in the operating systems and software market. Public money should not be used to prevent such a competition and to lock the code in proprietary formats. Read more:
Ynet (Hebrew).
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