Article

An empirical look at the problems of open source adoption in Finnish municipalities

Authors:

Mikko Välimäki,

Juha LaineAuthors Info & Claims

ICEC '05: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Electronic commerce

Pages 514 - 520

https://doi.org/10.1145/1089551.1089643

Published: 15 August 2005 Publication History

Abstract

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.

References

[1]

Alford, W. (1997). To Steal a Book Is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization. Stanford University Press.

[2]

Batson, A. (2004). Foreign software shutout. The Standard 30.11. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/China/FK30Ad01.html

[3]

Business Software Alliance (2003). First Annual BSA And IDC Global Software Piracy Study. http://www.bsa.org/globalstudy/

[4]

COSPA- Consortium for Open Source in Public Administration. (2005). http://www.cospa-project.org/

[5]

{European Commission. (2005). European F/OSS-related research activities. http://europa.eu.int/information_Society/activities/opensource/european_activities/index_en.htm

[6]

Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Policy Support. (2005). http://www.flosspols.org/outline.php

[7]

Ghosh, R., Robles, G. & Glott, R. (2002) Free/libre and open source software: Survey and study floss. Technical report, International Institute of Infonomics, University of Maastricht.

[8]

IDABC. (2005). European Interoperability Framework For Pan-European Egovernment Services. http://europa.eu.int/idabc

[9]

Initiative for Software Choice (2004). Key Messages. http://www.softwarechoice.org/download_files/Key_ISC_messaging.pdf

[10]

Initiative for Software Choice. (2004). ISC Comments to Chinese Ministry of Information Regarding Proposed "Domestic Sourcing" Rules for Software Purchases. http://www.softwarechoice.org/download_files/Chinese_Software_Rules_Comments.pdf

[11]

ISTweb. (2005). Free / open source software actions in European programmes. http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka4/tess/impl_free.htm#selected

[12]

Kasvio, A. Liikala & al. (2005). Tulevaisuuden verkottuva Suomi. Tietotyhteiskuntaneuvoston raportti. http://www.tietoyhteiskuntaohjelma.fi/tietoyhteiskuntaneuvosto/fi_FI/ /kokousmateriaali/_files/72678315505289075/default/TietoYnRap-16-2-05.pdf

[13]

Korkalainen, L. & Mutanen-Pirttilää P. (2004). Kuudelle Suurimmalle Kaupungille Osoitetun Kyselyn Tulokset. Muistio. http://www.tietoyhteiskuntaohjelma.fi/esittely/fi_FI/raportit_ja_selvitykset/_files/11042717720003432/default/mu_sixpack_290404.pdf

[14]

Müller, B. (2005). Letter to Mr Pedro Ortun, Director of Basic & Design Industries, Tourism, IDABC on the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) for Pan-European eGovernment Services. http://www.bsa.org/eupolicy/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm &PageID=22753

[15]

The Office of United States Trade Representative. (2004). The U.S.-China JCCT: Outcomes on Major U.S. Trade Concerns. http://www.ustr.gov/Document Library/Fact Sheets/2004/The_U.S.-China_JCCT_Outcomes_on_Major_U.S._Trade_Concerns.html

[16]

Sallstrom, L. & Damuth, R. (2004). DRAFT - The Critical Role of the Software Industry in Economic Growth: Focus Peru. http://www.softwarechoice.org/download_files%5CPeru_Policy.pdf

[17]

Schmid, G. (2001). REPORT on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI)). http://www.europarl.eu.int/tempcom/echelon/pdf/rapport_echelon_en.pdf

[18]

The United Nations. (2005). The Least Developed Countries. http://www.un.org/special-rep/ohrlls/Idc/list.htm

[19]

Valtioneuvoston kanslia. (2004). Valtion tietohallinnon ohjaus ja organisointi. Valtioneuvoston kanslian raportteja. http://www.vnk.fi/tiedostot/pdf/fi/89033.pdf

[20]

Valtioneuvoston kanslia. (2004). Tietoyhteiskuntaohjelma. http://www.valtioneuvosto.fi/tiedostot/pdf/fi/42828.pdf

[21]

Wong, P. (2004). Vietnam Adopts Formal FOSS Master Plan.http://www.asiaosc.org

Cited By

Alami AWasowski A(2019)Affiliated Participation in Open Source Communities2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870185(1-11)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870185
Brovelli MMinghini MMoreno-Sanchez ROliveira R(2016)Free and open source software for geospatial applications (FOSS4G) to support Future EarthInternational Journal of Digital Earth10.1080/17538947.2016.119650510:4(386-404)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2016.1196505
Mahapatra RManzar RBhadauria V(2015)Adoption and Use of Open Source Infrastructure Software by Large CorporationsJournal of Database Management10.4018/JDM.201510010126:4(1-17)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/JDM.2015100101
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

An empirical look at the problems of open source adoption in Finnish municipalities
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy

Recommendations

From Open Government to Open City: Lessons Learnt from Institutionalizing Open Government Practices in Bahía Blanca, Argentina
ICEGOV '17: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance

Bahía Blanca is an Argentinean medium-sized city located in the south of Buenos Aires Province, pioneering the implementation and institutionalizing the practice of Open Government (OG). Through dedicated efforts, the local Government has been ...
ICT governance in higher education: case study of the rise and fall of open source in a Gulf university
ICTD'09: Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Information and communication technologies and development

Open source software is a natural fit in higher education as both are based on an 'open science' model of knowledge development, and collaborative learning. It also helps bridge the gap between knowledge production and its use whenever academics become ...
Open Source Software implementation in the UK public sector: Evidence from the field and implications for the future

Open Source Software (OSS) is a model of computer software development where the source code is available for programmers to view, read, modify and re-distribute without the property right restrictions of proprietary software. OSS has existed as a model ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

ICEC '05: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Electronic commerce

August 2005

957 pages

ISBN:1595931120

DOI:10.1145/1089551

Conference Chairs:
Qi Li
Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
,
Ting-Peng Liang
Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan, China

Copyright © 2005 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 August 2005

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 150 of 244 submissions, 61%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

7
Total Citations
View Citations
1,078
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)5
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 29 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Alami AWasowski A(2019)Affiliated Participation in Open Source Communities2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870185(1-11)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870185
Brovelli MMinghini MMoreno-Sanchez ROliveira R(2016)Free and open source software for geospatial applications (FOSS4G) to support Future EarthInternational Journal of Digital Earth10.1080/17538947.2016.119650510:4(386-404)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2016.1196505
Mahapatra RManzar RBhadauria V(2015)Adoption and Use of Open Source Infrastructure Software by Large CorporationsJournal of Database Management10.4018/JDM.201510010126:4(1-17)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/JDM.2015100101
Rossi BRusso BSucci G(2012)Adoption of free/libre open source software in public organizations: factors of impactInformation Technology & People10.1108/0959384121123267725:2(156-187)Online publication date: Jun-2012
https://doi.org/10.1108/09593841211232677
Freeman S(2012)User freedom or user control?Information Technology & People10.1108/0959384121120436225:1(103-128)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2012
https://doi.org/10.1108/09593841211204362
Magnusson M(2011)Intentions to Adopt Open Source Software ERP Systems - A Case Study of Four Swedish MunicipalitiesProceedings of the 2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences10.1109/HICSS.2011.247(1-10)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/HICSS.2011.247
Ward DTao E(2010)Open Source Software Use in City GovernmentMachine Learning and Systems Engineering10.1007/978-90-481-9419-3_8(97-109)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2010
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9419-3_8

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents