A nonprofit open source advocacy group in Quebec is taking the provincial government to court over its software procurement policies. The group, which is called FACIL, contends that the government has failed to comply with contract regulations by consistently adopting foreign proprietary software without first evaluating open source alternatives.
In a complaint filed with Quebec Superior Court, FACIL points out that the government awarded Microsoft CAN$10 million across seven different contracts, but never invited other vendors to propose bids. This behavior could fall afoul of regulations that require government agencies to solicit bids for contracts exceeding CAN$25,000. FACIL also cites a procurement guidelines document issued by the government of Quebec last year which instructs officials to define their operational needs during the procurement process in a way that is broadly inclusive and nonprejudicial towards open source solutions.
FACIL has asked the court to declare that procurement must be conducted in conformance with these requirements and that open source solutions should be given equal consideration to Microsoft products. To demonstrate the viability of open source technology for public sector adoption, the report briefly notes several high-profile open source rollouts in France and the Netherlands. In a statement, FACIL president Mathieu Lutfy says that the government of Quebec has lagged behind other governments in open source software adoption. He believes that remedying this failure could stimulate the local IT industry.
"A strategic Free Software utilization in public administration could create thousands of jobs as well as a significant decrease in software licensing costs. However, Quebec's public administration refuses to even consider and evaluate these options," he wrote. "While most of the developed countries have started, a few years back, migrating their technological infrastructures to Free Software, Quebec's public administration is far behind."
Open source software adoption has been strong in much of the world, but has lagged in North America. Several national governments in South America have migrated significant portions of their infrastructure to open source software. Venezuela has even mandated GPL licensing for all programs developed for government use. In Europe, numerous countries heavily fund open source software development and some, including Norway, are moving all public sector computing to open source solutions. Linux and open source software has seen very strong adoption in Asia as well, particularly in China and India.
Although open source software offers governments a lot of very clear advantages in cost and flexibility in many different scenarios, there are still cases where deployment just isn't feasible. Some capabilities simply aren't available in open source programs yet. Governments are also constrained by the need to support compatibility with legacy technologies, many of which aren't interoperable with emerging open solutions. When governments adopt proprietary software, they should think hard about how to avoid lock-in and they should pressure vendors to support open standards in order to ensure that there are minimal impediments when open alternatives are finally mature enough to be adopted in the future.
Regardless of whether open source software is a viable and cost-effective alternative, the government of Quebec appears to have erred in granting Microsoft no-bid contracts. Evaluating alternatives is generally the most responsible course of action and, at the very least, could have given the government of Quebec more negotiating leverage to get better pricing from Microsoft.
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