Free and open source software in municipal procurement: the challenges and benefits of cooperation.

• Author: Colannino, Justin C.

ABSTRACT

The use of free and open source software by municipal governments is the exception rather than the rule. This is due to a variety of factors, including a failure of many municipal procurement policies to take into account the benefits of free software, free software vendors second-to-market status, and a lack of established free and open source software vendors in niche markets. With feasible policy shifts to improve city operations, including building upon open standards and engaging with free software communities, municipalities may be able to better leverage free and open source software to realize fully the advantages that stem from open software development.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Introduction I. The Benefits of Free Software for Municipal Governments A. Traditional Benefits of Free Software: Freedom, Autonomy, and Communal Pooling of Resources B. Secondary Benefits to the Public C. Transparency and Safety D. Preventing Vendor Lock-in or Obsolescence II. Challenges to Free Software Adoption A. Entrenched Proprietary Vendors B. Services vs. Goods C. Finding Solvent Vendors D. Procurement Policies III. Steps Municipalities Can Take To Leverage Free Software A. Create and Foster Collaboration Among Peer Cities and Vendors B. Begin with Solutions That Already Have a Robust Community C. Licensing Matters D. Design Procurement Policies to Include a Step Where the Procurement Officer Consults with City IT Staff About Available Free Software Solutions E. Design Requests for Proposal that Require Well Defined Open Standards INTRODUCTION

Since its inception in the early 1980s, free and open source software (2) (free software), software released under a copyright license that permits the general public to study, use, copy, distribute, and prepare or distribute derivative works of the software, has demonstrated the promise and power of internet collaboration to produce no-cost digital tools for general public use and education. The coincidence of free software's growth and the development of other collaborative no-cost digital goods such as Wikipedia with the internet age is no accident. Whether it is a tweak that makes grandma's lasagna recipe even better, an improved work-out routine, or a new trick to getting the last bit of ketchup out of the bottle, it is human nature to share life improvements with others. Before the internet, these improvements either traveled by word of mouth or had to be published and distributed at significant cost. With the internet, each time someone accesses the information, she has a copy she can keep for herself and, once an improvement is written up, it can be shared and copied at no cost. Just put it online.

Take, for example, the now antiquated process of digitizing, or "ripping," a compact disc (CD). Typically, a computer digitizes an album on a CD by creating a different file for every track. At first, naming these tracks took time: for every track you had to type in the song title, the artist name, the album, and other information so that you or your digital music player could remember which file was which. This tedious task changed after the creation of the compact disk database (CDDB), an internet service that permitted users to query a database using a digital fingerprint of the compact disk that would return with song title and artist name for each track. If the fingerprint query turned up no results in the database, the user would need to enter in the information by hand, and CDDB would query users to upload the entered information to its servers. This query effectively enabled users to share the song title and artist name with every other person ripping the same disk. (3) Every person not only entered data to improve their own life, but, by sharing copies of the information through the internet, they were able to improve everyone else's life who was in the same situation.

Software, like Grandma's lasagna recipe or the CDDB database, can be represented digitally and so may be duplicated quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively over the internet. This makes collective development easy: whenever someone makes an improvement, he can share it online easily for all to use. These mechanisms in software development along with people and organizations making improvements in the programs they use and sharing those improvements with others have created a rich pool of stable software that can be used and improved upon by municipal governments to suit their needs.

Free software possesses three properties that enable this collective development that proprietary4 solutions do not: its source code (5) is auditable, its source code is modifiable, and it has a license cost of zero. By embracing this collective production method, municipalities are increasingly able to develop collective solutions to their common problems: when each municipality designs and builds the software it most needs, the collective wealth of all similarly situated municipalities is increased.

This Article examines this benefit and other related benefits derived from city governments' use of free software, and discusses current obstacles to free software adoption. It also provides practical advice to municipalities regarding how to leverage collaborative digital production in order to derive greater benefit for themselves and the public using limited resources.

Part I sets forth certain advantages of free software over its proprietary counterparts and discusses in detail the opportunity free software presents to municipalities, including operational autonomy, transparency and security, prevention of vendor lock-in, and secondary benefits to the public. Part II highlights some of the social, economic, and legal obstacles to municipal use of free software, and attempts to present practical advice to address each. Part III highlights steps that municipalities might take to leverage free software and collaborative development in order to improve their technological infrastructure and civic reach.

1. THE BENEFITS OF FREE SOFTWARE FOR MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS

   1. Traditional Benefits of Free Software: Freedom, Autonomy, and Communal Pooling of Resources

      Many benefits the general public obtains through the use of free software are also present in the municipal context. The first and most obvious benefit is the financial savings due to free software's zero cost license. Indeed, this is often the main reason that governments seek free software solutions to begin with. (6) For many municipalities that pay per installation of office suites such as Microsoft Office, the savings from a switch to an equivalent free software suite such as OpenOffice.org can be immense. For example, in a bundle deal for computing services for which Microsoft Office software was a major part, New York City pays twenty million dollars a year. (7) Contrast this with Katowice, a city in southern Poland, which, while operating on a much smaller scale, saved one hundred thousand Euros per year by switching to OpenOffice.org using minimal effort. (8) These savings can be amplified across other systems with a switch to or a build out of a free software solution, even when accounting for added training costs. (9) And because additional licenses cost nothing, municipalities can increase operations with non-linear software costs, since existing personnel may be used to support additional workstations or servers.

      While license costs themselves are zero, it is often argued that, considering all factors, the total cost of ownership (10) of free software solutions is higher than their proprietary counterparts. While this is a controversial issue, experts generally agree that analysis must be done on a case by case basis, (11) and much of the available evidence suggests that "total cost of ownership for [free software] is often far less than proprietary software." (12)

      Another benefit of free software is that it provides municipalities with the capability to pick and choose the features they wish to include in their software solutions. This is quite unlike proprietary solutions, where vendors force both upgrades and obsolesce of software or hardware. (13) For example, in recently passed legislation requiring state agencies to consider free software in procurement, the New Hampshire state legislature found that it was in the "public interest that the state be free, to the greatest extent possible, of conditions imposed by parties outside the state's control on how, and for how long, the state may use the software it has acquired." (14) Permitting upgrading on a schedule controlled by the municipality provides operational savings in two ways. First, it permits evaluation of each upgrade in a piecemeal fashion, allowing the city to apply only the upgrades it deems necessary, reducing the cost of training and support. Additionally, each incremental improvement can be implemented and rolled out as needed, instead of waiting for an entire new version of a system incorporating a laundry list of changes that necessitate a more comprehensive investment in training and support. (15)

      The benefit derived from this flexibility is not limited to upgrades, but also applies to customization to fit local organizational needs. (16) For example, a reason the Evergreen ILS, a made-from-scratch solution for the Georgia Public Library system, registered initial success was that its development process allowed users to give feedback, and the information technology (IT) professionals on staff could quickly modify the software to suit these user requests. (17) This flexibility also enables extension of the Evergreen system to serve users with visual or other impairments. (18) The benefits of flexibility are also borne out empirically: for example, a survey of free software users and customers found that flexibility was the main benefit from free software adoption. (19) This flexibility includes customization for municipal citizen's needs, such as language, (20) or...