Open source software in 2015 (2)

Yesterday I summarised the first five forecasts concerning open source software in 2015. These forecasts can be classified as:
- totally negative;
- technologically and socially optimistic;
- conditionally depended on political support.
Today five more forecasts.

Maarten Wijnen-Meijer, consultant with the government office OSOSS, is also rather optimistic, as open standards will reduce vendor lock-ins. He signals that more suppliers will support open source software products and that more closed products will be developed in such a way that they can cooperate with open source applications. He also predicts that companies will participate in the development of open source software application. He draws attention to the fact, that open source software and standards have been started out by communities. People take pleasure in developing and using open source software together.

Jeroen Visser, IT specialist Open Source IBM Nederland, makes the situation of open source in 2015 conditional on community based software development, as more forecasters did so far. But he is convinced that the break through of open source also depends on the government and especially municipalities. They will have to organise themselves as they have a common business model in order to develop community model solutions. Condition is that the government looks at open source as a product of a community based development and shared functionality.

Michiel Leenaars, Director of the 10 year old Internet Society Netherlands (ISOC), sees open source as increased entropy. Portable devices running on open source software and wireless connections will have become the standard and no longer the exception. But despite the strong increase of open source software there will be no mono-culture, but also competition, yielding innovation, cross-fertilisation, niche marketing and customisation. Even in 2015 transfer of complex open source CMS functionalities to another platform will not be easy.

Karel De Vriendt, Chief European Commission, Directorate General Informatica European e-government services, gave his personal view on open source software in 2015. The phenomenon will not disappear, but he also stress that it will not just fly. The success of open source software depends on four aspects:
- the rise of a real oss-economy and of business models;
- the end of conditional sales like PC with an operating system (Mac + Mac OS; PC + Windows).
- the permutation of open source software in education;
- the use of open source software by the government.
Use in education and government are essential; besides co-operation pays out.

Duco Dokter, managing director Wyldebeast & Wunderliebe and president of NN-Open, closes the forecasts in style. He simulates a fictional fragment of the State of the Union to the Dutch parliament on September 15, 2015: ICT policy has been oriented towards sustainability, openness and independence, safeguarded by using open standards and where possible open source programs. The effects of this policy is showing now: never did The Netherlands have such a healthy, technological climate. There is room for innovation by healthy competition. “The yoke of closed standards and programs has mostly been thrown off. Let us look ahead in the realisation that freedom is the highest good attainable”.

Blog Posting Number: 969

Tags: open standards, open source software, OSS