Toward a national strategy for Open Source Software

Abstract

Open Source Software (OSS) solutions are growing rapidly as they become more mature. Countries have focused their efforts to support OSS initiatives and foster their development by providing government support through laws and legislation, and education. Because of the growing national interest in OSS, we surveyed efforts of twenty major world economies, otherwise known as the Group-of-Twenty (G-20). We examined over forty-five national initiatives within the twenty countries and we were able to identify seven distinctive common strategies applied within the past ten years. Each strategy has been adapted by at least three countries. The result of the survey shows a significant growth in interest to support OSS by major economies. Based on the result of our survey we present a stepwise process to align the seven strategies to national objectives and market needs, and provide a prioritization scheme for strategy implementation.