[In a recent ITSSD Journal post (See: Attali Commission: "France Must Strictly Circumscribe Precautionary Principle to Promote Entrepreneurial Risk-Taking, Innovation & Economic Growth", ITSSD JOURNAL ON ECONOMIC FREEDOM (Oct. 24, 2010) at: http://itssdeconomicfreedom.blogspot.com/2010/10/attali-commission-france-must-strictly.html ), the ITSSD provided extensive translated excerpts from the recently released (October 2010) French Attali Commission Report, An Ambition for Ten Years - Report of the Committee for the Liberation of Growth.
The Attali Commission report, among other things, strongly recommended the strict circumscription of the Precautionary Principle, the zero-risk threshold of which was found to encourage risk aversion, reliance upon social welfare state provisions and, consequently, calls by local industries for greater international trade regulation, and hence, protectionism. The Attali Commission concluded that the Precautionary Principle, as it has been applied in France, continues to serve as a disincentive for businesses and individuals to engage in the kinds of entrepreneurial risk-taking and scientific and technological innovation activities that are necessary and which, in fact, will lead to economic growth in France.
The Attali Commission report, among other things, strongly recommended the strict circumscription of the Precautionary Principle, the zero-risk threshold of which was found to encourage risk aversion, reliance upon social welfare state provisions and, consequently, calls by local industries for greater international trade regulation, and hence, protectionism. The Attali Commission concluded that the Precautionary Principle, as it has been applied in France, continues to serve as a disincentive for businesses and individuals to engage in the kinds of entrepreneurial risk-taking and scientific and technological innovation activities that are necessary and which, in fact, will lead to economic growth in France.
Apparently, however, the Attali Commission report fails to directly address the application of the Precautionary Principle to the ICT sector, which failure can be seen in calls by the French government (and by the EU Commission by extension) to increase the use of Open Source software, especially in public IT projects, by expressing government procurement preferences for IP-free and royalty-free ICT technologies to be incorporated within national and/or regional standards, that are to be adopted and used by the French government (and by extension the European governments) as part of its (their) transition to e-government (computerization of public services) platforms.
While there are legitimate public policy reasons for the French government (and by extension other European governments) to seek to reduce government budgetary costs and taxpayer burdens, and to increase job opportunities for the younger generation through the use of e-government platforms, however, this budget conscious ethos does not justify in a legal sense the French government's (and by extension other European governments') decision to expressly promote procurement guidelines that prefer/favor patent/trade secret-free and otherwise royalty-free software and information communication e-Government platforms.
There is at least one 2008 article which verifies that these actions were recommended by the Attali Commission ,and it voices the concerns of "the French association of software publishers, Afdel...[which was quoted as saying]...that the commission Attali turned its back on innovation by recommending Open Source. Afdel fears commercial software companies will be excluded from public IT projects. 'The commission Attali surprisingly favours a strategy to cut costs, instead of favouring the growth of an industry that employs 60,000 people'" Indeed, this same article reflects that the Attali Commission had previously mandated a quota for government acquisitions of Open Source (royalty and/or proprietary-free) software platforms for public IT projects - "The Attali report lists three recommendations. First, competition between the two types of software should be increased in bidding for new IT projects, including public projects. As a result in 2012 at least 20 percent of all applications developed for or installed by the public sector should be Open Source." See FR:Government Economic Commission Recommends Open Source, European Communities (May 28, 2008) at OSOR.eu at:
Apparently, the academic literature which promotes the application of the Precautionary Principle to the information society supports this same objective. Similarly, NGOs such as the Free Software Federation Europe (FSFE) and the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) have couched their policy arguments in favor of such initiatives in stark populist 'public interest' terms that have per se appeal to the unemployed within Europe; however, there is no doubt that such arguments also mask the hidden agendas of certain companies which endeavor to effectuate broad government and market migration ('change') to a different business model - from one based on products to one based on services, where they believe they have an ostensible market advantage. Yet, contrary to their assertions that such preferences will liberate the market, it is more likely the case, rather, that they will further impair the entrepreneurial, risk-taking and scientific and technological innovation activities which the French Attali Commission deems indispensable to France's, and by extension, Europe's economic growth and vitality in the 21st global knowledge economy. In addition, such government interventions will also preclude France (and by extension, Europe), from stemming its economic decline.
Lastly, a 2005 study prepared on behalf of the European Parliament strongly suggests that the application of the Precautionary Principle to the ICT sector has as its philosophical justification/basis, in part, the very trade protectionism that the Attali Commission is now recommending against.
Lastly, a 2005 study prepared on behalf of the European Parliament strongly suggests that the application of the Precautionary Principle to the ICT sector has as its philosophical justification/basis, in part, the very trade protectionism that the Attali Commission is now recommending against.
Below is some information on this perspective on the Precautionary Principle for readers to seriously consider:
"The Precautionary Principle in the information society can be articulated as follows: In order to enable society now and in the future to make relevant choices in the use of Information and Communication Technologies, as well to minimize harm for human health and the environment caused by ICT, ICT-related decisions under uncertainty should favor [ ] lower complexity over higher complexity[,] open standards over proprietary standards[,] and adapting the technology to humans over adapting humans to the technology" (emphasis added). 1
...“Pervasive Computing refers to visionary new ways of applying Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to our daily lives. It involves the miniaturization and embedding of microelectronics in non-ICT objects and wireless networking, making computers ubiquitous in the world around us. Unlike most of today’s ICT products, Pervasive Computing components will be equipped with sensors enabling them to collect data from their surroundings without the user’s active intervention. If our daily life is to be pervaded in such ways by microelectronic components, running all the time with most of them wirelessly networked, one must ask whether these technologies might not have undesirable side-effects. The expected benefits need to be weighed against the potential risks involved in implementing such technological visions. When comparing opportunities with risks, we will have to answer the basic question of the ethics of technology: ‘Which technologies do we want in our lives, and what kind of a world would that be?’” (emphasis added) 2
“...The free space theory says that the PP is intended to preserve free space for the activities of future generations. This applies for example to future activities that pollute the environment in that the permitted environmental pollution (according to the risk limit) is not exhausted. However, the free space may also be applied to a modified assessment and evaluation, since values, laws and risk acceptance change in society and new scientific knowledge is acquired (‘risk of change’). Things that are regarded as unobjectionable today may be seen as unacceptable damage tomorrow…According to Van den Daele (2001), the PP is used to bring technological development more firmly into the sphere of influence of politics and society. This appears necessary because technical progress not only brings natural risks into the ambit of human decisions, but at the same time creates new risks. New technologies can have unacceptable side-effects for society. The PP is intended to guarantee that society is able to make a conscious decision for or against entering into such risks, even where there is uncertainty over the existence and extent of a risk. The PP is not only an important principle in national and international environmental policy, but it is now also being extended to consumer protection policy. According toVan den Daele, the areas of damage associated with the notion of risk (originally health and the environment) have now been further extended to include social problems or changes in moral principles (Daele, 1991, quoted in Wiedemann/Brüggemann, 2001). With the extended scope of the PP, even the possibility of a change in applicable values would have to be treated as a risk and minimised. The question therefore arises whether, on the basis of current values, a possible change in those values can be regarded as an opportunity or a risk. Certainly such processes should be given over to a social discourse more than others (Habermas 2001), since it is obvious that society is redefining its value coordinate system and takes decisions on new technologies not just within the framework of such a system. It is not acceptable for technology to establish ‘faits accomplis’ and thereby stipulate moral standards without any reflection on the subject. It should merely be pointed out that Pervasive Computing has the potential to change moral standards in society, for example the standards representing the boundaries between the private and the public spheres” (boldfaced emphasis added) 3
“[T]he decisive step on the way [of ICT]to causing (possible) damage is the propagation of a technology together with the nature of its use…The use of a technology that has been propagated interacts both with the behaviour of users and with the use of other technologies. The propagation of a widely used technology is reversible in theory, but irreversible in practice. Once a technology has been propagated, the costs to the national economy of adjusting the course of the trend would be very high, if the legal requirements for such an adjustment are satisfied at all. In such cases, we talk about socioeconomic irreversibility. For this reason, precaution must be exercised in the case of technologies such as ICT which are very widely used in respect of the development and diffusion of technologies” (emphasis in original; boldfaced emphasis added). 4
“...In summary, it must be stated that there are three reasons why in the context of the information society the PP can be construed not only in terms of the ‘Emission-Transmission-Exposure’ arrangement:
1. The diffusion of very widely used technologies (mass market products) such as ICT currently in use is socio-economically irreversible.
2. A high number of emission sources can lead to unwanted exposure even where missions are limited at source. In addition, those affected have little opportunity to react to such ubiquitous risks.
3. Precaution against social effects of a technology is not covered by the concept of ‘avoiding harmful impacts’.
These reasons also apply to some other widely used technologies and are therefore not only relevant in the context of the information society. However, they are particularly pertinent in the case of PvC because the widespread use of this technology, its ubiquity and its penetration of all areas of life are an express part of the vision. This observation raises a dilemma regarding the precautionary measures that may become policy as a result of a technology assessment:
• If the problem is tackled in a broader sense ‘at source’ and the development and diffusion of technologies are regulated, there is a risk of inefficiency and of conflicts, since the measures may, for example, infringe international agreements (WTO) as technical barriers to trade. [WTO Trade Barrier concerns if Government policies are too heavy-handed]
• If, on the other hand, measures at the front of the causal chain are not taken, no precautionary action is possible in the case of mass technologies, but only aftercare of more or less irreversible conditions.
Ropohl (1996) therefore puts forward the idea of ‘innovative technology assessment’, which is used where a technology is linked to a utilisation idea. ‘This would have the advantage that they can become effective even in the early stages of technical development and, in addition, at the place where there is the most extensive technological knowledge’ (Mehl, 2001, p. 112f). According to Ropohl (1996), however, this also has a disadvantage in that a forecast is difficult at this early stage. He therefore suggests that technology assessment goes hand-in-hand with technological development in an ongoing learning process. ‘Whilst innovative technology assessment also needs scientific and political institutions, it is also and equally dependent on the constructive participation of industrial corporations and on the expert competence of the individuals working in those corporations’ (Ropohl, 1996, p. 269f). The advantage of this kind of approach is undoubtedly that developers of a technology can be involved in the social discourse and take responsibility at an early stage. However, it must also be borne in mind that the independence of the technology assessment is called into question” (boldfaced emphasis added). 5
“…The connection between the precautionary principle and the sustainability principle Because of the long-term orientation of the PP and the ‘free space theory’ there is a direct connection with the sustainability principle’s aim of intergenerational fairness. The PP can therefore be regarded as one of several instruments that implement the sustainability principle. Rausch (1985) and Rehbinder (1991) also recognise the sustainability and precautionary principles as having the same intention: not just to delay the overexploitation of nature, but to prevent it permanently. Norton (1992) sees the precautionary principle as a way of protecting the sustainability principle from the feared ineffectiveness. The final declaration from the ‘United Nations Economic Conference for Europe ’ back in 1990 stressed the role of the PP as a necessary prerequisite for sustainable development: ‘In order to achieve sustainable development, policies must be based on the precautionary principle [...] Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.’ (Bergen Declaration, 1990)” (boldfaced emphasis added). 6
“…In conclusion, it should be noted that if the sustainability principle is interpreted in the context of the information society, a ‘maxim of dematerialisation’ can be inferred: Information and communication technologies should be used in such a way that their potential for dematerialisation (reduction of material and energy conversion for the same utility) is realised. At present this maxim is still largely ignored or ineffective. The dematerialization potential of ICT is not being realised; the path taken by the industrialised countries into the information society is still a path of rising materials and energy sales per head of population…In addition to the question that was discussed above concerning the way in which the sustainability principle is to be interpreted in the context of the information society, there are a number of problem areas in the information society, which have been discussed for some time. These include, in particular, the traditional ethical principles that are touched on by certain applications of ICTs: respect for human dignity, welfare, social justice…In 1976 the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), the global umbrella association for information technology organisations, formed a Technical Committee to deal with ‘The Relationship between Computers and Society’ (IFIP TC 9), which gave the many national organisations the impetus to discuss the social responsibility of ICT professions and to draw up ethical guidelines for their members" (boldfaced emphasis added). 7
"…There are five subjects that repeatedly crop up in these discussions because of their ethical implications and the disagreements to which they give rise:
1. Privacy: Where does individual freedom to collect data end, in conflict with the right to information self-determination (which stems from the principle of autonomy)?
2. Security: What level of security for an information system needs to be guaranteed for it to be responsible to use the system? Who is responsible for security flaws? Is it a criminal act or a service to society to identify and publicise security flaws?
3. Unmastered complexity: In the case of complex, and particularly distributed, information systems, it is generally not possible to give a formal guarantee of certain properties of such systems. Does the increasing dependence on such systems result in a loss of decision-making responsibility (‘the problem of incontinence’)?
4. Free speech: What are the limits of the right to free speech with respect to the use of electronic media, when it comes into conflict with other fundamental rights? May or should there be censorship of Internet content?
5. Intellectual property: Where is the boundary between information as public property, which must be available to everyone for reasons of social justice, and intellectual property, over which the owner has autonomous control?
6. Digital divide: The jeopardisation of social justice through the division of society into those who have access to the information society and those who are excluded, e.g. low-income households, the elderly, those with disabilities (also known as the ‘global digital divide’: the gap between north and south).
7. Education: Changes to the education process through the use of ICT and the implications for social justice…
…Although a specific change in the situation regarding ‘intellectual property’ and ‘cultural diversity’ can be expected as a result of PvC, those subjects will not be examined any further, since this would extend far beyond the bounds of this study.” (emphasis added)." 8
“…A feature of PvC is the networking of a large number of components. Among the networks, the Internet will continue to play an important role in the ‘PvC era’, since it has developed into a global information and communication infrastructure. In future it can be expected that the Internet will encompass more and more applications and will be ‘extended’ right inside everyday objects. In principle, the whole spectrum of communications infrastructure can be part of the ubiquitous networking, from satellite-based networks and fixed and mobile phone networks to short-range wireless networks. A central role will be played by wireless technologies, in particular where nonstationary objects are networked” (boldfaced emphasis added). 9
"The development of the networking potential of devices and objects also depends on further standardisation of network protocols. Many PvC devices will presumably support the Internet protocol (Ipv6). For applications in which interconnected devices or objects form a network, however, network protocols for distributed architectures are needed. In this respect there are a number of sophisticated systems and systems in development such as HAVI25, UpnP26 and, more broadly speaking, CORBA27. Hitherto, however, these systems have been proprietary and not interoperable. Generally accepted, cross-manufacturer standards have not yet been developed, which has prevented the relevant systems from breaking through (Huhn, 2002). One example is the field of home networking (smart homes), where many different network access points exist. As soon as generally accepted standards exist, network-ready components will be a possibility for a mass market" (boldfaced emphasis added). 10
“…Social effects of PvC are, in the broadest sense, also relevant to health and are therefore dealt with extensively. However, we would point out that the statements made in this part of the study display greater uncertainty than the comments on health effects in the narrower sense and on environmental effects…The division of society into those who use ICT and those who cannot or do not want to use ICT is termed the ‘digital divide’ in society. In that regard, access to the Internet is now the central criterion. On account of the abovementioned opportunities provided by new forms of human machine interaction it is possible that the threshold for the use of ICT will fall considerably…At the same time there is a risk that consumers’ freedom of choice will be restricted…ICT is based decisively on technical standards and this is true in particular where the level of networking is high. As long as proprietary de facto standards continue to play an essential role, there is a possibility that competition will disappear…In th[is] case the consumer no longer has the choice of which ICT products or ICT services they use because the ICT market tends to adopt a ‘winner-takes-all’ structure. This is the case at present with software but it could spread to hardware on account of the close link between hardware and software in PvC, that is to say the providers will attempt to sell software licences in a ‘bundle’ with hardware products” (boldfaced emphasis added). 11
“…In the procurement of ICT products (both material goods and services), regard should be had for energy efficiency, useful life, waste disposal characteristics and ergonomics. In the Pervasive Computing age, it will be a major challenge to develop a long-term procurement policy despite short innovation cycles…The focus should not be the characteristics of the individual hardware product, but the systems to which the components procured are connected. The life cycle of the overall system should be assessed on the basis of ecological, social and economic criteria. For this purpose, we recommend that a check list be drawn up and that purchasing staff be given appropriate training…In economic terms, regard must be had above all to the increasing dependence on foreign manufacturers and licensers. Public procurement policy, with its sizeable volumes of demand, should not encourage the market dominance of individual, mainly foreign suppliers. Otherwise, in the long term, the ‘electronic nerve system’ of the state will be at the mercy of the success of individual lines of technology, proprietary standards and pricing policy of a few dominant suppliers. These risks can be minimised by giving preference to open, product-independent standards, because only these allow fair competition in the ICT sector in the long term, and the use of open source software” (boldfaced emphasis added). 12
France should increase the use of Open Source software. That is one many recommendations offered by an economic commission Attali headed by French economist and policy adviser Jacques Attali.
As in the United States, the French government should secondly consider tax benefits to stimulate Open Source development. The third recommendation is that France helps to establish international rules on interoperability between Open and closed source software.
Perhaps lacking a fuller understanding and/or appreciation for the relevance of the deeper philosophical and ethical (sustainable development-related) underpinnings of Europe's application of the Precautionary Principle to the ICT sector, industry has focused mostly on the technical standards and intellectual property issues, which form only a part of those underpinnings.
At least as far back as 2003, concerted efforts have been made to encourage the broader use of non-proprietary ‘open’ standards in lieu of proprietary standards employed in the ICT sector, which is consistent with applying the Precautionary Principle to the ICT sector. Indeed, in a paper published by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the author claims the following:
“The OpenURL situation has made it clear that NISO needs to develop a patent policy explicitly governing tolerance for encumbered technologies and procedures for disclosure. Because of the extended work of the W3C Patent Policy Working Group, much of the recent discussion about standards organizations and patents has focused on the relative merits of RAND versus royalty-free licensing. The debate has shown a clear and strong preference for royalty-free terms, and may in time cause a re-evaluation of the RAND-based patent policies of other standards organizations. However, because NISO is an ANSI-accredited standards developer, NISO’s policy will have to be consistent with ANSI’s own policy which currently allows patented technologies on both royalty-free and RAND terms. There are other lessons that can be learned from the recent experience of the W3C, beyond the opposition to RAND. It is striking that the W3C debate did not focus on the appropriateness of including patented technologies in standards. Even in organizations with a ‘Tao of unencumbrance’, the idea that the best technology for a standard may at times be a patented technology appears to be widely accepted.
…NISO Patent Update
On September 25, 2003, the NISO Board of Directors unanimously approved a NISO Patent Policy. NISO’s policy statement beings: ‘To promote the widest adoption and use of NISO standards, NISO seeks to develop and promote standards that avoid embedded patents whenever possible’. The Policy acknowledges that this may not always be possible. If a patent claim is essential for implementation of a NISO standard then NISO would seek to assure that a free license would be offered, or that the patent holder would not enforce the patent, or that a license would be made available under reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. NISO policy is consistent with ANSI requirements” (emphasis added). 13
These ongoing efforts were subsequently acknowledged and the arguments seemingly embraced by a consultant to the SMEs Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO):
“During the development of technical standards, participants may be required to draw the attention of the committee to the fact that there may be one or more ‘essential patent(s)’ that are needed for meeting the standard, i.e. it would be impossible for someone to comply with the standard without employing the technology protected by the patent(s). So the permission of the patent-holder would be needed and that could mean signing a license agreement and paying royalties to the patent holder. Obviously, it would not be very productive to adopt a standard if an IPR holder can block the implementation of that standard by either refusing to grant a license or requiring such high royalties as to make it impossible for its dissemination and adoption as a standard…Many SDOs discourage the use of proprietary or patented technology in standards; they support it only in exceptional cases where justified by technical reasons. In such cases, the patent holder of a technology considered to be crucial for meeting the requirements of a standard may be contacted by the technical committee of an SDO and asked whether the patent holder would agree to negotiate licenses with users of such standards on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions (generally referred to as RAND terms and conditions). However, IPR policies of SDOs generally do not really explain as to what may be considered to be RAND terms and conditions. Some SDOs go beyond the RAND terms and conditions, requiring technologies to be licensed on a royalty-free basis (generally referred to as RF basis); for example, this is true of certain consortia dealing with Internet standards” (emphasis added). 14
At least one commentator has highlighted how the first European Interoperability Framework (v.1.0) specifically concerning the ICT sector endeavored to define the term ‘open standards’ in the context of European e-Government services in a manner that was consistent with the application of the Precautionary Principle but at odds with industry norms with respect to open standards.
“The IDA [European Interchange of Data between Administrations] and like definitions of open standards threaten well-established and highly effective norms and mechanisms that have succeeded for many years in fostering the development and widespread adoption of the best technical standards in the world. If any of these definitions were adopted, standards bodies that often are cited as examples of well-recognized “open standards” developers (such as CEN, ETSI, ISO, IEC, IETF, ITU, OMA, ECMA, OASIS, and those accredited by ANSI) would not qualify as open standards organizations, and hundreds of international standards that have been developed and widely deployed by these and other such leading standards organizations would not qualify as open standards. In addition, because the mandatory royalty-free, unfettered sublicensing, and ‘no other re-use constraints’ conditions of these definitions fail to adequately accommodate the rights and interests of patent holders, they would discourage key technology contributions to the standards development process and thereby impede innovation and interoperability. Finally, these proposed definitions would limit the universe of ‘open’ standards available to European and other governments in their procurement decisions and thereby further derail technological innovation and interoperability going forward” (emphasis added). 15
Similar assessments of the impact of the effective application of the Precautionary Principle to the ICT sector were made by other commentators. For example, according to one commentator, a former legal adviser to the Business Software Alliance,
“The requirement that a standard be ‘irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis’ [and] . …that standards licenses be ‘irrevocable’ and impose no constraints on ‘re-use’ of the standard is inconsistent with the licensing policies of every major standards organization, including those that require royalty-free licensing…BSA also has concerns with statements in the EIF regarding open-source software” (emphasis added). 16
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Endnotes
Endnotes
1. See Claudia Som, et al., The Precautionary Principle in the Information Society – Impacts of Pervasive Computing on Health and the Environment, 10 Human & Ecological Risk Assessment, 787–99 (2004). “We advocate precautionary measures directed towards pervasive applications of ICT (Pervasive Computing) because of their inestimable potential impacts on society.” Id. at 787, 796.
2. See Lorenz Hilty, Siegfried Behrendt, Mathias Binswanger, Arend Brunink, Lorenz Erdmann, Jürg Fröhlich, Andreas Köhler, Niels Kuster, Claudia Som, Felix Würtenbergerat, The Precautionary Principle in the Information Society - Effects of Pervasive Computing on Health and Environment, European Parliament Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the Union, Working Paper STOA 125 EN 08-2004 (Second Revised Edition 2005) p. 17, at: http://www.empa.ch/plugin/template/empa/*/34042 .
3. Id., at p. 32.
4. Id., at p. 36.
5. Id., at p. 37.
6. Id., at p. 40.
7. Id., at p. 42.
8. Id., at pp. 43-44.
9. Id., at p. 49.
10. Id., at pp. 50-51.
11. Id., at pp. 252-253.
12. Id., at pp. 269-270.
13. See Priscilla Caplan, Patents and Open Standards, 14 Information Standards Quarterly No. 4 (Oct. 2003); National Information Standards Organization (NISO) (2003), at pp. 7, 9 at: http://www.niso.org/publications/white_papers/Patents_Caplan.pdf .
14. See Esteban Burrone, WIPO, Standards, Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and Standards-Setting Process, http://www.wipo.org/sme/en/documents/ip_standards.htm .
15. See Nicos L. Tsilas, The Threat to Innovation, Interoperability, and Government Procurement Options From Recently Proposed Definitions of ‘Open Standards’, 10 International Journal of Communications Law & Policy 8, 2, 12 (2005), at: http://www.ijclp.org/10_2005/pdf/ijclp_08_10_2005.pdf .
16. See Benoît Müller, The European Interoperability Framework: An Industry Perspective, Business Software Alliance (Dec. 2005) at pp. 6-8, http://www.politech-institute.org/review/articles/MULLER_Benoit_volume_3.pdf .
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http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-government-economic-commission-recommends-open
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http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-government-economic-commission-recommends-open
FR: Government economic commission recommends Open Source
France should increase the use of Open Source software. That is one many recommendations offered by an economic commission Attali headed by French economist and policy adviser Jacques Attali.
"Increase competition between commercial and Open Source software", is the 58th recommendation of Attali's commission. The policy advisers estimate that Open Source software equals some 131.000 man-year of work, half of which is donated by European developers and represents billions of Euro in investment. "Using Open Source software helps companies to cut costs for research and development, by an average of 36 per cent. Open Source has a market of only 2 percent, though it is growing by 40 percent annually, estimates the commission.
The Attali report lists three recommendations. First, competition between the two types of software should be increased in bidding for new IT projects, including public projects. As a result in 2012 at least 20 percent of all applications developed for or installed by the public sector should be Open Source.
As in the United States, the French government should secondly consider tax benefits to stimulate Open Source development. The third recommendation is that France helps to establish international rules on interoperability between Open and closed source software.
The recommendations were criticised by the French association of software publishers, Afdel. According to a new report by Le Monde Informatique, the association said that the commission Attali turned its back on innovation by recommending Open Source. Afdel fears commercial software companies will be excluded from public IT projects. "The commission Attali surprisingly favours a strategy to cut costs, instead of favouring the growth of an industry that employs 60,000 people", Le Monde Informatique quotes the chairman of Afdel, Patrick Bertrand, chief executive of the management software development company Cegid.
Attali's commission was set up this summer up by France's president Nicolas Sarkozy. The commission published its report titled '300 Decisions for Changing France' on January 23.
© European Communities 2008
