Morality and Pragmatism in Free Software and Open Source

As governments around the world search for an alternative to Microsoft software, the open source operating system Linux fi nds itself in a perfect position to take market share from Microsoft Windows. Governments in France, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom use Linux to encourage open standards, promote decentralized software development, provide improved security, and reduce software costs (Bloor, 2003). The Chinese government strongly supports Linux as its operating system of choice because Chinese experts have complete access to the source code and can examine it for security fl aws (Andrews, 2003). In Brazil, leftist activists gathered to promote the use of open source software (OSS) (Clendenning, 2005). There is a connection between the technological reasons for choosing open source software and the political ones. Many governments see open source as a way to promote a socialistic agenda in their choices of technology. Open source advocates, however, do not necessarily make these connections between the software development methods involved in open source and political movements of governments. There is evidence, however, that leaders in the open source movement have expressed their rationale for advocating opening the source code of software. The open source movement can trace its roots back to an alternate, still very active, software ABSTRACT