Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), urges governments and public administration to exclusively use Open Source software.
Stallman spoke this Monday at a lecture in Berlin, Germany, at the invitation of the Newthinking store and netzpolitik.org, a webblog. According to Heise.de, a German IT news site, Stallman said that no government committed to the common good and to a free society can never use proprietary software. "The governments' IT landscape must not fall into private hands."
Especially schools should exclusively use Open Source software, Stallman said. According to the Heise article, Stallman referred to a recent meeting of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. He criticised the widespread practice of proprietary software vendors to offer their hard- and software free of charge to schools. According to Heise, Stallman said that the companies want to create dependence on their application, and compared this with drug dealing: "The first shot is always free."
The FSF founder also stressed the importance of Open Source software for the economy, as it lessens the risk of vendor lock-in. "Free software means a free services market" Heise quotes Stallman. "What an irony that proprietary firms accuse us of being communists, while we are offering a free market and they do not?"
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Heise.de news article (German)