The Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) and IBM held a joint business event that tackled the developments unfolding in the world of open source software (OSS). The event, targeted for both public and private sectors, attracted a large number of attendees from government ministries, local industry players and multinationals.

MITA chairman Claudio Grech opened the event by saying that the government's support to OSS is crucial for the development of the right eco-system in which OSS can proliferate. Mr Grech said that MITA has already taken two major steps in this regard: "We have set up the government of Malta open source end user group which aims at raising awareness and knowledge of OSS and we have also published a vision document - the Open Source Vision white paper – which provides a set of high level principles intended to facilitate the accelerated, non-intrusive adoption of OSS within the government".

IBM’s government programmes executive Jonathan Sage gave two key presentations on the adoption of OSS and on EU policy with regard to OSS and open standards. He laid stress on the importance of OSS in the educational sector: “It is important that from a young age, students are not locked to a particular technology or suite of products, but are allowed to explore and use various proprietary and non-proprietary products both at school and at home,” he said. Curricula taught in schools should reflect the software that is available, including open source software and during their procurement, governments should not close their doors to OSS, OSS should be considered on-par with proprietary software.

A panel discussion touched upon several topics, including public procurement. MITA chief technology officer Godwin Caruana said that procurement decisions must always be taken in a context – one cannot solely look at acquisition costs, one must also capitalise on past investments and consider operation and technical factors.

Peter Delia, a director of Ricston, said the government is a major buyer of ICT products and solutions and therefore if a level playing field between proprietary software and OSS is adopted, there will be value for OSS to grow further. Jonathan Camilleri Bowman, managing director of 2i said that from a business point of view, what is crucial is meeting customers’ needs irrespective of whether proprietary or open source software is used.