ACT (Free Software) in the World

Latin American countries

As of 2012, Latin American countries are uniting efforts in the development of the ACT: in 2007, the Iberoamerican Network on Technological Cooperation and Libre/Free Knowledge organization was created, the purpose of which is to interstate the exchange of experience in such areas as electronic government, electronic medicine and education, electronic business, R&D and the development of computer literacy in the field of the ACT.

• Argentina: 92% of public authorities (SWG) use ACT, 67% plan to increase the use of ACT;

• Venezuela: in 2004, a decree was adopted on the mandatory use of ACT in the JLG and for 2012 the ACT is used in more than 90% of JLG; The Government supports the National Repository (Repositorio Nacional de Aplicaciones);

• Brazil: 96% of state institutions use ACT, 61% - plans to replace all their proprietary software with ACT. The ACT Foundation for the OGV Portal de Software Publico Brasiliero operates; SGUs are obliged to choose software from it; If the JLG develops a new software, it is placed in this fund;

European Union

As of mid-2012:

• The ACT repository for SWG works in the EU countries, combining the ACT repositories of different EU countries;
• developed a special free license European Union Public Licence;
• Most EU countries recommend that public authorities use ACT and Open Document Formats (ODFs).

European health institutions (more than 20 thousand organizations) use the ACT from the specialized Connect repository and take part in its development.

USA

The US Department of Defense creates for itself OS and applications according to the free software development model (part of the software is free, part is distributed freely only among partner organizations), June 2012^[1].

Read about the use of the ACT in the US public sector in a separate article on the link.

Great Britain

The new UK government IT strategy (2012) relies on open source software. The strategy contains an action plan for the next two years, of which most are to be implemented in the coming year.

Global and local trends affecting the spread of ACT

The introduction of a free alternative to proprietary software in the field of server IT infrastructure has led customer companies to gradually reduce costs under this IT budget item, transferring investments in the field of application software and services (including custom development services based on ACT, implementation and support). This trend in recent years has forced many IT companies to redefine their business models to varying degrees, reducing their focus on selling software products and strengthening consulting and service lines. In the future, this trend is likely to increase, spreading from the infrastructure software segment to business applications. The prerequisites for this are the emergence of stable projects for the development of applied ACT, and indirect evidence that we can observe for two years now the entry into the ACT market of suppliers of proprietary business systems, such as Oracle.

Both in the West and in Russia, there is a tendency to advance the development of ACT in business compared to state organizations. Business responds more quickly to emerging cost-cutting opportunities and is less bound by bureaucratic procedures and regulations, including implementation decisions. In addition, in most markets, the payment of IT specialists in business is higher than in the public sector, which allows commercial structures to hire more qualified specialists who are better guided in the new opportunities on the market. Recently, when a number of Governments adopt public support programmes for the ACT, this imbalance in individual markets has diminished. However, in the public sector, the proliferation of ACT will be constrained until the ACT community or solution providers achieve a certain level of standardization of ACT technologies. The development of open standards, in particular, document standards and activities on their wide adoption in the field of IT are another trend that is gaining momentum at present and in the near future will have a significant impact on the distribution of ACT, including in the public sector.

The commercial promotion of the ACT will remain weaker compared to proprietary counterparts, partly due to the basic ideology of the ACT mentioned above, but more so because it will not be the ACT products that are available for free, but rather their implementation and support services that will be promoted to the market. Thus, in the future of B2B, the ACT market will acquire features that bring it closer to the professional services and management consulting markets, in which the concept of a product is blurred, or, in other words, the product is intelligence and expertise of certain teams of specialists.

The features specific to Russia that restrain the spread of the ACT are the large-scale spread of computer piracy, powerful lobbying for the use of proprietary software by manufacturers and weak (until recently) state support for the ACT.

The fight against piracy, carried out over the past decade in a sluggish regime mainly by the producers themselves, has gained a little more importance at the state level only in the last two to three years, amid the advocated rapprochement with the European community, discussion of WTO accession and related issues of intellectual property protection. The result of the aggravation of this struggle and the connection of law enforcement agencies to it was, in particular, the surge of mass interest in the ACT mentioned above after the Ponosov case. The trial itself is only an episode that cannot seriously and long-term affect the spread of the ACT, but while maintaining the emerging trend towards tougher protection of intellectual rights in Russia, free alternatives to proprietary software will undoubtedly be mastered more and more widely.

Another important trend that has emerged in Russia over the past two years is the beginning of legislative activities in the field of ACT and the development of related concepts and projects in sectoral departments. Unlike a number of other countries, which have been implementing centralized programs for many years, the first Russian document related to this area was prepared only in 2008 (see above). Given the length of the procedures for approving such state programs, it can be assumed that full state support for the ACT in Russia should not be expected in the near future, but the very fact of the state's appeal to this topic is an important signal for many departmental institutions. From this point of view, conducting tenders for the supply of ACT to schools and implemented pilot projects in education can in the long term play a very important role in the dissemination of ACT, and not only in the public sector.

See also

• ACT (Free Software) in Russia

Notes