Whilst I would agree that legislation is far too draconian a step to take to ensure take-up of open source. There are many ways that governments can encourage the take-up of open source without legislation. The Japanese in the 1950s and 1960s targeted specific high value engineering markets. Up till very recently this strategy paid off very well for them. I could certainly see countries putting a similar effort into the acquisition of knowledge centered industries. The adoption of open source, whether through legislation or other less draconian means, would certainly fit such a strategy.
It is also interesting to speculate how having a pre-existing proprietary software industry will affect the take up of open source software. What if creating an open source hacker destroys one or more proprietary software engineering jobs? If I live in a country without a pre-existing proprietary software industry the chances are that this isn't going to concern you very much. But if you do have a proprietary software industry you may well take the view that there is little incentive to swap a proprietary software engineer for an open source hacker.
It occurs to me that this isn't a new problem. The US and UK had precisely the same problem with manufacturing post the 2nd World War. Both countries had old plants with entrenched working patterns. In Japan and Germany, on the other hand, both largely started from a clean slate. New plants were built and new working methods developed. Both, whilst now experiencing economic difficulties, are still the leaders in high value engineering.
The country with an utter hegemony in the software industry is the United States, nowhere else even comes close. The US has constraints upon its behaviour as a consequence of its hegemony that few other country have. It will be interesting to see how this affects take up of open source in the US generally, and in government in particular.
Jack Hughes
CTO, OPENXTRA Ltd.
http://www.openxtra.com/
