One area where open source makes a lot of sense is in government infrastructure. It lets governments avoid having everyone's data stuck in propriety formats and

One area where open source makes a lot of sense is in government infrastructure. It lets governments avoid having everyone's data stuck in propriety formats and then extorted by software companies for access later. The UK government, for example, has recently mandated a preference for open source: (http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240179643/Government-mandates-preference-for-open-source http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240179643/Government-man...) Unfortunately, governments are still getting caught in proprietary solutions. Here in New-Brunswick, Canada for example, the government has just chosen an officially sponsored electronic medical record system for the province. Unfortunately, they picked a proprietary SAAS system which means that if doctors signup, everyone's medical records will be uploaded to some private company's servers. The company charges $24 000 per doctor upfront plus $400 a month subscription for continued access with a price guarantee for only three years. After all our medical records have been converted to their proprietary format at a huge cost (not included in the $24000), this company will be in a position to charge whatever they want. The government gives incentives to doctors to signup to the proprietary system ($16000) and have given monopolistic exclusivity for at least three years to this system when it comes to connecting to hospital lab results. There is actually a good open source alternative developed in other Canadian provinces. The OSCAR open source EMR is quickly becoming the most popular system in those provinces. Support plans often costs less than $100/month (it would be free if you were a geeky doctor willing to install and support it yourself). Somehow, the vast marketing and sales budgets of proprietary companies compared to the more minimal OSS sales push was able to sway our government into giving a quasi monopoly to a costly proprietary system.