EC IT Head Hits Back At ‘Proprietary Software’ Claim

The man in charge of the European Commission’s directorate of informatics has denied a charge that the huge software deal signed by the EC favours proprietary software suppliers at the expense of the open source community.

Francisco Garcia-Moran, the director-general for Informatics, otherwise known as DIGIT (an independent body that seeks to promote the effective use of IT within the EC), dismissed the claim made last week by the president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).

The furore began after the European Commission signed its largest ever software deal worth a staggering €189 million (£158m) in early December. The six-year deal called SACHA II (Software Acquisition Channel) was signed with a Netherlands-based supplier, PC Ware.

Rough Deal?

However, the deal immediately attracted the wrath of open source pressure group FSFE, which labelled the European Commission’s software contract a “rough deal for Europe”.

Karsten Gerloff, the President of FSFE wrote that the decision to spend €189 million on proprietary software over the next six years was “in direct contradiction to its own decisions and guidelines.”

“This is a rough deal for Europe,” wrote Gerloff. “Instead of coming up with a strategy to take advantage of free software and become independent from vendors, the Commission is digging itself deeper into the vendor lock-in hole.”

Gerloff stated that last week’s EC contract went against the stated intentions of several Commission documents. European procurement rules state that public sector buying practices should “avoid discrimination and open up public procurement to competition.”

“European citizens expect the Commission to keep its costs low, to spend their tax money in ways that promote Europe’s development, and to stick to its own policies,” said Gerloff. “This behaviour by DIGIT (Directorate General for Informatics – i.e. Francisco Garcia-Moran) fails Europeans on all three counts. It damages the Commission’s credibility.”

DIGIT Response

But Francisco Garcia-Moran hit back at FSFE’s claims. In a letter sent last week and forwarded to eWEEK Europe UK, Garcia-Moran told FSFE president Karsten Gerloff that the contract had been an open tender, and that Gerloff’s statement had been “totally misleading” and contained “major omissions”, as the EU part of the SACHA II contract was only for €67.4 million (£56 million).

“You argue that the Commission should have come up with a strategy to take advantage of free software. I take this opportunity to inform you that the Commission has actually had an OSS strategy since 2001,” wrote Garcia-Moran.

He then cited examples of the use of open source software by the European Commission, including the use of 250 open source products, the operation of 350 Linux servers, as well as 800 open source web servers.

“I can only regret that you did not cross-check your sources prior to issuing the press release,” wrote Garcia-Moran.

Garcia-Moran also denied that there was a conflict of interest because DIGIT had signed multimillion-euro proprietary software deals while drafting the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), the controversial specification of open standards opposed by proprietary software suppliers.

The Commission has vowed to adopt the EIF before the end of the year.

In October, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) accused the Business Software Alliance (BSA) of pressuring the European Commission (EC) to abandon its support for open standards.

In June, Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice-president for the Digital Agenda, called on governments to embrace open standards, after criticising the waste and lock-in associated with some proprietary technologies.