For a variety of policy reasons, governments throughout the world are now
adopting different legislative and administrative strategies that support the
development of open source software (OSS). Nonetheless, such policies
toward OSS are extremely controversial. In this book, Jyh-An Lee summarizes
governments' various legislative and administrative approaches to promote
OSS, and analyzes such trend from a global perspective. Lee elucidates numerous
economic, technical, political, and legal factors affecting governmental
policies toward OSS. The most fundamental argument of the book is
that, in lending its support to OSS, the difference between a government user
and a business user is that the government should take into account society's
long-term interests, not merely its own interests as a consumer. The book is
addressed to professionals, such as policymakers, lawyers, business consultants,
software managers, and scholars in relevant fields.