free openSS

4 ❘ FREE/OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: LOCALIZATIONLanguages that are nationally important but financially unfeasible can be used.Disadvantages of Proprietary SoftwareExpensive to license and maintain.Dominated by the English language.Controlled by foreign corporations.Dependent on proprietary or closed standards.Has little or no local support.The high cost of the software leads to illegal copying of the software.The local software industry is not developed.Software cannot be localized or modified.FOSS is generally much more secure than proprietary or closed source software. In the words of PeruvianCongressman Villanueva, “To guarantee national security, the State must be able to rely on systems withoutelements controlled from a distance. Systems with open source code allow the State and citizens toinspect the code themselves and check for back doors and spyware.” 2Certainly, in an uncertain and sometimes dangerous world, few governments can afford to risk theirinformation infrastructure security by relying on the goodwill of a secretive organization (such as acommercial software company) that they cannot control.2‘The OSS advocacy report: Peruvian Congressman Responds to Microsoft’, March 10, 2002; available from www.studioforrecording.org/mt/Pubdomain_Bread/archivist/000013.html