El uso del software libre en las administraciones públicas de la UE

31Para Starr, Internet permite convertir en auténticamente público loque antes tan sólo lo era nominalmente. Uno de los sectores que másse puede beneficiar de esta posibilidad son los servicios públicos deinformación, un objetivo que ya estaba en el NII:The single most important goal of online government publication ought to beimproving the transparency of the state. At the very least, laws and regulations, courtdecisions, public budgets, the minutes of public meetings--all such documents shouldnow be freely accessible online. Just as we have legal requirements for open publicmeetings and freedom of information requirements for the disclosure of governmentfiles, so we need to move beyond desultory experiments and codify requirements foronline dissemination (with suitable exceptions for individually identifiableinformation, such as motor vehicle records) (Starr 2000).Otro de los ámbitos de intervención gubernamental radica en ladefensa de ese espacio común electrónico de los riesgos que puedeimplicar el desarrollo paralelo de un espacio comercial en Internet:At the same time, the commercial development of the Internet has generatedproblems that seem unlikely to be solved without government regulation and, indeed,without international treaties. Privacy has been the leading casualty. CommercialWeb sites have such strong interests in data about their visitors' surfing habits andpersonal characteristics that they are unlikely to desist on their own from the abusesthat have become rampant. Individual Web sites may post their privacy policies, butit is implausible to expect visitors to check the fine print--this is what we hiregovernments to do. While libertarians worry about governmental excesses, they oftenseem blind to the risks of private concentrations of power (Starr 2000).Pero el punto fuerte de la posición de Starr es que relacionadirectamente la transparencia política con la transparenciatecnológica, y lo hace en un sentido amplio, social:I suggested earlier that the new technology can improve the transparency ofgovernment, but the pursuit of transparency should be seen as a more general goal.Open-source software shows the power of transparency--of opening up knowledge towide access and participation. Before the Internet took off, there were manycompeting proprietary online networks: Why did the software for the Internettriumph over others that had received far greater investment? Open-sourcedevelopment of the Internet as a public good produced faster innovation and growthin the network, which consequently became more valuable because it connected somany more people. The open-source approach also encourages trust and allowscontributions from unknown, creative people. The electronic commons worksbecause its resources are not readily depleted as use increases--in fact, its valuegrows the wider it extends (Starr 2000).Starr recupera como base de su argumentación la vinculación entreun conocimiento compartido y un éxito tecnológico que se dio en losinicios de Internet, y extiende el argumento a la transparenciatecnológica que está vinculada a la transparencia política: