Oracle ha publicado un informe donde presenta al software libre desde un punto de vista muy negativo. Este informe, dirigido al departamento de defensa de Estados Unidos, afirma que el no analizar con detenimiento la implementación del software libre puede traer consecuencias catastróficas. Para justificar estas afirmaciones se basan en un caso de estudio consistente en el desarrollo de un registro electrónico de salud en el año 2009. El resumen, al menos desde el punto de vista de Oracle, de este caso de estudio es:
The Department of Defense and Veteran’s Administration use separate medical databases that can neither translate nor communicate their data in a functional way. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 directed the departments to develop a single electronic health record system by 2009. They pushed that scheduled date of completion to 2017 after the plan hit a number of management, oversight, and planning snags.
Five years and nearly $12 billion later, the IPO has little to show for its efforts. The soaring costs of this failed project have led both departments to rethink their approach to achieving EHR interoperability, two top VA officials told members of Congress. Former VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker, a long-time proponent of open source software, said the VA now plans to use an integrator to combine multiple pieces of commercial software—such as the pharmacy system—but not for the open source software packages. Baker made a spirited defense of the VA’s plan to save money and improve its own EHR system through an open source EHR improvement effort. That led to a revision of the iEHR plan, now estimated at $16 billion.
Desde mi punto de vista, Oracle pretende extrapolar una curva a partir de un punto. Todos sabemos que un proyecto de software puede ir terriblemente mal por múltiples motivos diferentes de la tecnología que se ha usado para llevar a cabo el proyecto. E incluso aunque en este caso particular la culpa hubiese sido de la tecnología, esto no quiere decir que nunca las opciones software libre sean adecuadas para el problema.
Algunas otras joyas del informe son:
The “open source versus free software” debate brings the issue of licensing terms and conditions into sharp focus. If you are concerned with vendor lock-in, and you see open source solutions as a means of “owning” the code you want to run, a quick glance at the Open Source Initiative (OSI) can be daunting. Nearly 100 licensing regimes have gone through the license approval process. Open source is not free, nor is it easy to understand the strict legal terms and conditions associated with its use.
La conclusión final del informe viene a ser:
Today, just about every commercial software vendor leverages open source software. Many of these vendors are the primary contributors to major open source projects. In fact, it is precisely their level of expertise and rigor that has helped make open source what it is today. The skill required to successfully and economically blend source code into a commercially viable product is relatively scarce. It should not be done directly at government expense.
Government-sponsored community development approaches to software creation lack the financial incentivesof commercial companies to produce low-defect, well-documented code and are not subject to the same market pressure at the software code level. Oracle helps ensure that open source software fits well within the surrounding infrastructure and provides a route to enterprise grade production.
Entiendo que esto es un documento de puro marketing que intenta vender productos de Oracle. Pero me parece muy rastrero el atacar el software libre de este modo. Y más cuando la propia compañía está involucrada en tantos proyectos de software libre. Con esta actitud no es de extrañar todos los problemas que Oracle ha tenido con sus proyectos de software libre (Hudson, OpenSolaris, OpenOffice...).
¿Qué opináis vosotros acerca de este informe de Oracle?