Constitutional affairs legal affairs

Workshop: Legal aspects of free and open source software 
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3.3.3 
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) studies and evaluation 
Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) is a term often cited in relation to software purchases. 
However, there are several different methodologies of computing TCO, and despite the 
word “total” present in the acronym, few studies include all the long-term costs involved in 
software purchases, such as the costs of required regular upgrades, or the exit cost of 
migrating to another software. It is therefore difficult to use TCO studies, or even compare 
them.  
Furthermore, such studies rarely evaluate anything other than quantifiable costs; the 
benefits of flexibility, independence and transparency, essential to a public organisation, 
may be qualitative and hard to quantify. Thus, it is advisable to analyse costs and benefits 
for the needs of the specific public organisation concerned, over the long term, rather than 
relying on published TCO studies. In particular, if an agency plans to issue a public tender 
for a solution that will be used for a limited duration of time, it should consider the costs of 
being able to migrate to a different solution when that duration is complete. Such costs of 
migration are likely to be higher when the initial solution is proprietary.  
3.4 
Download or purchase? 
Procurement regulations, especially European Directive 2004/18/EC, define when the 
acquisition of anything, including software, must be put through a public contract, i.e. a 
formal procurement process such as a call for tenders. As the legal analysis in the Dutch 
Government's guideline, The acquisition of (open-source) software, notes, the acquisition of 
open source software may not in itself require a call for tenders. This is true especially 
when this software can be acquired free of charge, i.e. not only free of the licence fee, but 
also free of any compulsory fees such as for manuals, media or services.  
Thus, downloading open source software from Internet repositories free of charge is a 
means of acquiring software that does not require a public contract. This is true even if the 
acquiring agency wishes to, in the future, separately acquire paid services or support. For 
such paid services, of course, a public contract process is required. Regulations do not 
require that the acquisition of software and services be treated as a single acquisition 
(which would have to be put out to tender), if the software itself can be acquired free of 
charge, and if this acquisition is independent of and does not require those services. 
Downloading software free of charge  Purchasing software  
Large emphasis on market research 
Large emphasis on specification  
Knowledge to search for the appropriate 
software to acquire (download) is 
required by the agency 
Bidders provide some of the knowledge, though 
preparing the tender specifications may also 
require considerable knowledge 
Services must be tendered separately 
Software and services can be included in the 
same tender 
 
4  DOWNLOADING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE 
When the public agency has decided that open source requirements are particularly 
important for a specific software acquisition case, the process described in this section can 
be followed. This process would end in the agency downloading open source software itself, 
with no fee paid whatsoever. Separately, commercially provided services and support, if 
required, may be acquired by publishing calls for tender. Note that this process can be 
abandoned at any point - for instance, if the software cannot be found easily, or evaluated, 
or once downloaded is found unsuitable for any reason. At that point, the other approach 

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Policy Department C: Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs 
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described in the next section can be followed, namely, publishing a call for tender for open 
source software. 
Furthermore, the author recommends the method of downloading open source software as 
part of the acquisition process: downloading software comes after all the steps described 
above, i.e. the determination of requirements, and is simply an alternative to the step of 
publishing a tender for the supply of software. It is not proposed here as an alternative to 
the process of managed, well justified and monitored software acquisition. 
4.1 Sources 
of 
software 
Open source software can be redistributed by anyone, so there are naturally many sources 
for download for most open source applications from the Internet. A number of issues need 
to be taken into account. Although these are not  very  different  from  issues  that  must  be 
considered while selecting proprietary software, it is worth reiterating them. 
4.1.1 Community 
& 
language 
While selecting proprietary software, it is useful to get to know about the vendor and 
support network around the software. Although the evaluation of tenders is based on the 
documents provided with bids, public agencies may already be aware of solutions available 
on the market thanks to interaction with vendors, reviewing press articles, trade 
magazines, analysts' reports etc. For open source software, the process of "getting to 
know" is similar, except that it can be more useful to interact with the community behind a 
particular open source software application, instead of a particular vendor. As open source 
software applications can be modified and redistributed, each typically has a community 
behind it, made of different individuals, companies and other institutions - perhaps even 
public agencies - providing modifications to the software, service and support.  
Such a community of users and developers often interacts, and provides some level of 
mutual support free of charge. Indeed, one of the goals of the EU Open Source Observatory 
and Repository (OSOR) was to foster such a community for open source software of 
particular relevance to the European public sector. Similar collaborative platforms for open 
source software in the European public sector already play this role in countries such as 
France, Italy, Spain, and Sweden among others. 
Open source software is particularly suited to multi-lingual environments, as the freedom to 
modify and redistribute the software makes it easy for people who speak a particular 
language to freely add support for it. It is useful to investigate the extent of technical 
support available for local language versions of the software, as there is often considerable 
technical support available from user/developer communities. 
Finally, there are local support groups for many open source software applications, and it is 
useful to identify them. 
4.1.2 
Support & reliability 
Open source software, like any software, varies in the level of support available and in the 
software's reliability. For open source software in particular, communities can provide a 
fairly high level of support free of charge. This may not be a practical option for any but the 
smallest public agencies (or, at the other end, larger agencies with significant in-house IT 
skills). However, this does mean that the software can be downloaded and tested, with the 
help if required of the supporting communities, before any decision is made on whether or 
not to deploy it (and perhaps acquire commercial support services).  
For many open source software applications, having free support via the community is an 
order of magnitude quicker and more effective than support by a remote supplier. Also, the 
community can provide updates to software, making error corrections much quicker than is 
the case for most proprietary software applications. Indeed, even commercial open source 
support providers often rely on this free community support, combined with their in-house 
expertise. 

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