Republicans Don't Get Open Source

Here is another side of the story - The leftist governments in some of the Indian states think open source has something to do with socialism and they do a lot of hue and cry about using commercial software etc, which is also equally wrong. Your statement is absolutely right, which both the right and the left don't get - is that open source is politically neutral.

I disagree with the concept of political neutrality of open source software (OSS). Big money significantly affects politics throughout the world. It buys ads and markets products that compete against OSS. Thus, politics pushes people away from OSS and toward commercial products. For example, Microsoft succeeded in getting DeVry University to standardize in the summer of 2008 on Microsoft Office 2007 (MO), rather than on the OSS OpenOffice.org (OOo). That means the graduating classes will know nothing of OOo, and they will take their MO prejudice and OOo ignorance into the workplace, creating additional pressure to standardize on MO instead of OOo.

People don't care about OSS because it earns little revenue, too little to pay for a lot of marketing. Only personal greed will push people abandon Commercial software (like MO or Windows) in favor of OSS (like OOo or Linux).

Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot. Open Source software is generally free (although it costs to hire programmers to customize it). YOu have to pay for Micorsoft and get permission to customize it.