How Michigan can Leverage Open Source

Yes, I said Leverage- I sound like a big fancy CIO, don’t I?:)

I have been a Michigan resident for 26 of my 27 years. I left Michigan for 18 months to take some contract work in DC- My wife and I weren’t happy with the area and moved back first chance we could. Unfortunately for us, the company that hired me started to flounder and laid me off after 5 months. After a few nerve-racking months, I found a job on the other side of the state and had to move. I’ve been here for 3 months now and have had time to reflect on the situation.

What does this have to do with open source?

Well, I think open source could be the thing to jump-start our Economy. Michigan is grasping at a dying auto industry, trying to stay afloat. We need to move on. They’re never going to retain their former glory- that’s not part of their business plan. Michigan has hundreds of well educated individuals who are leaving due to the lack of jobs- we need to focus on that. Our colleges are pumping out graduates who immediately leave the state after getting their paper. Think about all the good schools we have- U of M, MSU, Central, Eastern, Western, Oakland and GVSU- this isn’t even counting the religious schools like Calvin, Aquinas and Hope. We need to keep these guys from grabbing their degrees and running.

So how do we do that? We need to create an environment where small businesses can take off (Apple started with some guys in a garage, Walmart started in BFE, Arkansas)- I’m not a finance whiz or anything, but I think small business tax cuts would be a right step, but I’ll defer that argument for an economist to have. What I do know is right now the booming small business is Technology, which coincidentally is something that graduating college students are skilled at. Grand Rapids alone has one of the best medical setups in the country on Healthcare Hill with several hospitals, MSU’s medical school, GVSU’s medical school, Van Andel [Cancer Research] Institute, etc. Plenty of room for Biotechnology to take hold.

So how will Open Source software help Michigan? What makes it different than regular commercial software?

1) Low barrier of entry. The barrier of entry is much lower when using open source products- starting costs are low, and you get the benefit of “standing on the shoulders of giants”. A company could invest a moderate amount of effort extending and repackaging existing Open source software and produce an excellent product in a relatively short amount of time. Another advantage is this would also let us move towards a service-based economy for the rest of the country. Once Michigan is established as a bastion for open source, we well have an influx of skilled workers looking to get away from the unrealistic housing prices of DC and Silicon Valley.

2) lower software costs- it’s common for companies to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on software they really don’t need. Does the receptionist *really* need Windows 2003 with Microsoft Office? Does your web developer *need* the $500 Photoshop when Gimp can take care of 90% of it’s functionality?

3) many countries are standardizing on the Open Document Format, something Microsoft helped develop, but suddenly refused to support when they found out they couldn’t patent it. Your data belongs to you, and for the State of Michigan, the data belongs to the people. It shouldn’t be locked up in proprietary format without open specifications. I should not require purchasing expensive software to fill out a form and send it back to the state, nor be completely locked out because I don’t run a Microsoft or Apple operating system. Other countries, states and government departments are starting to realize this and are beginning to legislate that state documents be kept in either an open format or an open platform. Michigan should jump on this band wagon like Brazil, Peru, Spain, Germany, Croatia, the NSA, the DOD, Indiana schools, California schools, the state of Mass, and Texas and Minnesota. Even google is getting in on the act. Oh, and don’t forget that the laptop for every child project is running on opensource software.

I heard on the radio that Michigan lost 300,000+ jobs last year. One of the complaints I’ve heard about this suggestion is it doesn’t help the people who’ve lost their jobs- the blue collar workers in their 30’s and 40’s who feel they wouldn’t be able to keep up. For the most part, that’s true- IT is a young man’s game, there’s no denying that. I have friends who are in their early 30’s and have “senior” attached to their titles. The truth is, I don’t know how to help them and I don’t know that there is any way to help them. Manual labor has been replaced with robots or foreign labor that works for a fraction of what the average Michigan blue collar worker makes. Dwelling on past mistakes- allowing our workforce to stay compliant for 30+ years, will not make things better. The only advice I can give them is, if you don’t already know how to comfortably use a computer, learn now. There’s no shame in admitting you don’t know something. Perhaps something as simple as an A+ certification and starting a PC repair business might be something to try.

A point my friend shabbs brought up is “How do you make open source profitable to the degree that it can support a whole economy?” I think the best bet would be selling “services.” People don’t pay for Red Hat Enterprise, they pay for the support and security updates. IBM doesn’t make it’s money by selling shrink-wrapped boxes with CDs in it- they sell enterprise level support to mega corporations and governments. Transgaming sells a membership for Cedega (which lets you play windows games in linux), under one license, while giving back some of their work to the wine community under another. Yes, they all do technically charge for the software, but it’s the support that is their bread and butter. Our economy is now a services-based economy. You can make money with open source if you put your mind to it.

Another point to bring up is that once a decent IT community springs up, a decent pool of IT workers will appear. Closed-source companies will start moving in to take advantage of the low cost of living and educated workforce. While they’re more of a secondary benefit, they will support the economy and draw even more IT professionals in.

We need to do something, and if seriously think you have a better idea, lets hear it.