The Swiss Canton of Bern has decided to switch to Open Justitia, a management system for legal documents, developed as open source by the country's Federal Court. The canton procured support for the installing and maintaining the software from a Swiss IT service provider. One competitor disputes the contract. The firm, whose offer of its own proprietary alternative was turned down, is rallying for political support.
The firm, Weblaw, has been protesting against Open Justitia since 2011. That year the company tried in vain to halt the publication as open source of Open Justitia. It asked the Swiss parliament to intervene, saying the Federal Court was acting as a commercial IT vendor. The parliament sided with the open source project, deciding that the software, developed since 2006, was not comparable and that making the code freely available to others as open source does not mean that the court is acting as a commercial software vendor.
The firm since then has been losing customers, Swiss newspaper Der Bund reported last Saturday. It quotes one of the owners, who says the company has had to lay-off staff and has lost around 1.5 million Swiss francs in sales (about 1,2 million euro). Repeating its arguments, Weblaw is getting support from politicians, according to Der Bund. A national Swiss People's Party politician wants to stop the Federal Court and the newspaper reports that a politician for the Bern City party is angry about the threat to jobs.
Der Bund quotes also Swiss People's Party Canton council member Christoph Neuhaus, who says the move to the open source software will save the canton 200,000 Swiss francs (about 162,000 euro) purchasing costs and some 75,000 CHF (about 61,000 euro) in annual recurring licence costs.
Hints
Other politicians defend the move to free and open source. The Swiss open source advocacy group ch/open published a press release on Sunday, quoting two members of the Bern Canton council. Social Democrat Councillor Giovanna Battagliero: "The use of Open Justitia saves the Canton tax payers hundreds of thousands of francs. The open source development model is the best suited for authorities to jointly develop software and, by doing so, reduce spending." The Evangelical People's Party Councillor Marc Jost: "If public administrations would work together and coordinate their ICT solutions, much money could be saved."
Ch/open also points to an article published in October last year by the IT trade publication Green Byte, alleging that Weblaw is manipulating public opinion with false claims. According to Green Byte, the company has been losing contracts to competitors that offer services based on the open source document management service.
It is not known which IT company won the bid to supply services to the Bern Canton.
More information:
Der Bund news item (in German)
Green Byte news item (in German)
Answer of the Federal Council to the Swiss Federal Assembly (in German)
Press release by ch/open (in German)
Joinup news item