Unexpectedly the pioneers of Open Source, North America and Europe are lagging behind while Emerging Markets, such as Brazil and South Africa take the lead in the utilization of Open Source technology, thus saving them a great deal of money.

"Europe and North American are behind in the Open Source Movement," said Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems.

Although, North America has been slow to adopt Open Source software in the government, the Obama Administration is moving toward Open Source and Sun Microsystems is supportive of this move, as explained by Phipps.

Brazil is using Open Source technology in parts of their infrastructure. "The reason they did that was, according to Gilberto Gil, their Minister of Culture, was a matter of sovereignty for the country," said Phipps.

Phipps continued that the Brazilian Government has been able to save money by hiring local developers to work on the shared code that is generated by programmers from around the world by the Open Source Community. This allows them to customize and improve upon the software in their own backyard. Thus, they have seen a huge growth in the Brazilian economy.

South Africa is also taking the initiative of incorporating Open Source into their government, especially for education. Phipps explained that they use the "Open Document Format" as their standard, thus freeing the government departments to purchase software more smartly, rather than relying on one supplier. South Africa is saving money with Open Source thus giving them the leverage needed to negotiate with suppliers.

"And more importantly," said Phipps, "they've [South Africa] been able to lubricate the flow of information around government, and with foreign governments, as well."

Phipps defined Open Source technology, "collaboratively created by communities around the world of individual developers often working for companies that have got a need for the software or the technology. And rather than going to a big corporation to have it customer built, they collaborate freely, amongst themselves to build it as a commons, as a shared piece of software technology."

More Information

WSJ Interview with Simon Phipps: Open-Source Technology in Emerging Markets

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