It is now estimated that of the $3.4T USD spend on information and communication technology (ICT), $1T USD is wasted every year, either due to applications being abandoned before ever reaching production, or because applications that are put into production are so late, so broken, or missing such key functionality that a substantial fraction of the money invested is as good as lost.  In this context, open source software is growing rapidly, for many good reasons, but it is not enough.  In this talk I will share my experiences talking with national policy-makers about how open source can provide a local, sustainable, robust solution to this crisis, even if it does mean the end of certain software monopolies.

Michael Tiemann has been involved with Free Software and Open Source Software since 1987, when he downloaded the GNU C compiler, made some hacks, and released the GNU C++ compiler later that year. He founded the world\\\\\\\'s first company to commercialize free software (in 1989) and sold that company to Red Hat (in 2000).

In addition to writing over 100,000 lines of code for the GNU project, he has submitted patches to dozens of other free and open source software, advised open source projects, companies, and consortia, co-authored new free and open source licenses, has advised national governments on free and open source software licensing, technology, and policy issues, and has given testimony in court about the negative effects of abusive software monopolies.