The Price of Free Always Comes Due Later

The government encourages the use of open-source software in public-sector IT projects. Avoid dependence on a particular vendor. Save on licensing fees. Open up technology. These are admirable aims. But admirable aims do not necessarily produce admirable results.

A free license does not mean there are no costs. The costs do not disappear: installation, integration, performance validation, security patches, incident response, staff training, version upgrades, data migration, and long-term maintenance. One line may appear to have vanished from the price list, but its costs have merely been spread across other lines.

A more serious issue is the nature of public systems. Public administration, railways, electricity, healthcare, taxation, and disaster response are not areas where, when a system fails, we can simply say, “We’ll ask the community.” Free software with no accountable provider is being placed on infrastructure on which people’s lives and safety depend, yet no one is asking who will be responsible for maintaining it. Open-source communities have no obligation to address the disruption experienced by citizens. There is no SLA, no security response framework, and no contract promising emergency patches. Software is not simply a product to take and use; it is infrastructure that must be operated responsibly. Yet the government is not giving the weight of that responsibility serious consideration.

Trying to avoid dependence, only to fall into deeper dependence

The claim that “we use open source to avoid vendor lock-in” is only half true. Having access to source code and being free from dependence on a particular ecosystem are entirely different things.

Today, software dependence does not arise from a single line of code. It comes from cloud operating environments, APIs, data formats, authentication systems, deployment tools, and technical support organizations. Even if a database is replaced with an open-source alternative, dependence deepens when that database runs as a managed service on a particular global cloud and all the surrounding tools and operational expertise are tied to an overseas platform. The contract with a domestic company has been terminated, but administrative data and operational control have effectively been handed over in their entirety to a distant overseas platform.

Trying to escape vendor lock-in only to enter ecosystem lock-in: this is the reality that the government’s current open-source policy is creating.

Losing the market means losing the future

For South Korea’s software industry, the public-sector market is more than a source of revenue. In databases, middleware, security, monitoring, and industrial software, it is the foundation on which domestic companies validate products, build customer references, and use maintenance revenue to develop the next version. Without the public sector acting as an initial customer, domestic companies struggle to build either the track record needed to enter the private market or the credibility needed to enter overseas markets.

The government itself is dismantling that foundation. If public procurement becomes fixed on “try free open source first,” products painstakingly developed by domestic companies are eliminated at the price-comparison stage. Performance, technical support, and security response no longer matter. Once the first question is “Is it free?”, the remaining questions are never asked. This is not evaluation; it is exclusion.

Domestic companies that survive are forced to change direction: from selling their own products to installing and operating foreign open-source software, and from developing core technologies to becoming local service providers for overseas software. This shift is far from trivial. Turning a product company into a service company means giving up intellectual property, a brand, and global competitiveness. Once development capabilities have collapsed, restoring them is difficult even if funding returns.

This is reverse discrimination against domestic software

Domestic software companies spend money on development, obtain quality certifications, build technical support teams, retain maintenance staff, and establish security response systems. Those costs are reflected in their prices. Global open-source projects, meanwhile, enter the market at a price of zero, backed by thousands of developers around the world and major platform companies.

The moment a public institution says, “We’ll consider it first because it’s free,” domestic companies are excluded from the outset. They are not competing on quality; they are being excluded on price. It is not fair competition to demand quality, certification, accountability, and delivery conditions only from domestic companies in a market where vast foreign ecosystems enter at zero cost. Whatever it is called, the structure is dumping.

Public procurement determines an industry’s future, not just its numbers

Public-sector demand helped the electricity, railway, defense, semiconductor, and battery industries reach where they are today. The state bought first, and domestic companies used that experience to develop their technologies and enter global markets. Public procurement is more than purchasing. It is a policy declaration about which industries a nation intends to develop.

Yet that principle is not being applied to software. The government supports semiconductor companies in building domestic factories and helps battery companies expand overseas. But when a software company develops a product and approaches the public sector, the government asks, “Why pay for it when free open source is available?” Manufacturing receives industrial policy; software receives cost-cutting logic.

The results are already before us. We have many developers, but no global software brands. Systems integration companies abound, yet packaged software products that sell in world markets are rare. Tens of trillions of won have gone into public projects, but it is hard to see that spending accumulated as domestic technology assets. The budget was spent, but the industry did not grow.

The highest costs are found where there is no price tag

Software is invisible, and so are its value and its losses. Everyone notices when a steel plant closes. Far fewer recognize a loss of national competitiveness when a software company abandons product development and turns to subcontracted services.

A price of zero does not mean a cost of zero. Costs accumulate out of sight: products domestic companies never built, developers who never had the chance to grow, brands that never reached the world, and data and operational expertise transferred overseas. These losses carry no price tag. But the bill will arrive. It simply arrives later.

A nation that uses a great deal of free software is not a software powerhouse. A software powerhouse is a nation that builds software itself, fixes it, takes responsibility for it, and sells it to the world.

What kind of country is the government building now?