The city of Tirana (Albania) gets it: using open source software creates opportunities, promotes creativity, and helps local businesses and citizens. Turkey also recognises it: this summer the government implored public services to switch to ‘domestic and national’ information and communication technology, including open source.

The Basque Country (Spain) shows what happens when governments encourage the use of open source software. In the past year, Basque ICT companies that specialise in free and open source software report revenue growth of 8 percent – much higher than the autonomous region’s average. And in France, the Conseil National du Logiciel Libre (CNLL), a national trade group advocating free software that represents over 300 ICT firms, once again confirms that the market for open source keeps on growing, in terms of both turnover and jobs: it expects that by 2020 close to 70,000 people in France will have jobs related to open source software.

In all these countries, governments actively encourage the use of open source in public services. They realise that their investments in open source create future benefits and generate a virtuous loop between the public and private sector. It's something for other governments to consider as a new year's resolution.