UK Government Boosts Open Source Adoption 106
Cameron Logie writes "The UK Government has today announced full backing for greater adoption of Open Source solutions in the public sector. According to the article at the BBC News site, 'Government departments will be required to adopt open source software when "there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products" because of its "inherent flexibility."'"
Re:Correction! (Score:3, Insightful)
when "there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products"
Damn lies and statistics can be used to prove that open source is more expensive, then it doesn't get adopted.
Clarity needed (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>"if there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products"
So does that mean if MS Office costs $200, but OpenOffice costs $0, then the government employees can't adopt OpenOffice because there's a cost difference?
Overall cost difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA:
The problem is that the "overall cost" depends on how much marketing $$$ [wikipedia.org] is thrown in.
Re:Clarity needed (Score:3, Insightful)
TFA words it differently: "when it delivers best value for money"
It still won't be cheaper, because of the costs of retraining every last government employee, including the retarded ones, to use the new software.
Re:Clarity needed (Score:5, Insightful)
So does that mean if MS Office costs $200, but OpenOffice costs $0, then the government employees can't adopt OpenOffice because there's a cost difference?
Deploying any piece of software requires proper planning, configuration, infrastructure and training. Even free software costs money to own, hence the 'overall cost' they refer to. This is a good thing though, it's what keeps us employed even though the software is 'free.'
Re:Spin (Score:3, Insightful)
Small scale, socially driven, symmetric transparency vs. large scale, technologically sophisticated asymmetric transparency. "Public Space" has never meant "Panopticon", and anybody who wants to make it so is pushing a truly radical change.
Re:Also licensing (Score:1, Insightful)
one of the terms of the license is you MUST buy a license for every computer that's physically capable of running the software.
a) Suggest to MS that this clause might interest the European Comissioner for Competition.
b) Watch said clause disappear as 'an oversight' 'left over from a previous version of the license'.
Open format more important than open source (Score:4, Insightful)
As a citizen, I don't really care whether my gov (US) uses Microsoft, Mac, Solaris, Linux, or AmigaOS. I *do* care when they publish documents [cbp.gov] I need to work with in an undocumented proprietary format. And no, OOXML doesn't fix that (it only pretends to). Yes, I can get by with Open Office DOC importer for the time being.