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and in other news... every other city on the planet is using Microsoft.

No, that's not true. A couple of other cities running Linux:

• Turku, Finland (Linux continues onward march in land of its birth)
• Largo, Florida, US (Secretaries use Linux, taxpayers save millions)

By the way, a lot is happening in developing countries. On May 22nd, I had the opportunity to attend the publication seminar of the interesting Free as in Education research report by Niranjan Rajani, sponsored by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Other writers published in the study are Cesar Brod (Brazil), Frederick Noronha (India) and Nico Coetzee (South Africa). Also attending the seminar, among many others, was Edgar Villanueva (Congressman, Peru), who sent the famous response letter to Microsoft, giving a talk on "Legal and Other Experiences in Promoting FLOSS in Peru".

But cities are not the only ones interested in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS), of course. For example, what do you like the government of South Africa open source software web site at http://www.oss.gov.za/? Their Government OSS Strategy Document (in PDF format) could be interesting reading.

TPS TURKU will be the next hockey champ in Finland Hockey Elite League.

Did I mention Skully Records, New York City, USA? You know, I happen to live in Turku , Finland and English is not my native language. Our bands (there are many) have released many CDs over the years. What is your native language? Why don't you try to write a song in Swedish language and release it in Stockholm, Sweden? ..Haha! Well, whatever, your poor comments can't get me down. I do have a life even though I am a UNIX sysadmin. In fact, this very moment, I'm getting drunk and soon I'll go to downtown to meet some chicks and I'll always love my sunny funny girl.

The article mentioned a few developments in Finland.

There's also a newer one, made by a member of Finnish parliament Kyösti Karjula (Center Party):

"Member of Parliament Kyösti Karjula and three other members have made an initiative for the government to take practical measures towards to adopt the Linux operating system in public administration. According to the members, the advantages of Linux are financial savings and better security than in Windows.

'There is also a significant technology political reason for changing over to Linux, because a system based on open source makes it possible to advance [Finnish] know-how. ...' " (references to German decision, etc.)

In December 2001, the IT Department of City of Turku published their final report on adopting OpenOffice and Linux for the city computer systems. The report takes a "negative" approach, listing the problems encountered, so it's rather interesting read. In the conclusions, they recommended the adoption of OpenOffice and Linux, and to proceed with an extended study and a pilot period.

Turku (my home city) has a population of about 160,000 and the city has about 3000 computers. However, if Turku adopts Linux, dozens of the surrounding small (and large) munincipalities will follow.

I agree with you. And so does the IT department of my homecity (Turku, Finland). They are considering moving from MS Office to Openoffice.org, and have therefore made this report. Check it out.

Among other things it shows that the average computer user can handle Openoffice just as well as MS Office. The same seems to apply to the OS level (Windows vs. Linux) as well. All it takes is some training in the new program.

The Finnish city of Turku just few weeks ago published an research on the pros and cons of migrating from Windows/MS Office computers to Linux/OpenOffice environment (a short note about it can be found here. The verdict was that city would save considerate amounts of money by doing this and so migration is started first by installing OpenOffice to existing Windows systems and slowly starting to migrate tho OS as well (first Linux workstations should be running by 2003).

Anyway, basically they say that OSS is a viable alternative already and that they continue monitoring it. Shifting to OpenOffice should be done gradually by the end of 2003, a complete Linux-workstation is a longer term goal.

Anyway, basically they say that OSS is a viable alternative already and that they continue monitoring it. Shifting to OpenOffice should be done gradually by the end of 2003, a complete Linux-workstation is a longer term goal.

Also my city, Turku (in South-West Finland) is seriously considering switching all city computers to Linux and OpenOffice. This would mean about 3000 computers. The topic has been discussed in many news.

The simple reason is that with new Windows and Office licensing, the software costs would be about 1-2 million euros per year.

"The Microsoft has changed its licensing policy from stealing to plain robbing. Cities simply can't afford to make such contracts," says the information management officer of the city.

"Finland is nowadays a Microsoft nation. This sort of changes would create certain kinds of problems."

Turku will not pay any licensing fees to Microsoft before the examination about Linux is finished before the end of this year.

At least 20 other cities are waiting for the City of Turku decision, and will follow its strategy. Turku has about 160,000 citizens.

City of Turku in Finland considers switching to GNU/Linux systems because of Microsoft's new licencing policy. According to a newspaper article (in Finnish), this would mean 3000 users.