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EU Studies Linux Migration

Posted by michael on from the reverse-assimilation dept.

LeftOfCentre writes "The Register reports that the European Commision, the executive arm of the 380 million population European Union, has decided to spend 250,000 Euros on studying how government computers in EU states could be migrated to Linux and open source."

4 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. Fasibility Study Only - As yet.... by anonymous+cupboard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This is currently only a feasibilty study, and I gather the Germans in particular with thir own initiatives are quite strongly behind this.

    However, many persons in the EU are aware of the perils of depending upon a single vendor and their propietary formats, and also how ill-served we are when pushing documents around between PCs configured for different languages.

  2. Europe out in front again... by Broken+Bottle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does anyone else get the impression that this will be yet another area where, yet again, Europe is going to be WAY out in front of the US. Europe and progressive social policy (or, if you live there, I guess you'd just call it "social policy" :) ) are practically synonymous and the US is once again made to look like a country run by bankers... Government is a public institution. Therefore, in my mind, it makes perfect sense for a government (a democratic one at least) to setup it's IT infrastructure based around a platform created by the people for the people rather than a platform that lines the pockets of a monlithic corporation (and, in this case, a foreign one at that).

    Chris

    1. Re:Europe out in front again... by pubjames · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Of course we have the example of UK to show it is possible to transition from a welfare state to a free market.

      That's right. As a UK citizen I am proud of how the UK has lead the way with privitizing its public services. It's made the UK a much better place to live! What with the expensive public transport system that fails to run on time and a health service that is now one of the worst in Europe. And what joy it brought when The Post Office spent vast sums renaming itself "Consignia" to be more commercial, and then reverting back to "The Post Office". How jealous the rest of Europe must be!

  3. What about the UK? by GnomeKing · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The UK government recently (relatively) spent a lot of money with microsoft to introduce a "gateway" system for several things for use by the UK population (I dont know if it is implemented, but a good example is tax returns)

    I wonder if how to solve "initiatives" like that will be taken into consideration - since afaik there is no OSS solution for the existing implementation, and their gateway would have to be rethought/designed/implemented to move to OSS