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UK Gov't Considers Expanding Open Source Use

Posted by timothy on from the did-you-say-free-old-boy dept.

IonPanel writes "BBC have a story about the use of open source software at the heart of British government policy. The UK government is now running trials at both government and local level, citing the world-wide effort of a community of programmers fixing bugs and free upgrades as the reason. And all this despite the good friendship between Bill Gates and Tony Blair. There will be quite a few worried faces at Microsoft over the next few months ... Lets hope it's another Munich!" The experiments -- a joint effort with IBM, run by the Office of the E-envoy -- will "cover a range of departments, from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to the e-envoy's office itself."

3 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. The real reason... by arth1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The real reason is probably simple: Money
    Not money as in saving by using open source, but saving money as in getting Microsoft and other vendors to drop their pants, because open source is considered, and acknowledged as a competitor.

    Regards,
    --
    *Art

  2. Manuals by skinfitz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This could be a major boon for tech manual writers - you know governments - like everything documented (well - supposed to anyway).

    Tons of OSS stuff is severely lacking in the documentation department - if enough governments take it up then it could create a nice tech manual industry.

  3. As a UK local government councillor ... by Tim+Ward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ... I am involved in procurement. We are currently looking at an open source solution for a particular application (well, not completely open source, the back end is Oracle).

    So far I am not impressed.

    I'm not unimpressed witht the software; the difficulty is in getting a handle on what the software can and can't do and confidence that what it can't do will be fixed.

    When you're buying commercial software you get some or all of
    • a visit from a salesman
    • product brochures
    • a demonstration from an expert in the product
    • documentation
    • comprehensive on line help
    • a road map or new features release plan
    • clarity as to what you do and don't get in the support contract
    and so on.

    With this open source offering we appear to be getting few or none of the above: "here's the URL for the demo system, go and play with it". Um yes. Thanks. Not, I fear, a basis on which a public authority can spend lots of tax payers' money on a service for tax payers.

    Whilst it seems entirely possible that the open source offering is well designed to meet our needs it also seems entirely possible that it will be unable to demonstrate this to an acceptable risk profile so we'll have to buy something else. The competitors, as usual, include paying for a managed service elsewhere or buying commercial software.