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5000 OpenOffice.org Seats for Singapore Government
kurtz_tan writes "This story on Linux World says the Singapore Ministry of Defence (Mindef) has installed the OpenOffice productivity suite on 5,000 new desktop computers. This move is aimed at giving employees in the ministry an additional choice in productivity software. It will also help Mindef make 'significant' savings in terms of capital costs.
Singapore is acknowledged as the second best world wide for e-Government. Hope all other world wide government follow suit."
It isn't, precisely because it's an inferior version of what is already available.
It gives people the general idea that open source = inferior.
While I'm not particularly fond of word processors either, MS Office is a great productivity suite that gets things done in minutes.
(I love the smell of karma in the morning) It's NOT "wrong" to use proprietary software, specially if data is released to the general public in more open (CSV/RTF/HTML) formats. I mean, time _is_ money, you know.
Nobody ever said it was 'wrong' to use proprietary software. What is wrong is to do what Microsoft does, which is to use bullying, cheating, lying, strongarming, and monopolization as regular business strategies. And it's even more wrong done on such a large scale. Which makes it 'right,' in a way, to refuse to support them.
This is why governments are turning away from MS to open source and Free software. Not just because of the initial cash savings, but because they know they won't be at the mercy of Microsoft's draconian licensing practices in the long term, which is where the real cost shows up. If you've ever been in charge of purchasing software for a large organization as I have, you probably know what I'm talking about. They literally act like heroin pushers to get their claws into your company, and they're just as sleazy.
Sure, Open Office is not as polished as MS Office - yet. It will be better in time. But here's something you and the grandparent don't appear to understand. Most Free software is publically developed. If you don't like it, don't bitch and complain about it, contribute to making it better. If you're not willing to do that, then you don't really have any place to say crap like "It gives people the general idea that open source = inferior." Either use it, help to fix it, or just shut up.