Spanish Region Goes Entirely Open Source

greengrass writes to tell us TechWorld is reporting that the Spanish region of Extremadura has decided to go completely open source with their day-to-day operations. While the region has long been a supporter of open source software, within a year it will be a requirement that all officials use the ODF and PDF formats for all documents. From the article: "Extremadura, Spain's poorest region, made headlines following a 2002 decision to migrate about 70,000 desktops and 400 servers in its schools to a locally tailored version of Debian called gnuLinEx. The government has estimated that the total cost of this project was about 190,000 euros (£130,000), 18 million euros lower than if the schools had purchased Microsoft software. "

Comments

Simple math

[orzetto]

The government has estimated that the total cost of this project was about 190,000 euros, 18 million euros lower than if the schools had purchased Microsoft software.

Good argument for GNU, Linux and open source in general with your boss: cuts your software costs by 98.9%. Finally someone puts an official number on this.