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UK Government Boosts Open Source Adoption

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the here-comes-the-big-discount-offer-from-microsoft dept.

Cameron Logie writes "The UK Government has today announced full backing for greater adoption of Open Source solutions in the public sector. According to the article at the BBC News site, 'Government departments will be required to adopt open source software when "there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products" because of its "inherent flexibility."'"

17 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Well... They need all the money they can get by Colin+Smith · · Score: 5, Funny

    So that they can give it to the poor destitute W^HBankers.

     

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    Deleted
  2. Re:Correction! by sakdoctor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    when "there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products"

    Damn lies and statistics can be used to prove that open source is more expensive, then it doesn't get adopted.

  3. YES! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The benefits of open source over closed source are obvious!

    We can now look forward to a more community driven approach to oppression.

  4. Clarity needed by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >>>"if there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products"

    So does that mean if MS Office costs $200, but OpenOffice costs $0, then the government employees can't adopt OpenOffice because there's a cost difference?

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    1. Re:Clarity needed by sakdoctor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      TFA words it differently: "when it delivers best value for money"

      It still won't be cheaper, because of the costs of retraining every last government employee, including the retarded ones, to use the new software.

    2. Re:Clarity needed by socsoc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Easier than training them to use Office 07. All my younger new hires get OOo and they work fine with it once they realize possible hangups over file formats.

    3. Re:Clarity needed by TheNinjaroach · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So does that mean if MS Office costs $200, but OpenOffice costs $0, then the government employees can't adopt OpenOffice because there's a cost difference?

      Deploying any piece of software requires proper planning, configuration, infrastructure and training. Even free software costs money to own, hence the 'overall cost' they refer to. This is a good thing though, it's what keeps us employed even though the software is 'free.'

      --
      I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
    4. Re:Clarity needed by MoonBuggy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It could easily be argued that since these are government projects, paid for by our taxes, that they should prefer options where their funding gives more overall value to the public.

      As such, even if it were somewhat more expensive to pay a team of coders to add 'feature X' to OpenOffice than to use MS Office with 'feature X' already included, they should still consider doing so in order to contribute both 'government services' and improved software to the public, as opposed to contributing 'government services' to the public and funding for software development to a private company.

    5. Re:Clarity needed by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I once had a user request training after their old keyboard was replaced with a new one. I wish I were joking.

    6. Re:Clarity needed by oever · · Score: 2, Funny

      Not everyone enjoys Dvorak.

      --
      DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
  5. Overall cost difference? by mangu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FTA:

    Government departments will be required to adopt open source software when "there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products" because of its "inherent flexibility".

    The problem is that the "overall cost" depends on how much marketing $$$ is thrown in.

  6. No choice anymore... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Todays headlines are the result of *years* of work behind the scenes.

    The UK Opposition party, the Conservatives, are absolutely serious about implementing an Open Source, Open Standards, Open Procurement policy should they win the next election.

    Government departments are increasingly talking about sustainability (ie "we've run out of money") with Becta being the first to actually do something about it (appoint Sirius as the first and only Open Source company on a Government procurement list).

    There is at least one National Open Source infrastructure project just about to come out of stealth mode, and politicians are smelling some positive press commentary for once.

    This may be an essentially defensive move in the light of George Osborne's recent pronouncements, but it will inevitably lead to real progress in the historically extremely difficult (for Free Software) political scene in the UK.

  7. Re:Spin by rbanffy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Many government websites in Brazil are hosted on Zope and Plone (I work as a part-time consultant for one of them). There is an open-source turn-key solution for legislative bodies freely available and used by hundreds of them (it's also Zope-based and I did some consulting for them too). Several huge databases run on PostgreSQL clusters - chances are if you filed a tax report in Brazil, a lot of your data now resides on a PostgreSQL server. As of our last election, all electronic voting ballots ran Linux. With about 120 million inhabitants, any federal agency here is easily the size of a medium country or a huge company.

    That said, there is still a long way to go and a lot of steering to keep us on the right course.

    --
    http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
  8. Re:Spin by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That claim is true in a narrow sense; but annoyingly misleading. "I see you, you see me, we both depend on memory" public spaces are a whole different animal from "I don't see you, your cameras see me, and whatever happens is indexed and recorded for who knows how long" public spaces.

    Small scale, socially driven, symmetric transparency vs. large scale, technologically sophisticated asymmetric transparency. "Public Space" has never meant "Panopticon", and anybody who wants to make it so is pushing a truly radical change.

  9. Also licensing by jimicus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've looked into Microsoft licensing for a number of things in the past and a few of the clauses make for interesting reading.

    Let me preface this by saying I'm in the UK, I've been speaking to MS UK and it's them this information comes from. I have no idea how well these terms would stand up in a court of law or how flexible they are if you've got government-sized budgets but.... if you want an educational license - or, for that matter, one of the more flexible enterprise license schemes, one of the terms of the license is you MUST buy a license for every computer that's physically capable of running the software.

    Every PC, every laptop, even every x86-based Mac.

    Of course you can go down the "Open" licensing route which (AFAIK) has no such rule but while I haven't priced it up, I bet it quickly becomes drastically cheaper not to.

    Suddenly, OpenOffice doesn't look like such a cost saver unless you roll it out to everyone. Nor does Ubuntu.

  10. Re:Spin by OneSmartFellow · · Score: 2, Informative

    Addendum:

    I'm sorry, I don't have the figures, but I'd rather live in a country where the police are rarely seen, and when they are they act with (relative) prudence, instead of like drunken cowboys.

    I'd also prefer to live in a country where they don't incarcerate 1/8 of all black males under the age of 30, or detain people without charge indefinitely.

    Those topics are far more important to me than some cameras placed in public places.

  11. Open format more important than open source by CustomDesigned · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a citizen, I don't really care whether my gov (US) uses Microsoft, Mac, Solaris, Linux, or AmigaOS. I *do* care when they publish documents I need to work with in an undocumented proprietary format. And no, OOXML doesn't fix that (it only pretends to). Yes, I can get by with Open Office DOC importer for the time being.