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Egyptian Government To Adopt Free Software On Larger Scale

Posted by Unknown on from the digital-arab-spring dept.

ezabi writes "After announcing a 43 million USD license agreement with Microsoft, the Egyptian government was faced with a protest from FOSS enthusiasts staging a protest before the cabinet. Later, representatives from the community had a meeting with the minister of communications and information technology. Such a meeting led to the ministry issuing a press release (in Arabic) stating its commitment to gradually move to open source (Google Translate to English) as a strategic option for future projects. It's worth mentioning that all governmental websites used in the elections and constitution referendum were all based on open source solutions."

3 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. And open interfaces? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hard to imagine that the Egyptian Government will be happy in the long term with software which gives the user full control over encryption and messaging. They will want a nice closed source solution with DRM right there in the kernel, firmly attached to the hardware.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  2. Charlie Brooker on Windows ... by dgharmon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it".

    "using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981" Charlie Brooker

    --
    AccountKiller
  3. There wasn't anyone else by dbIII · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The only form of legal assembly was religious groups so they were the only ones that were organised enough to run the place after the old government was kicked out