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Indian State Saves $45 Million As Schools Switch To Open Source Software (factordaily.com)
From a report: The Kerala government has made a saving of Rs 300 crore ($45 million) through introduction and adoption of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) in the school education sector, said a state government official on Sunday. IT became a compulsory subject in Kerala schools from 2003, but it was only in 2005 that FOSS was introduced in a phased manner and started to replace proprietary software. The decision made by the curriculum committee to implement it in the higher secondary sector has also been completed now. "It's not the cost saving that matters more, but the fact that the Free Software license enables not only teachers and students but also the general public an opportunity to copy, distribute and share the contents and use it as they wish," K. Anwar Sadath, executive director IT@School said.
No, they always switch back after Microsoft bribes the right people.
- yet. That is exactly what people used to say about IBM products - up until the day in 1993, when IBM posted massive losses and had to lose something like half its workforce, if I remember correctly. If nobody has got fired for buying Microsoft, it may well be because management simply are blind to the very significant cost of keeping a Microsoft only environment in the air, especially on the server side.
In the beginning, when Linux started to be taken serious, there was a lot of nonsense being said, like 'You get what you pay for'; then more and more engineers started wailing about how much trouble Windows servers were, compared to Linux, and in the last several years, even management in many companies have moved away from automatically going for Microsoft software. As far as I can see, Microsoft products are beginning to be regarded as legacy software that you can't get rid of yet. It could be that we will see the day when people will get fired for buying Microsoft, when there clearly are much better options available.