British Government to accelerate use of Open Source

Posted Thursday 12th March 2009 at 9:00 am Comments(1)

Tom Watson MP, minister for digital engagement, said open source software would be on a level playing field with proprietary software such as Windows.

Open source software will be adopted “when it delivers best value for money”, the government said.

It added that public services should where possible avoid being “locked into proprietary software”.

It is great to see that even governments are realising that there is quality community built software around that fulfils their needs just as well and probably better than any proprietary softare can do.

On several occasions I have argued the whole OpenOffice.org vs Microsoft Office and the only argument I ever really get is that Microsoft Office is what they know. This indicates towards how much the average user is afraid of moving away from ‘what they know’ and finding an alternative. Even though the alternative has all of the functionality (and more), has fewer bugs, is more stable and doesn’t cost a penny to use, upgrade or be supported compared with the product that they are used to. In the case of OpenOffice.org their alternative even looks like Office so that you can instantly feel at home using it.

With the recent economic climate there is also another reason why proprietary software isn’t such a great idea. Smari McCarthy talks about a new crisis about to hit businesses in Iceland:

Smari McCarthy:

The companies and institutions that buy these generally don’t buy these directly through Microsoft. Instead, they sell contracts in bulk to Microsoft Certified Partners (MCPs), which are local companies that lobby the software, generally at a loss to themselves, as they know that Microsoft’s lock-in is powerful enough that they can only get service contracts from the company if they offer a substantial discount on the Microsoft products.

Now, the licensing term is three years, but the licensing fee is made in the form of annual payments. Here is where the fun begins.

Now, say an economy collapses. Say some fifteen hundred companies in your local economy go bankrupt. Now, say that Microsoft comes to collect its annual fee from the MCPs. The MCPs say, of course, “wait, the company that we sold this license to has gone bankrupt, we shouldn’t have to pay.”

“Aha!” says the suit from Redmond. “You made a contract with us, and another with them. Their inability to uphold their end of the contract does not invalidate your commitment to us.”

One of the biggest mistakes users make when trying out Open Source software is that they immediately want to know if they can use their favourite application. The answer is often ‘No’ however there is always an alternative. I have already mentioned OpenOffice.org for Microsoft Office. Here are a few more:

Internet Explorer – Mozilla Firefox
Outlook Express/Outlook – Evolution, Mozilla Thunderbird, Kmail
Adobe Acrobat – Ghostscript, OpenOffice.org
Windows Media Player – Amarok, Rhythmbox, Songbird, VLC, MPlayer
Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro – Gimp, ImageMagick
Adobe Illustrator – Inkscape, Sketch

This is only a few highlights from a much larger list but if you look at the list you will quickly see that your options in the Open Source world are far greater, than any paid for software.

Lets hope the British Government really mean what they say and start to advocate the use of Open Source software so we the public can stop having to pay for all to often shoddy software…