South African Government Embraces Open Source
23 Feb
http://www.osdir.com/Article9746.phtml
The South African Cabinet today announced that it had approved a free and open source strategy and that government would migrate its current software to free and open source software.
At a Cabinet media briefing government said that it had “approved a policy and strategy for the implementation of free and open source software (FOSS) in government.
If an entire government can embrace open source software then I’m guessing the average business probably can too?
How many governments need to adopt open source software before the business community takes note?
I had a discussion with a client recently about MS Exchange licensing. He had a quote from Microsoft and I almost dropped the phone when he told me how much a rollout for 200 people was going to cost him. Suffice to say, it was not dissimilar from what I make on an annual basis.
Stop the insanity.
I often hear the argument that its difficult to find IT people with open source experience. Speaking as an IT guy, we’re a pretty resourceful bunch. The whole IT gig is about being able to read manuals, search Google, and leverage forums, mailing lists, and social networks to solve problems.
If the business worlds starts demanding open source experience then the work force will respond.
You might want to read the ubuntu blog at http://ubuntu.wordpress.com
Ubuntu is leading the FOSS revolution in SA – makes me proud of my roots
Thanks for the link.
I run several Ubuntu servers and I do follow Ubuntu Linux quite closely. I haven’t switched over on the desktop, and probably won’t anytime soon as I’m pretty happy with Mac OS X. I think Linux has a long way to go before it can match OS X on the desktop.
Were it not for OS X, I’d probably pick Ubuntu over Windows though…