Latest Examples of Public Sector Moves to Free Software
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-21 10:51:48 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-21 10:52:41 UTC
Summary: European software policy as detailed by recent news
UK
-
Parliament is still treating Linux users as though they aren't citizens. It's website, for them, is like the door of an exclusive Soho gentleman's club.
If you aint got Microsoft, you aint getting in - though we might give you a second chance if you go home and change that boho suit.
Video broadcasts of Parliamentary proceedings are designed to be watched by people with Microsoft software.
-
The UK government has revealed that it is considering ditching Microsoft software for open source alternatives. Cabinet minister Frances Maude has said he wants to see a range of software being adopted by the thousands of civil servants that work across departments and believes that this could save millions. Indeed, since Maude spoke out on the matter, it has been suggested that the government has spent more than €£200 million on Microsoft products since 2010 alone.
-
That pales into insignificance with what is going on in the government of the UK. Although they have been making some good noises lately, they are in a deep hole.
-
Tom Morris did some digging and found that only three members of the 23-member board appear to actually be programmers or have a technical background. So a campaign to drive home the importance of programming skills is predominantly made up of people who lack those very same skills.
[...]
A more obvious example of what George Monbiot calls the captive state would be hard to find. This is just a cabal of private businesses looking for a government subsidy to ensure their future profits. Corporate welfare, in other words.
Europe
-
Open source software is creating 'tried-and-tested' solutions addressing interoperability, portability and security, writes ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, in its December 2013 report on standards for cloud computing. Future specifications and standards may derive from open source projects, the standardisation organisation suggests.
France
-
Already 58 candidates for the municipal elections in France have signed April's Free Software Pact, stating that they will support the use of free and open source software. Free software advocacy group April began its support campaign in early January. "Many candidates are keen to announce their support and to detail their plans for freedom in the digital age", the group comments.
-
France's free software advocacy group April has launched a campaign to get candidates for the European elections of 22 - 25 May 2014 to state their support for these type of software solutions. The Free Software Pact campaign is Europe-wide and the group is inviting free and open source enthusiasts to help contact as many candidates as possible.
Belgium
-
The government of the Flanders region in Belgium is using open source for its new open data forum, opened this week Tuesday. The site host is running Linux, web server Apache and content management system Joomla for the open data knowledge exchange website.
-
For their e-government services and their websites, public administrations in Belgium's Walloon region should prefer to use standards and open source software solutions, recommends André Blavier, an ICT expert working for the Agence Wallonie de Télécommunications (AWT), a government agency. Yet an even bigger priority for the Walloon government is making its data publicly available. "Open data will help development digital public services, and create a more transparent government."
Holland
-
TYPO3gem, the user group of Dutch municipalities using the TYPO3 content management system, is becoming a model for other groups of public administrations using open source solutions, according to a study published by the Open Source Observatory and Repository last week. Examples include the group of towns using Drupal, an alternative content management system, and a number of municipalities using zaaksysteem.nl, a case management solution.
Germany
-
Berlin will not switch to open source operating systems for its workstations, the German Linux Magazine reports. The administration of the German city state again dismissed a request by the opposition party Bündnis 90/Greens to replace outdated proprietary desktop systems by open source. Such a switch clashes with the city's efforts to centralise the IT infrastructure.
Switzerland
-
Unanimous bar one abstention, the parliament of the Swiss Canton of Bern yesterday voted in favour of a bill to exploit 'synergies in its software use". The law instructs the canton's public administrations to increase their use of open source, make their own software publicly available and, when starting new IT projects, give priority to this type of solutions. The measure is expected to result in financial savings.
Denmark
-
A group of five Danish municipalities are making available as open source KITOS, their IT project management solution, announces OS2, the Danish online community for public administrations and open source. The solutions will be web-based, letting municipalities manage their IT projects, systems and contracts.
South America
-
Caracas, Feb 7 (Prensa Latina) Experts from Venezuela and Argentina shared experiences on software developed on the basis of free software, as part of the efforts to spread awareness among the population, specialized sources confirmed today.
According to the Nacional Center for Information of Technology (CNTI), development teams operating systems Huayra (Argentina) and Canaima GNU / Linux (Venezuela) met by videoconference to strengthen the work in this area.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Misinformation is Not Intelligence
- It's low-grade plagiarism and it fails to show any signs of intelligence
- 'Tech' Gimmicks Are for Advertising, Not for Usability
- In the case of Microsoft, they latched onto slop
- BetaNews Sacked Brian Fagioli and Deleted His Comments, But He Still Tries to Use the "BetaNews" Brand for Self-Affirmation
- Fagioli takes the work of other people
- [Meme] Hard to Be a Better Person?
- Sooner or later they'll realise that for each pound I spend they need to spend about 1,000 times more
- New US Editor for The Register is a Microsoft Booster
- "Avram Piltch has served as US editor for The Register since July 2025."
- Reda Demanded That FSF Removes Its Founder, Now Reda Works Directly for Microsoft
- A sellout and a traitor, first working for GAFAM, now Microsoft
- PCLinuxOS is Raising Money to Support Development After Fire Incident at the Host
- PCLinuxOS has not had announcements lately
- Over 3 Months Later Brett Wilson LLP Still Unable to Recruit a Media Lawyer?
- "Immediate start", but not found... still unfilled
-
- Links 24/07/2025: Convicted Felon Quits UNESCO, "Vibe Coding Goes Wrong", and Signalgate Gets Worse
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 24/07/2025: Forgejo Woes and Smolnet Directory Week
- Links for the day
- Links 24/07/2025: Storage Tapes Still Kicking, Windows TCO 'on Steroids' (Microsoft-Induced Catastrophes)
- Links for the day
- Bobby Borisov (LinuxIac) Has Apparently Begun Experimenting With LLM Slop, So We Cannot Trust LinuxIac Anymore
- So did LinuxIac become a slopfarm? Maybe not yet, but it's getting there
- Informa TechTarget's ITProToday is Becoming a Slopfarm Generated by Microsoft Chatbots
- Busted.
- The LLM Con Artists Are Highly Destructive
- Who will ever be held accountable for this scam?
- Too Bribed by Microsoft to Move to Free Software?
- Microsoft lies and Microsoft bribery (in politics)
- Microsoft Hiring European Politicians is Another Form of Bribery; There Should be a European Investigation
- When Microsoft bribed people in Europe for OOXML (there's no denying this!) a European government delegate said that Microsoft operated like a cult
- Speed of the Site Should be Better Now
- The "bot attacks" impact the speed of the sister site too
- Getting More From AnalogNowhere
- Recently we used many images from AnalogNowhere
- Microsoft, Microsofters and 'Secure' Boot Shills Already Storming the LWN Report About Expiring Certificate, Shooting the Messenger
- LWN has clearly stuck a nerve
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 23, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 23, 2025
- Disable "Secure" Boot Today (the Only Better Time to Do So Was Yesterday)
- Don't trust anything Red Hat tells you about security
- Links 23/07/2025: Windows Killed Company After 150+ Years, US Government Mimics Russia's Attacks on the Media
- Links for the day
- Freedom Generally Wins at the End, History Shows (But It's Constantly Attacked, Too)
- At the moment people realise "Linux" (e.g. Android) isn't enough to guarantee any freedoms
- “Inhumane” and “Disgusting” Mass Layoff Execution, According to Microsoft Staff
- The workers are looking for other places to work
- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Slogan for Its 40th Anniversary
- The freedoms are what's most important
- Microsoft is Trying to "Pull a Nokia" on GNU/Linux as Desktop/Laptop Platform
- We all remember that rather well, don't we?
- LLM Slopfarms gbhackers.com, "Cyber Press" and CyberSecurityNews Are Drowning Google News (and Shame on Google for Feeding and Facilitating Them)
- All are run by the same people
- Links 23/07/2025: Droplets GUI Patent Monopoly Challenge, Nokia Leverages Illegal Patent Court Against Rivals
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Community in Geminispace and Challenges With Old Computers
- Links for the day
- Links 23/07/2025: Slop Patents Tackled, Slop Copyright Misuses Tackled by Politicians
- Links for the day
- Our Three Lawsuits Against Microsofters Are About to Become a Lot More Relevant to GNU/Linux
- The Master will easily understand why Garrett has been attacking me since 2012
- Links 23/07/2025: Retreating From Transparency on Jeffrey Epstein, We No Longer Have Press Freedom
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Piano and Food
- Links for the day
- New and Old
- On Ageism in Tech
- Slop Is Not Intelligence and It Does Not Enhance Productivity
- Like voice dictation, which cannot tell the difference between "sheet" and "shit"
- EPO Crimes Are Spreading to the British Court System
- Society is now paying the price for failing to tackle crimes at the EPO
- It's Time to Dump SharePoint and Here's What to Use Instead
- Nextcloud, ownCloud, Bookstack, MediaWiki, and MediaGoblin
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 22, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, July 22, 2025
- Brett Wilson LLP Has Gone Silent
- Sometimes silence says more than nothing at all
- Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Planet Ubuntu, and LinuxTechLab
- some slopfarms show no remorse and they don't value their reputation at all
- Links 23/07/2025: Book Bans, Storms, and Kangaroo Court for Patents Commits More Unlawful Acts of Overreach
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/07/2025: Thinkpad and Pinephone
- Links for the day
- Links 22/07/2025: "Blog Restart" and Microsoft Clobbered by “ToolShell"
- Links for the day
- Global Warming and Global GAFAM Energy-Wasting
- Burn more money (borrowed, loans), then hope the waste will somehow translate into profit?
- No Compliance With the European Patent Convention (EPC) at the European Patent Office (EPO)
- It's about preventing competition against this autocracy
- Blue-Collar Trolls vs White-Collar Trolls
- Examples of white-collar trolls
- Apple Vision Pro Failed So Badly That Its Sales Are About 2,000 Times Smaller Than iPhone Sales
- What's left for Apple to offer other than hype?
- To Millions of People "Year of the Linux Desktop" Was Some Time in the 1990s (Bootable GNU/Linux as a Complete Operating System is Over 33 in Age)
- In some sense, "year of the Linux desktop" was 33 years ago
- Make No Assumptions (or Demands) About the Screen Resolution Used by Other People
- There are usability aspects, aside from accessibility aspects
- Why Wayland (and XWayland) Won't Solve the Key Problem It Proclaims to be Tackling (the Same Is True for Rust)
- The problem isn't Wayland per se but the false promises and efforts to force everybody to move to it whilst insulting or demonising everyone who won't play along
- They Don't Tell Us that 'Digitalisation' (Now Sold as "Hey Hi") Just Means Customers Become Unpaid Staff and Are Made Accountable
- People are being conditioned to associate technology with something undesirable, at times even unbearable
- Diplomatic Immunity Should Not Exist for Anybody
- The EPO in its current form gradually 'normalises' the end of European democracy
- Brett Wilson LLP Stopped Sending Me Papers When I Showed It had Sent Me Over 5 Kilograms of Legal Papers
- A week ago we lodged our third lawsuit
- Microsoft Mass Layoffs and Shutdowns Became the New Normal at Microsoft
- Microsoft mass layoffs became a topic of everyday media coverage since May
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) Has Layoffs and Microsoft Gaming/Entertainment Division Has an Uncertain Future
- it's good to see all those horrible things crashing and burning
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 21, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, July 21, 2025
- FSF "Raised Almost $139,000 During This Summer Campaign"
- "Thank you for making a stand against dystopia!"
- Gemini Links 22/07/2025: VPS Exploited and Fear of View
- Links for the day