Subscribe

Governments opt for open source


Johannesburg, 13 Dec 2004

Sun Microsystems says there is growing interest among governments around the world in deploying open source software, particularly in Europe where the European Union has legislated that file formats must be open and interoperable.

"We are finding with Star Office and Java Desktop System (JDS) there is a great deal of interest and movement in government sectors towards using these technologies," says Fred Kohout, Sun client systems marketing VP.

"Governments are interested in finding a viable alternative to high licence fees and frequent virus attacks, which are virtually unknown in the Java world," he comments.

Kohout cites the UK city of Bristol, which is migrating 5 000 desktops to Star Office, and Japan`s education, trade and industry ministry, which has endorsed JDS for use throughout Japan.

"Pricing is interesting and that is great leverage for government institutions, but in the end it is interoperability and openness that count because governments are not going to allow documents to be held hostage to a single vendor`s file format or architecture," says Kohout.

"Governments in emerging markets such as those in Africa can take advantage of the lower costs of acquisition and ownership of open source technologies more easily than developed countries because they do not have to integrate with or migrate from existing installations," explains Kohout.

"African countries can leapfrog in IT in much the way they have in mobile telephony, thereby freeing themselves from predatory licensing schemes," he says.

Share