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Iceland makes open source push

Alex Kayle
By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist
Johannesburg, 26 Mar 2012

Iceland makes open source push

Iceland's government has made progress in its efforts to adopt open source software as public sector IT leaders in the country have increasingly moved away from proprietary software, PC Advisor reports.

However, the scheme faces hurdles with other enterprise software, as some government ministries are firmly locked into a Web of proprietary technologies from companies such as Oracle, according to Tryggvi Bjorgvinsson, the project leader of Iceland's open source project, ZDNet states.

"Cost is one thing, one of the prime motivators today, but we also want more equality between software," says Bjorgvinsson. "The government needs to back open source software, as there aren't that many service providers actively selling free and open source software."

Five of Iceland's 32 secondary schools have moved from Microsoft Windows to Ubuntu Linux, The Wall Street Journal says.

Some schools in the country have switched from Microsoft Word and to open source Moodle course management software. A number of fringe publicly funded institutions have also made the move.

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