The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has launched an initiative to try to convince European governments that any software paid with citizens’ tax money should always be published as Free Software and Open Source. Under the motto “Public money? Public Code!” call for citizens, companies and organizations of all types to join this campaign so that the code paid by citizens is available to citizens by law.
The use of free software is increasingly being spread among public institutions due to the significant savings it entails. A recent example is the Puçol town hall in Valencia, which has just established the GNU / Linux operating system LliureX. The first pilot experience with this software has meant a saving of 25,000 euros in licenses.
The city of Rome, the fourth-largest city in the European Union, will increase its use of free and open source software, it decided in October. All new software solutions will be based on open source, and the city is to consider replacing existing proprietary solutions by open source alternatives.
The italian military is going to be the european administration to make the largest transition to Open Source software. During the next four years, more than 100.000 PCs will migrate to LibreOffice as part of LibreDifesa project, which will save 26 to 29 millon euros to italian administration.
The main reasons for the military to perform this move are interoperability and long-term accesibility of documents and information. The army of this country is standardising on the Open Document Format (ODF) and is advising its users to use free fonts.
United States keeps on moving towards Open Source. Delivering on the commitment made in the Second Open Government National Action Plan, Government has announced a draft Federal Source code policy to support access to custom software code.
This policy asks for new software specifically developed for or by Federal Government and the commitment to share it with the different federal agencies so that they can re-use it. A portion of that new federally-funded custom code will also be released to the public.
The US Government’s IT pros rely on desktop virtualization to provide the end users with the appropiate tools for their work while guaranteeing security.
These IT pros have usually to deal with tougher regulatory and compliance constraitns than other companies. But users request the same flexibility and need to work anywhere and using any device.
That’s why VDI is the most suitable technology and more and more agencies are implementing it.
