The public administration of the city of Montreal (Canada) has announced its intention to abandon the use of proprietary software in favor of Free Software. A change that is motivated by the benefits of such a software model, such as the possibility of improving its IT services by promoting transparency and capacity of choice.
The Government of France has announced that during this summer all the departments of this public administration will start using their own Open Source instant messenger service instead of the popular WhatsApp and Telegram. It is a measure to guarantee the sovereignty and security of their communications by themselves, which will be encrypted from end to end, without depending on private initiatives.
In May of this year 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will enter into force, which will be mandatory in all countries of the European Union. This new regulation will affect all companies, located in Europe or doing business in the EU, that handle personal information of any kind. Failure to comply with these regulations will be penalized with fines reaching up to 20 million euros.
Russia is another country that has decided to stop using proprietary software and enjoy the advantages of free software. The IT staff of the Russian Ministry of Defense will remove Windows from all the computers and, instead, install the Astra Linux distribution, developed by the Russian company RusbBITeh.
The Association of Galician Free Software Companies (AGASOL in Spanish) is carrying out a migration to Free Software for the City of A Coruña. This is the first step to evaluate and plan the migration process of this Consistory, which is aware of the benefits of using this type of software.
