The UK Government has announced that it intends to increasingly adopt 'open-source' software, in preference to traditional 'propriety' software.
Open-source software products are usually free-of-change, which offers immediate savings in terms of licensing costs - currently estimated at £600m for the Government alone.
The Government have stated that they will adopt open-source software when it offers "best value for money" and that public services should actively seek to avoid being "locked into propriety software".
In particular, the government has said it will:
... adopt open standards and use these to communicate with the citizens and businesses that have adopted open source solutions.
Ensure that open source solutions are considered properly and, where they deliver best value for money ... are selected for Government business solutions.
Strengthen the skills, experience and capabilities within Government and in its suppliers to use open source to greatest advantage.
Embed an 'open-source' culture of sharing, re-use and collaborative development across Government and its suppliers ...
- Ensure that there are no procedural barriers to the adoption of open source products within Government ...
Ensure that systems integrators and proprietary software suppliers demonstrate the same flexibility and ability to re-use their solutions and products as is inherent in open source.
Departments will be required to adopt open-source products when "there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products".
This stance is likely to cover many different product areas including desktop applications (OpenOffice.org, Firefox, etc), groupware solutions (Zimbra, Evolution, etc) document management (Alfresco, OpenKM, etc) and databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc).
