The times, they are a changing. One interesting, and in my opinion welcome, change is a new push by businesses and institutions to move to Open Source Software. Aside from the fact that most open source software is free, there are a whole host of other advantages worth considering. Two that stand out: (1) interpolability and (2) security. These are things every organization needs—you want people you like to be able to see and use the information you provide and you want people you don’t like to, well, not.
Apparently Obama is considering moving government-run technology to a more open model. Obama asked Sun’s chairman Scott McNealy, an open source advocate, to write a white-paper on the benifits. McNealy’s (admittedly biased) take:
It’s intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software….The government ought to mandate open-source products based on open-source reference implementations to improve security, get higher-quality software, lower costs, higher reliability–all the benefits that come with open software.
Read the whole story here.
In these tough times it will benefit many homes, churches, and non-profit institutions to look into free Open Source software as an alternative to high-priced proprietary solutions. Even just switching from MS Office to openoffice.org could take a significant chuck out of your fixed-costs! Or consider the Gimp instead of Adobe Photoshop, or Zotero instead of EndNote, and Thunderbird or Gmail instead of Outlook.
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