Open source became part of state policy in India recently. French Armed Forces ditched many thousands of Windows PCs for Ubuntu and used FOSS solutions to cut costs. So did UK Government. And speaking of Italy, Turin recently became the first Italian city to adopt Ubuntu and LibreOffice saving millions of Euros in licensing and other costs involved with proprietary solutions. The momentum is clearly building in favor of FOSS alternatives. And Italian Military becomes the latest to join the Open Source bandwagon.
Italian Armed Forces Adopts LibreOffice and Open Document Format (ODF)
Italian Military joins the latest list of LibreOffice and ODF adopters. The Ministry of Defense will over the next year-and-a-half install this suite of office productivity tools on some 150,000 PC workstations - making it Europe’s second largest LibreOffice implementation, according to Open Source observatory.
Italian Agency for the Digitization of the Public Sector (AGID) congratulated the Ministry of Defence, and hoped that other organizations will follow through. The switch was announced on 15 September by the LibreItalia Association, an NGO working to promote FOSS solutions in Italy. The NGO will help the ministry to ready trainers in different parts of the military, and the Ministry is to develop a series of online courses to help with the switch to LibreOffice. The material is to be made public using a Creative Commons licence.
The switch to LibreOffice is a consequence of a June 2012 law which says that free and open source should be the default option for the country’s public administrations, according to LibreItalia. The project is also one of Europe’s largest. In a world where the mightiest of corporations and even the International Space Station adopting Linux and FOSS, this is hardly surprising. (further reading, image source)