UK Government May Switch from MS Office to Open Source 273
New submitter Karashur sends this report from The Guardian:
"Ministers are looking at saving tens of millions of pounds a year by abandoning expensive software produced by firms such as Microsoft. Some £200m has been spent by the public sector on the computer giant's Office suite alone since 2010. The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude believes a significant proportion of that outlay could be cut by switching to free 'open-source' software, such as OpenOffice, or Google Docs. 'I want to see a greater range of software used, so civil servants have access to the information they need and can get their work done without having to buy a particular brand of software. In the first instance, this will help departments to do something as simple as share documents with each other more easily. But it will also make it easier for the public to use and share government information.'"
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Is it Outlook? Is it Windows 7 cert store on the staff member's workstation? Is it Active Directory? Is it Exchange 2010? Is it God?
Clearly it's the NSA's backdoor.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
>Is it God?
Clearly not. What would God be doing mucking around on a Windows network? His competition on the other hand...
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
sometimes Excel is my whole work environment, hitting on huge databases, downloading chunks into pivot tables, using spreadsheet calcs to create masses of UPDATE statements that then change the same database.
All you need to do now is have Excel read email and you would have emacs as if it had been developed by Microsoft!