They have a great website too – http://opensourceforamerica.org/ (I do think they missed a trick though, I’d have gone for “opensourceforus”, much more fun)

Obviously the UK are correspondingly on the ball (!). For information regarding open source in relation to the “Digital Britain” report you’ll need to download the PDF, you’ll find open source mentioned under chapter 8, section 19. However if you can’t be bothered (which of course you can’t, who would) here’s the extensive and inspiring text (yawn) >

“The CIO Council has also been laying the foundations for Digital Public Services by standardising on the desktop computer designs and approaches; the use of openstandards and reuse – ensuring all parties reuse the IP created by the Public Sector; the green ICT Strategy to drive sustainability as well as efficient and effective infrastructures”.

How many computers do you think run Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc (MS Office, basically) at what – around £50-£100/$50-$100 a pop with discount & volume licencing? Now imagine how many billions could be saved globally if nobody had to pay licence fees for their Office Software Suite, that’s at least 90% of all computers in the world (and which is why Microsoft are so rich). Here’s a thought, Firefox is already established to let’s switch to Open Office, one stage at a time, we can easily migrate the operating system to Ubuntu later.

Convinced yet? Back at OSFA, they have a superb 4 Point “Benefits of Open Source Software” page which highlights the advantages in a single concise hit, and as they say –


Open Source? There’s no reason not to.