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"The Government has made an important move towards opening its data for public use with the launch of the Open Government Licence, its answer to Creative Commons."

uk government Open Source data

"Among the dozens of staff-submitted ideas for the British government to save money are two that suggest dumping Microsoft and moving to Linux, OpenOffice and other open-source applications.

To be sure, they are just two among the 60,000 ideas proffered by those who work in the public sector, but just 31 of those were listed on the website for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "

uk government Open Source

"So we consider that the time is now right to build on our record of fairness and achievement and to take further positive action to ensure that Open Source products are fully and fairly considered throughout government IT; to ensure that we specify our requirements and publish our data in terms of Open Standards; and that we seek the same degree of flexibility in our commercial relationships with proprietary software suppliers as are inherent in the open source world. This open source strategy addresses these key points. It sets out the steps we need to take across Government, and with our IT suppliers, to take advantage of the benefits of open source."

OB UK Open Source

"Big corporations, such as IBM, Google and Amazon, are devourers of open source software because they find it cheap, efficient, low-maintenance and reliable. But UK government departments, including health and the foreign office, have proved risk-averse with hardly any open source in their infrastructure."

OB UK Open Source

"Here's a particularly entertaining thread on Flickr, in which members vent at the fact that their photos--many of which had been set for private viewing only--had been scraped by Microsoft and pulled over, creditless, to Microsoft's servers. Amusingly, some of the scraped "entries" were of iconic British landscapes such as that of, er, Tennessee."

OB Microsoft Flickr UK photography

'In a speech that read like a tacit disapproval of convicted monopolist Microsoft, Brown banged on before an audience of business bigwigs about the stupidity of protectionism. He said the model of openness integral to the internet and enshrined by the likes of Google was an example to be replicated on the international stage, in politics and economics. "You stand for an open and non-protectionist economy," he said. "The only way the net and the new technology can work is if there is openness and we are not protectionist".'

OB UK Microsoft Google

"A British government agency has told the European Commission that Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Office works poorly with rival software used in British schools, hurting the interests of learners, teachers and parents."

ODF UK Microsoft education OB