Puffbox

Is open source software a political issue? The Green Party is trying to get it on the agenda, with a call for IT consultancies’ government work to be released as open source, for others to use and improve. ‘This means the problem can be solved once and then implemented everywhere,’ they say, ‘without charging taxpayers again and again for the same thing.’ That’s assuming it worked in the first place… Frankly it makes perfect sense, and with such high-value contracts at stake, you’d have to assume the big consultancies would consider it ‘a price worth paying’. The Greens are also calling for ‘social movements’ to make a ‘commitment not to move to Vista.’ All very well in principle, but the OEM cost of Vista against an open source competitor like Ubuntu is negligible. OpenOffice versus Word/Excel/PPT might be an easier battle to fight.