The city government of the Dutch capital Amsterdam is testing the migration to Open Source desktop computers. Two tests are underway, one at the city district Zeeburg, and the other at the city's housing service. The standard office applications are replaced with Open Source alternatives on PCs running Linux.
The city council has reserved 300.000 euro for the experiments, that will run until the middle of this year. ‘Should the tests be successful, migration of all desktop PCs in the city administrations is an option’, says spokeswoman Marjolijn van Goethem. The city councils contract with its current supplier of desktop software, Microsoft, expires at the end of 2008.
The experiment started on behalf of the city council. This requested the city government last year to consider the migration to Open Source and open standards software. The council thinks this could make the administration less dependent on software suppliers. The council also believes that using Open Source software and open standards can improve data exchange and make it easier to permanently preserve data.
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Further information:
· Press release (in Dutch only)