EU tries to ditch Microsoft Vista, XP and Office for open-standard
The European Commission feels there should be more competition in the technology sector. The Commission also feels Microsoft’s anti-trust practices are hindering competition in the European Union.
Thus the EU came up with a policy to seek out “open-standard” software whether its an operating system such as Vista, XP or office software. Open-standard software means software available at no cost to the user or with a small nominal fee.
However according to InformationWeek it seems the EU is facing a tough time practicing what it preaches internally. The Commission contracted Microsoft for software and support in the amount of 4.5 million euros annually until 2011.
On the flip side, the Commission fined Microsoft in the excess of 1.68 billion Euros ($2.58 USD) for anti-trust reasons. Some have even criticized the Commission for their inability to follow their own policies citing some projects were required to use Microsoft Excel.
All of these acts contradict the Policy announced last week by European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who pledges to promote open-standard software from now on.
According to Christos Ellinides, director of corporate IT solutions and services, indicates the cost of migrating to a different software platform ends up outweighing the benefits. He also provides software solution to the Commission as well.
Munich has already abandoned Microsoft software and started migrating to open-standard software and everything has been transitioning without a hitch. So, it is possible to migrate without major issues if done properly.
It seems like Europe is slowly attempting to escape from Microsoft’s dominance, it remains to be seem how successful this endeavor will be.
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June 18th, 2008
This is excellent news for Linux. Finally Linux will get that much needed boost unto the world scene. Proprietary, bloated and expensive is out. Lean, mean and free are in and in todays economy..it is a smart choice!