[luau] News - Europe's Microsoft Alternative

[Warren Togami]

This is an amazing article about Spanish government sponsored use of 
Linux in government and schools.  10,000 user machines converted 
already, with 100,000+ more coming next year.  Their government hired a 
company to make a customized Linux distribution for their own use that 
became very popular.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59197-2002Nov2

MERIDA, Spain -- Luis Millan Vazquez de Miguel, a college professor 
turned politician, is succeeding where multibillion-dollar, 
multinational corporations have failed. He is managing to unseat 
Microsoft Corp. as the dominant player in the software industry, at 
least in his little part of the world.

...

In Extremadura, the regional government paid a local company $180,000 to 
cobble together a set of freely available software. The resulting disk 
contains a suite of programs that includes an operating system, word 
processor, spreadsheet and other applications. The government also 
invested in a development center that is creating customized software 
for accounting, tracking hospital patients and crop-yield management 
that the agency will distribute free to citizens.

So far, the government has produced 150,000 discs with the software, and 
it is distributing them in schools, electronics stores, community 
centers and as inserts in newspapers. It has even taken out TV 
commercials about the benefits of free software.

...

For many, the Extremadura project symbolizes the seriousness of assaults 
on Microsoft by governments around the world. The European Economic 
Commission is promoting it as a model for the rest of the world, and 
officials from governments as far away as New Zealand and Peru have 
inquired about duplicating the region's efforts.

There are now nearly 70 laws or policy proposals pending in two dozen 
countries that would force or at least encourage governments to use 
open-source software. This year Germany said it signed a contract to use 
Linux in many of its government systems; other significant economic 
powers such as the United Kingdom, China, Italy and Brazil are studying 
the matter.

(continued in article)