Wanted in Oz: Money for open source

In Australia, some want to be ahead of the curve in seemingly inevitable VoIP implementation. Senator Sandra Rossi of the Family First party was reported by Australia’s Computer World online version to have made an open call to the government for funding to support the “free and open source software revolution.”

Hood is apparently seeking to trigger a bit of a software debate among South Australian users, armed with a plan to use IT funding in establishing a computer so that “schools, libraries, and other institutions can decide whether open source is a better option than proprietary software.”

Hood cited the government of France as an example. La Republique, says Hood, first implemented open-source software in lieu of Microsoft product in their ministries of agriculture and law enforcement, finally decided to “dump” Microsoft software altogether. Closer to home, March will see the switchover of the National Archives of Australia to the “Open Document” format.

"Open Source often has significant advantages over proprietary software,” argued Hood. “With developers all over the world freely and constantly improving the software, it is little wonder that many open source solutions are now outpacing Microsoft products.” (Has Bill Gates heard about this? Can he just buy the entire island continent at this point?)

Hood was reportedly making the request with encouragement from the South Australian Ubuntu Users Group. Funding there is reportedly used to maintain software licenses and “this spending should be redirected to education and training. Secondly … organizations need a lab to test open source software.”

Interestingly enough, Hood also distributed open source software CDs to parliamentarians, presumably also at behest of Ubuntu users, eh?