Israel stops buying Microsoft software

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 4:52 pm

JERUSALEM — In an apparent showdown over price, Israel's government has suspended purchases of Microsoft productivity software and is encouraging the development of an open source alternative.

A spokeswoman for the Finance Ministry, which oversees government purchases, said Tuesday that government agencies would use existing Microsoft Office products for the time being rather than upgrade to newer versions.

The Israeli government also will encourage the development of lower-priced alternatives to Microsoft software in an effort to help expand computer use by the public.

To that end, the Finance Ministry has cooperated with Sun Microsystems and IBM in designing the Hebrew language version of OpenOffice software, a freely distributed open-source alternative to Microsoft Office.

"The move with Microsoft was a purely economic decision," said the Finance Ministry spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The Israeli government will not be purchasing new products from Microsoft, but will implement its contract to secure existing systems.

"On a policy level, the government is committed to expanding computer use. We want open source technology to spread, so more people will be able to afford computers," she said.

The spokeswoman said the government was unhappy with Microsoft's refusal to sell individual programs from its standard Office package, which includes an e-mail client, spreadsheet and word-processing applications. Not all departments require the entire suite of programs, she said.

Microsoft representatives in Israel did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

The Israeli move comes amid growing public sector interest in open source, or non-proprietary, software led by the Linux operating system.

Some federal agencies in France, China and Germany, as well as the city government of Munich, have opted to use Linux not just on servers but also on individual workstations. Entire national governments, including those in Britain, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia, are exploring open source alternatives to Microsoft.

Governments are a huge software market, accounting for about 10 per cent of global information technology spending, according to research firm IDC.

Federal, state and local governments in the United States spent $34-billion (U.S.) last year on huge systems to track everything from tax collection to fishing licenses.

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/sto...ory/Technology/

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1884, old post ID:15470

Chris Vogel · Post by **Chris Vogel** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 5:02 pm

Yea!

<offtopic>I would love to go to Israel. </offtopic>

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1884, old post ID:15476

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 5:06 pm

Now Canada might be next, USA??? This could truely be a new revelution to computing. Microsoft brought us as far as this, but are now blowing it, so let open source continue to lead us in a better direction and MS can go down with the ship - or join open source and make games (they make pretty cool games to be honest) and they can also go bigger with xbox and xbox2 etc...

If major software/hardware companies worked on making their stuff for linux, I'd be more then happy to install linux (if I can get it to install, that is, or I can still with red hat) and use it as my main OS.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1884, old post ID:15477

wldkos · Post by **wldkos** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 8:56 pm

takahita_tsukino wrote: Yea!

<offtopic>I would love to go to Israel. </offtopic>

Beautiful country.

Im glad to see this, they might be getting ridiculed, but who gives a

. It's an economic choice where money doesn't fall from trees.

Red, im gonna have to come to your house and put linux on one of your machines.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1884, old post ID:15481

Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 8:59 pm

"one" of my machines, I only have one, that's the problem. Otherwise I'd use one as server and put red hat (the only linux distro that actually installs for me)

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1884, old post ID:15483

Chris Vogel · Post by **Chris Vogel** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 9:06 pm

wldkos wrote:
takahita_tsukino wrote: Yea!

<offtopic>I would love to go to Israel. </offtopic>
Beautiful country.

Have you ever been? I haven't. I've just looked at books, television, etc...

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1884, old post ID:15484

wldkos · Post by **wldkos** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 4:45 pm

yes

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1884, old post ID:15502