British Government report gives green light to Linux

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 28 Oct 2004 at 12:52

The UK Government has released its report on the viability of Open Source software in the public sector, giving the platform its full backing where it offers the best value for money.

The report arrives on the same day that Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer sent round his executive email on the cost-savings of Windows.

Ballmer's arguments centred on the higher cost and difficulty of finding support and in-house training for adopters of the platform along with the exposure to intellectual property risks that Microsoft would cover you for.

Not so, says the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), department behind the report. Any fear that support may be fragmented or difficult to obtain 'may now be misplaced,' says the report. 'Many large suppliers such as IBM, Sun and HP are investing considerable effort and providing tier 1 support for the GNU/Linux operating system. Further, many proprietary software suppliers are porting their applications to run under GNU/Linux. Linux distributors have also extended their support life-cycles for their product sets. We expect this trend to continue and accelerate.'

And having spent a year piloting Open-Source-based solutions from IBM and Sun, the OGC's report makes for interesting reading on the benefits of migrating.

On the server side, the report says such a move was straightforward and the benefits clearly measurable. Powys, for example was able to consolidate some 60 servers to just 10. The organisations also noted improved security and better performance. Indeed the MoD Defence Academy based its complete Intranet and Internet configuration on Linux platforms, supporting Open Source applications and concluded that Open Source software is 'inherently more secure than one based on proprietary software'.

Ballmer, in contrast, said in his email that 'the number of security vulnerabilities is lower on Windows, and Windows responsiveness on security is better than Linux.'

On the desktop, systems such as StarOffice were considered acceptable for many of the tasks that users needed to perform. That said, no organisation managed to do away with proprietary software altogether, as many of them needed to maintain interoperabiility with external sites. Many of them needed the Access component of Microsoft's Office that is missing from StarOffice and OpenOffice - an issue that continues to dog Linux desktop migrations for SMEs in the UK.

Business software fared even less well: 'Software packages available under Open Source licences are typically limited in scope; there were no examples of licensed OSS application packages being used for `mission-critical` business services,' reads the report.

The likes of Novell are hoping to address this. Novell's MONO project is a development environment that makes it easy to develop and port applications to a multitude of platforms. This is key to allowing developers to move their in-house software to Linux, and an invaluable tool with which Novell can woo the corporate market too.

The other black hole for Open Source that the OGC pilots struggled with is a lack of documentation available.

As for the legal risks, the OGC noted the existence of the SCO suit, patent fears and the like but characterised such fears as a 'misunderstanding', noting that while Munich had delayed a Linux move due to patent fears it had nevertheless go ahead with it. Similarly, the only thing to take from the SCO suit is the result of the DaimlerChrysler suit which was as good as dismissed in favour of the car giant.