Forgot your password?
New user?
Document Actions
Asian states see open source as window of opportunity
Government agencies in such countries as India, China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Australia are increasingly adopting the same stance. Their decisions are not entirely based on commercial factors like price and maintenance but on larger, geopolitical issues.
In West Bengal, a tropical region in the northeast of India best known for tea and tigers, students at 2,500 rural schools are getting their first introduction to computers.
But the software that gives them a window on the world will not be Microsoft's.
Desktop software from Red Hat, a U.S. company that repackages and sells the Linux system, offered savings of 25 percent to 30 percent over Windows, G.D. Gauta, a principal secretary in the information technology department in the West Bengal Ministry of Education, said in a recent telephone interview.
But even if Microsoft had dropped its prices, it would not have made any difference, Gauta said, because "the Linux system is a better system."
Source: International Herald Tribune
