More and more countries are embracing the collaborative model of open source on a national level to fend off caged IT models. The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore’s (IDA) Technology Group has positioned Linux as a medium term technology bet, which means one to three years to mass adoption. According to IDA, software procurement decisions in the public sector continue to be based on value-for-money and fit-for-purpose, and do not prefer nor exclude open source software in their tender specifications and evaluations. The public sector currently has a heterogeneous environment and Linux Server operating system is widely used in the government. Government agencies such as the Ministry of Defence are already using open source software.

Looking back, the inflection point for global Linux adoption began in Europe about four years ago. In 2001, the German parliament adopted a resolution that declared the government should use open-source software “whenever doing so will reduce costs”. Two years later, a technology advisory group to the European Commission issued a report that called open-source software “a great opportunity” for the region that could “change the rules in the information technology industry”, reducing Europe’s reliance on imports. Since the German uprising, more than 125 national open-source policies have been proposed worldwide.

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Source: ComputerWorld Singapore