Being stuck in the neighbourhood between Russian and Europe, Hungary has suffered much conflict. The latest is over software. The government has identified that it’s IT is 15 years out of date and seeks to come up to speed ASAP. It has set up a FLOSS support/promotion centre with these objectives:
- reducing the cost of software licences in public administration;
- improving the quality of the governmental information technology services by enhancing the interoperability between different systems;
- improving the quality of governmental information technology services by spending the savings from reduced software licence costs on the development of service quality;
- the elimination of vendor lock-in in the case of national data assets by owning the software rights (use, development, further development, etc.).
They seem to be concentrating on servers and web-sites but they do provide much information about LibreOffice including Munich’s Wollmux template management system. They give presentations, courses and even distribute a CD-image(684 MB) with MD5 sum and documentation.
| A listing of the programs: gimp-2.8.6.exe gpg4win-vanilla-2.1.1.exe workrave-1.10.exe firefox/ firefox/adblock_plus-2.2.1-sm+tb+an+fx.xpi firefox/flashblock-1.5.15.1-fx.xpi firefox/flashblock-1.5.17-fx.xpi firefox/noscript_security_suite-2.6.7-fn+fx+sm.xpi firefox/adblock_plus-2.3.2-fx+tb+sm+an.xpi firefox/video_downloadhelper-4.9.12-sm+fx.xpi firefox/video_downloadhelper-4.9.17-fx+sm.xpi firefox/noscript-2.6.2-sm+fn+fx.xpi |
truecrypt-7.1a.exe klavaro-1.9.7.exe pidgin-2.10.6.exe libreoffice-4.0.4.msi 7zip-9.22.exe tuxpaint-0.9.21c.exe inkscape-0.48.4-1.exe libreoffice-helppack-4.0.4.msi firefox-17.0esr.exe audacity-2.0.3.exe evince-2.32.msi keepass-2.22.exe pdfcreator-1.7.0.exe keepass/ keepass/Hungarian.lngx vlc-2.0.8.exe |
vuze-4.8.exe thunderbird/ thunderbird/enigmail-1.5.2-tb+sm.xpi thunderbird/lightning-1.9-sm+tb-windows.xpi thunderbird/lightning-1.9.1-sm+tb-windows.xpi thunderbird/enigmail-1.5-tb+sm.xpi infrarecorder-0.53.exe scribus-1.4.3.exe stellarium-0.12.1.exe winscp-5.1.6.exe notepadpp-6.3.3.exe thunderbird-17.0esr.exe |
That’s a good start but they should figure out how to replace that other OS on their desktops to be completely free of lock-in. They could likely buy their new PCs with GNU/Linux installed. Presumably, if they use GNU/Linux on the server, use FLOSS applications on the desktop, and follow open standards, they should be able to migrate to GNU/Linux more efficiently. This move will likely cut their licensing costs in half but not their maintenance.
