<blockquote>'The days of the mega IT contracts are over, we will need you to rethink the way you approach projects, making them smaller, off-the-shelf and open source where possible.'
- Francis Maude (Cabinet Office minister)
Along with the obvious zero licence fee benefit of using open source – compared to a product such as Microsoft Office, which retails for over £216 per user – open source allows government to avoid supplier lock-in..
- Cliff Saran,
'..large-scale deployment of non-Microsoft PC software in the public sector.' 01 December 2011</blockquote>
<blockquote>'The UK's
Cabinet Office has published an
Open Source Procurement Toolkit for the public sector. The toolkit consists of a set of documents including an introduction to open source, an advice note on how procurement of open source should progress, "Options for open source" and guidance on total cost of ownership..'
-
Open source buying toolkit published by UK Cabinet Office, 3 November 2011</blockquote>
<blockquote>'..As made clear in the toolkit published last month, cost savings from avoiding proprietary software are not the only motivation for the government to encourage the use of open source; another important criterion is to avoid vendor lock-in, thereby encouraging competition and improving control over IT projects.'
-
UK's DWP to trial open source on desktop PCs 5 December 2011</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
The Third Industrial Revolution has begun (2) - Open Source..</blockquote>