(Switzerland) Bern Mandates Use Of Open Source, Banishes Microsoft Officially

Europe Moving Forward

By Dean Howell
December 11, 2012
Source

In an overwhelming majority vote, the city council in Bern, Switzerland has moved to implement all future infrastructure with open source technologies.  The “Party Motion”, as it is called in Switzerland, was submitted over a year ago, and has finally been realized.  Plans to move forward with open source design, strategy and implementation should begin immediately.

The party motion called for the following bullet-points.  These have been translated via Google Translate from German, so please consider that as you read them.<blockquote>- Development of an open source development strategy provides for that as a rule in all future procurements operating system and browser-independent solutions are chosen, will be announced in public tenders as product and vendor neutral and explicitly open source solutions are accepted with equivalent functional properties and similar cost structures, the open source version is preferred and specially developed software or on a contract code under an open source license is released.

- Active implementation of the open source development strategy by in computer science services, a competence center open source is created using knowledge building will experience using open source technologies gained through pilot projects and studies new areas of open source solutions are identified and adequate finances for the implementation measures are provided.

- National and international network of computer science services in bodies that work together for the promotion and government cooperation in the field of open source.

- In education, promote the use of and the transition to open source software with targeted support and train teachers with information and training measures on open source software.</blockquote>
The final council vote ended at 36 for and 20 opposed, effectively changing the technological landscape, and skilled workforce needs, in Bern forever.  Now the only question left is what soft of software will they be using?  What desktop environment will be used on workstations?  We would venture a guess at KDE, which is not exactly


Context

<blockquote>Open Source) '..the industry said was impossible: selling free software .. freedom and flexibility.'</blockquote>