*Office of Government Commerce
*Open Source Software Trials in Government
Final Report
http://www.ogc.gov.uk/oss/Report-v8c.htm
Thanasis
Key Conclusions
On the basis of the empirical evidence and experience reported from the
trials sites and elsewhere, the current study has concluded that:
- Viability of OSS: Open Source software is a viable and credible
alternative to proprietary software for infrastructure implementations,
and for meeting the requirements of the majority of desktop users;
- Obstacles to implementation: The main obstacles to widespread
implementation of Open Source software are: for desktop applications,
the current lack of complex functionality which can affect ease of
migration and interoperability for some organisations; and for business
applications, the lack of Open Source products to compete with
large-scale proprietary enterprise-level products; no significant
obstacles were noted for the adoption of Open Source in infrastructure
developments;
- Costs and benefits: Adoption of Open Source software can generate
significant savings in hardware and software costs for infrastructure
implementation, and reduce the licensing costs and hardware refresh
requirements for desktop implementation;
- Lessons learned: Adoption of Open Source, particularly for the
desktop, requires investment in planning, training of users, development
of skills for implementation and support, and detailed consideration of
migration and interoperability issues.