United Kingdom: Ditch Microsoft, Save [pounds sterling]269m Says Hungarian Open Source Group.

Byline: Mamta03

Despite a struggling economy and public debt, the Hungarian government continues to spend millions on Microsoft licences when cheaper alternatives exist, say open source groups

With governments across Europe including the UK looking to slash public spending to tackle budget deficits resulting from bank bail-outs and other effects of the recession, open source could be an important way to cut IT costs, according to free software advocates.

But with Microsoft and other IT vendors equally keen to maintain lucrative government contracts as the private sector continues to keep costs down, open source groups in countries such as Switzerland and Hungary are asking hard questions about why the software is not even being considered as an option for some public sector departments.

According to a statement on the EU Open Source Observatory and Repository for European public administrations (OSOR) - a site for information exchange about community developed software - five open source groups including the Hungarian Open Document Format Alliance (ODFA) are petitioning the Hungarian government to disclose how much it spends on proprietary software licences.

In an open letter to the Hungarian government's procurement agency - Directorate General for Central Services (KSZF) - the ODFA states that last year the government spent around 9.5bn Hungarian forints (35 million Euros) on Microsoft software and has already spent 6.3m Euros on educational licenses and millions more on consultation and services from the software giant. "Please make your calculations known to the public which will prove that open source will not be a viable low cost alternative," the letter states.

Like other economies in eastern Europe, Hungary has taken a battering during the financial crisis and was the first EU country to accept a loan from the International Monetary Fund in October, worth around [pounds sterling]15.6 billion.

The UK government is similarly under pressure to improve its use of open source software. In September, open source users and vendors called for more teeth to the UK government's open source strategy, saying that the policy is simply being ignored."The UK has one of the best-written policies out there the problem is policing it," said Steve Shine, vice president of worldwide operations at Ingres. The problem is that large procurements simply ignore it, and this is not being picked up, he added.

In September, open source groups reacted angrily to the news that a Swiss government contract given to Microsoft without any public bidding. Vendors including Red Hat and other open source players called on a Swiss federal court to overturn a three-year contract issued to Microsoft by the Swiss Federal Bureau for Building and Logistics, to provide Windows desktops and applications, with support and maintenance, for 14 million Swiss Franc ([pounds sterling]8 million) each year.

The Hungarian open source groups claim that by ditching the use of expensive proprietary software, the Hu

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