Heise: “Extremadura completely switches to Linux and OpenDocument”
According to Heise Online, Extremadura completely switches to Linux and OpenDocument.
Extremadura, a region in Spain, switched all of the computers in its educational systems to a customized version of Debian–and OpenOffice–in early 2003 (including 80,000 machines in all), and has been working to expand the use of FOSS ever since.
“A Linux distribution called gnuLinEx, which was developed in-house as a derivative of Debian, will be used as the operating system. In addition, freely available office applications running on Open Source licenses will be used. All of the staff in the administration are obligated to use the ISO standards ODF and PDF/A to share and archive documents. ODF was originally developed from within the Open Source community OpenOffice.org as a vendor-independent document format based on XML…
Vázquez de Miguel says that the region will “no longer be so exposed to the problems caused by forced migrations” after this switchover. Furthermore, he says the administration will have more input in the selection of software and be able to reduce support costs… In addition, the region expects free software to increase security and autonomy in addition to making public expenditures easier to calculate and track.”