The Conservative shadow chancellor George Osborne said
he will create a "level playing field" for open source software if
his party is elected.
“The government could slash 5% off Whitehall’s annual IT bill,
saving over £600m a year,” he told delegates at a conference held
at the Royal Society.
He said that the Japanese government was moving its entire
payroll system over to an open source platform – a switch that is
expected to cut operating costs by half.
Osborne reckoned that opening up the market in software would
enable the Government to save money, because open software allows
users to read, change and improve its code, in contrast to
proprietary software, where a company controls the source code.
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