Conservatives open up with open source

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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