Friday, November 1, 2013

‘Ditch Microsoft Office or take a pay cut: Which would you choose?’

<p>The capital of South Tyrol, the region that decided to ditch proprietary software rather than cut staff's wages. Image: Shutterstock</p><p>The strongest driver for free software adoption in a public administration? Fear of layoffs.</p><p>If you don't believe it, ask the autonomous province of South Tyrol, in Northern Italy. The local government has just begun implementing a plan that will have most public sector organisations in the region using LibreOffice by 2016. Really.</p><p>And why did they do it? Because the austerity measures passed by the national government meant the region was left facing a 16m cut to its personnel budget. In order to avoid cutting employees (or, more likely, their pay), management and unions had to find a creative solution. Which they did: a mass migration from Microsoft Office to an open source equivalent.</p><p><a href="http://www.zdnet.com/ditch-microsoft-office-or-take-a-pay-cut-which-would-you-choose-7000022348/">Keep reading...</a></p>

News Timeline



From Our Sponsor