Another gem from Reddit, this article, called "Moving to open source would save government one to four billion" by Gijs Hillenius from the Open Source Observatory and Repository for European public administrations, discusses a report by the Dutch government that found that open source software could save the Dutch government billions of Euros. That's a lot of money, especially for a smaller country.
This report came from a civil administrator in the ministry of the Interior. However, later, the ministry removed links from the report after it was demanded by members of parliament. It all sounds a little sketchy; maybe this has something to do with how the report blamed proprietary software companies with their unfair prices and vendor lock-in. Ah, politics. Governments are supposed to play nice with these companies, right?
While this report was removed and negated by the government, its findings are powerful. As we're learning in class from firsthand experience (and experimentation), open source software often works as well as proprietary software. But guess what? It's free and more customizable. Go, Netherlands! One of the socialist MPs (Rik Janssen) has been pushing for open source. I don't know much about how other governments approach this issue but this could be an interesting case study.
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