Does your government encourage open software?

The title says it all.

But, in reality, do you find that you have to use a particular browser, OS, PDF reader, spreadsheet or word processor when dealing with government organisations?

 

In answer to the title of the thread....I seriously doubt it. And as regards the software used for communication within....generally speaking yes, but not always.

 

Haven't worked in a government institution just yet since I'm still trying to graduate. But based from school experience, I doubt my government encourages it. The university I go to wants students to use Microsoft's OS and Office suite as well as other windows only applications. Another sad thing with my university is that the computers are installed usually with cracked/pirated software (Autocad, Photoshop, MS Office, etc.) on top of a free AV that was last updated circa November,2008; and to some extent, even encourages the students do the same. At least the last batch of computers that came last week for student use didn't have pirated winXP like 95% of the computers here, but legit windows 7 starter/home operating systems.

At one point, I had a slight argument with a prof who wants us to strictly use MS Visio as opposed to something like DIA even for simple schematic diagrams. In total, there's probably only me and a prof who dual boots to ubuntu on their laptops for browsing, word processing etc. But hey, at least I get to watch youtube faster with the uni's wireless compared to when I'm at home.

Sad state really. I'm guessing people just got used to using the same old apps and are too rigid to change or even the slight hint of it.

 

Following countries have adopted ODF (Open Document Format):
Belgium
Brazil
Croatia
Denmark
France
Japan
Malaysia
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Russia
South Africa
Switzerland
Uruguay
http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/Adoptions-ODF-Aug2008.pdf

 

Bob, re. SA, here's an interesting comment about pdf and how a certain branch of the government is issuing pdf documents that can be viewed only with Adobe's Acrobat Reader. I know it's free but why should a government insist that one reader should be used?

In the link below, please see the post dated Sept 7, 2010 (at 11:13 h):
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-non-adobe-pdf-reader.htm

Incidentally, there's also this link which refers to governmental bias regarding pdf readers:
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/i...nst-governmental-PDF-reader-bias-1080068.html