An observer from the planet Mars might be forgiven for assuming that socialist politicians would be in favour of open-source, and right wing politicians would endorse commercial software. However, according to a BBC news report today, the opposite is now confirmed to be the case in the UK:

The government could save more than £600 million a year if it used more open source software, the shadow chancellor has estimated.

You really have to read the speech, and remind yourself this is the second most senior Conservative (right-wing) politician in the UK. Tony Blair on the other hand fawns on Bill Gates, and under his Labour (left-wing) government the UK public sector has been riddled with secret deals with Microsoft.

• If the opinion polls are right and the Tories are going to form the next UK government (big if), and
• if the Tories practice in power what they preach in opposition (enormous if), and
• if they manage to drive through cultural change in the public sector (“starting to get silly” if),

then public sector computing in the UK could be in for a big change after the next election.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Open-source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.