Top Officials Seek Alternatives to Microsoft

[mea culpa <jericho () DIMENSIONAL COM>]

http://www.federaltimes.com/topstory.html

Top Officials Seek Alternatives to Microsoft
By Stephen Trimble
FEDERAL TIMES STAFF WRITER

Concerned about security and an excessive reliance on Microsoft software,
senior administration officials plan to diversify the types of operating
systems software purchased by the government.

The National Security Council soon will create a new office to assess the
ways federal agencies could make greater use of open-source, or
nonproprietary, software that is freely available to anyone and has codes
that are not secret.

"One of the areas we are very interested in looking at is open-source
code," a senior White House official told Federal Times.

The effort ultimately could affect the types of software the government
purchases for network servers and desktop applications.

The government will buy $2 billion worth of software in 2000, according to
Federal Sources Inc., of Fairfax, Va., a market research company.

The initial purpose of the new software assessment office will be to
identify agencies and programs that will be candidates for trials of open
source software, said the White House official, who asked not to be
identified.

The General Services Administration and the National Institute of
Standards and Technology also are involved in creating the office. Its
location still is to be decided.

The new office will assess the costs and benefits of using open-source
software to operate many government computers. Also to be determined are
the cost and technical obstacles to communication between systems using
open-source and the proprietary software now in use.

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