Can Free Software save the public money?

Bern City Council have adopted an Open Source software procurement policy.

This reported by long time Open Source campaigner, Simon Phipps in his Computer World blog. It seems, as in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, that this decision had a champion, in this case, a Councillor called Matthias Stürmer. Phipps story details the bureaucratic politics around the trigger decision which was the Microsoft licence renewal agreements. The size of the agreement required Council approval and the Council had been moving towards preferring Open Source IT. The Council review requirement led Microsoft to reduce the cost to a value below the review threshold and the renewal was approved without the Council approval. The Council was, it seems, unamused and took action to ensure that the policy preferences of the elected council were to be obeyed in future. Phipps reports, …

Free Wifi in London

Boris Johnson has promised to wifi enable London , speaking at Google Zeitgeist and proposes using lampposts and bus stops.

Fantastic! Some correspondents are suggesting there might be some DE Act constraints, but we’ll see.

The article above also links to this video,

demonstrating the undoubted subtlety of Boris, his mastery of rules and laws and his approach to international relations.

ooOOOoo

Slightly amended in 2013, certaintly there was no London wide WIFI by the Olympics last year, and little sign of any progress. DFL 12 Aug 2013 …