Israeli army considers Open Office on Windows

Posted by usharf on Jul 28, 2004 4:34 PM EDT
Linmagazine; By Uri Sharf
Mail this story
Print this story

It's A question of cost, again. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) will test running the Open Source office suite on Windows, on some of its workstations.

As reported on Haaretz today (Wed) The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in the footsteps of a similar decision taken by the Finance Ministry recently, will test running the Open Source office suite on Windows, on some of its workstations.

The IDF acknowledges it is paying license fees for thousands of workstations which do not require full blown Office Suite, and is expecting to be saving "millions of dollars" pre year, by installing the free alternative.

The decision, taken by IDF's central computer facility, acknowledges the new trend led by the Israeli Finance Ministry, which will distribute thousands of copies of the localized version of OpenOffice to the public, but IDF is not required to comply with any decisions or recommendations made by the Ministry.

The IDF wishes to asses the benefits of such migration, comparing the total cost of license fees vs. the costs involved in converting documents to the new format. Hebrew tops any compatibility issues already know between the two document formats.

Switching to Linux was considered as well, but the decision was to stick with Windows due to incompatibilities with some applications. Microsoft Israel's response: "Micsorsoft Office 2003 will be used in some new operational projects, and we see that as a more substantial decision."

  Nav
» Read more about: News Story:

« Return to the newswire homepage

This topic does not have any threads posted yet!

You cannot post until you login.