Por: Edwin Villamizar*
Bogotá is in the middle of a migration to Linux and free software.Mayor Gustavo Petro is taking advantage of the existing legal framework (Agreement 279 of 2007), to advance the process of changing the operating systems of 992 personal computers.
The initiative, which has been successful in other cities such as Munich in Germany and saved about 11 million euros, or in countries like Iceland that plans to migrate all its infrastructure to the world of penguin, is being launched in Bogotá.
According to the public documentation of the project, the 992 computers are part of the technological renewal to which all public entities are subject.The savings is of the almost 1000 licenses.The schedule includes transition to new mail clients, messenger customers and mail server.On the other hand, the total cost of ownership reflects that investing in training generates future resource savings.
According to Offray Luna, coordinator of the free software group of the Planning and Information Systems Directorate, the change will be made towards Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, with modifications, to facilitate the transition of users from Windows.“In the first instance to Ubuntu.While we distanced ourselves from some of its practices, it was the distribution that gave us a bigger response capacity according to the contractual terms already determined.
Luna added that they made two customizations.
Perhaps the strongest change for officials and employees will be welcomed to LibreOffice, the productive package that will replace Microsoft Office.In other words Word, Excel and Power Point, now they will be LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Calc and LibreOffice Impress.From now on letters, balances, presentations and in general all office actions will also operate with free software.However, productivity will be proportional to acceptance and a good training process.
It is worth remembering that beyond savings in licenses, the true advantage and satisfaction of using free software is in its philosophy.The free software community is the aggregate benefit of using programs that are developed in society, and which can be studied, copied, modified and distributed at no cost.That is, the user at this time of Linux, for example, is receiving the contribution of hundreds of thousands of people who participated with the knowledge of it, and not only of a handful of engineers paying for a single company.
Do you consider the change pertinent and necessary?Those who use GNU/Linux and free software?
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*Student of the last semester of Electronic Engineering Industrial University of Santander UIS.Passionate about free software and its dissemination.
