Countries considering Linux

• Venezuela's Government shifts to Open Source Software (By Brian Proffitt Managing Editor)
  According to government sources in Venezuela, the South American nation has announced an official policy that exclusively calls for the use of open source software in that government. The announcement, made on Wednesday, stated that from now on, all software developed for the government must be licenced under the GPL.[Aug 30, 2002]
• Swedish government mulls Linux (By Andrew Orlowski)
  Despite signing a recent deal with Microsoft, Sweden has become the latest country to investigate the benefits of free software. [Aug 22, 2002]
• Telstra will explore using the open source Linux OS as part of a new standard operating platform being scoped by the telecommunications giant as it looks to reduce its $1.5 billion annual IT budget. [21 Aug , 2002]
• Microsoft backlash boosts Linux Caitlin Fitzsimmons
  MICROSOFT'S hold on corporate Australia appears to be weakening, with a rise in the number of big companies opting to use Linux software for critical applications. Air New Zealand, Centrelink and the Department of Veteran Affairs are among a number of high-profile customers that have recently adopted the Unix derivative in areas where Microsoft products would traditionally have been used. [ Australian IT - 20 Aug 2002]
• MandrakeSoft to provide Linux server software to all levels of French government [ MandrakeSoft - 20 Jun 2002 ]
• From Peru, with love ... Peruvian bill if adopted will mandate that government agencies in per utilize open-source software [ InfoWorld - 31 May 2002 ]
• Snapshots from the OS front (By Matt Berger )
  Germany, Finland, Peru, Korea, Thailand, Philippines, France, Germany, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Austria, Denmark, Norway and UK [ InfoWorld - 12 Jun 2002]
• UK government seeks to embrace open source software. [ The Register - 14 Dec 2001 ]
• Open-source fans welcome French government move. [ IT World - 26 Jan 2001 ]
• Korea migrates 120K civil servants to Linux desktop [ The Register - 14 Jan 2002 ]
• Red Flag Linux beats out Windows in Beijing, China [ The Register - 1 Apr 2002 ]
• Tux Takes its Seat in Germany's Federal Parliament [ Heise Online - 28 Feb 2002 ]
• Roundup: The world fights Microsoft with open source ( Germany and Taiwan) [ InfoWorld - 12 Jun 2002 ]
• IBM signs Linux deal with Germany [ BBC - 3 Jun 2002]
• Largo City(Florida, USA) saves with Linux, thin clients. [ZDnet - 10 Apr 2002 ]
• Finland State administration considering switch from Windows to Linux. [ Helsingin Sanomat - 11 Mar 2002 ]
• Linux Bill Introduced in Finland [ Linux Today - 18 Jun 2002 ]
• Argentina Mulls Open-Source Move [ Wired - 04 May 2001 ]
• Linux to become official OS of choice in Norway [ Linux Today - 30 Mar 2001 ]
• India going for open IT (the article has expired)
• Pakistan Government may choose Linux as platform instead of Windows
  ISLAMABAD, September 06 (PNS): While the government continues to engage Microsoft Corporation in dialogue to seek exceptional discounts for making its software as platform for official operating systems, a recent notification suggest that the stage is being set to adopt Linux instead. [ Pakistan News Service - 6 Sep 2002 ]
• Region Extremadura in Spain Abandons Windows, Embraces Linux [Washington Post - 3 Nov 2002]
• Japan Gov't considers abandoning Microsoft Windows (Sunday, November 17, 2002 at 07:30 JST) TOKYO The Japanese government is reviewing the possibility of no longer using Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system as part of its plans to boost computer security within the government, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported Saturday.[ Japan Today - 17 Nov 2002] (the article has expired)
• Goverment of South Africa has declared that it will ditch expensive brand name software in many cases and switch to opensource alternatives. [ Business Day - 20 Jan 2003 ]
• Brazil House of Representatives decided not to renew licenses for the "Office" suite of office applications, from Microsoft, with a total cost would be around R$ 4 million (US$ 1.4 million) according to the congressman, and is studying free software alternatives. (Original in Spanish)[ 18 Aug 2003]
• All public educational centre necessities in Andalusia are intended to be fulfilled, first of all, with FreeSoftware. [Hispa Linux - 24 Mar 2003]
• The Brazilian government plans to migrate from Windows to Linux 80% of all computers in state institutions and state-owned businesses. [Linux Today - 13 Jun 2003]
• There is Linux in Europe. All over the place. [ The Register - 16 Jun 2003]
• Fujitsu, IBM Japan and Oki Electric won a contract to designe Japan government payroll computer system using Linux operating system rather than Windows. [ This Is London - 9 Jul 2003]
• The three nations Japan, South Korea and China are likely to build upon an open-source operating system, such as Linux, and develop an inexpensive and trustworthy computer operating system as an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows.[Reuters - 31 Aug 2003]
• Massachusetts has adopted a new policy that favors open-source software.[ CNet - 30 Sep 2003]
• The South Korean government has announced a plan to have proprietary software on a substantial number of its PCs and servers replaced with open source alternatives by 2007. [ Silicon.com - 1 Oct 2003 ]
• The Office of Government Commerce of Great Britain has just announced a deal with IBM to trial open source software. [ BBC News - 10 Oct 2003 ]
• Ministry of cummunication and informatics of the Russian federation signed an agreement with IBM about creation of Linux Competency Center. Into its tasks will be the support of state organizations in use of Linux. [ CNews - 9 Oct 2003 ]
• Government of Brazil announced that it has signed a letter of intent with IBM pledging to develop initiatives that will promote the use of Linux in the Latin American country. [ InfoWorld - 10 Oct 2003 ]
• In a memo sent last month, Massachusetts Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss instructed the state's chief technology officer to adopt a policy of "open standards, open source" for all future spending on information technology. [ Boston.com Businnes - 19 Oct 2003 ]
• ``We are trying step by step to eliminate Microsoft,'' said Nguyen Trung Quynh of Vietnam's Ministry of Science and Technology. [ Silicon Valley - 23 Oct 2003 ]
• It is now government policy in China to use the Linux operating system across all government ministries [ CNN - 14 Jan 2000 ]
• The Chinese government has pledged to deploy a million computers in the next year using Sun's Linux desktop software.
• The Israeli employment agency, will replace 550 out of 700 users with OpenOffice. [ The Register - 24 Nov 2003 ]
• The Israeli Treasury has decided to walk away from the Government's contract with Microsoft. Signed two years ago, the contract expires this month, and the ministry is testing localized builds of Mandrake Linux. [ Israel National News - 17 Dec 2003 ]
• The City of Austin recently completed a group of pilot studies on the use of open source software in its day-to-day business. The results are in, and as a result, as many as 80% of the city's desktops may be migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org. [ NewsForge - 17 Dec 2003 ]
• In an apparent showdown over price, Israel's government has suspended purchases of Microsoft productivity software and is encouraging the development of an open source alternative. [ E-Week - 30 Dec 2003 ]
• The IT Council of the Swiss Confederation adopted at the end of February 2004 version 1.0 of the Federal Administration?s open source software (OSS) strategy, which, among other things, considers Linux as a future potential standard operating system for the desktop. [ EU online - ]
• The latest Linux win is the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC), in Washington, which provides administrative support, program management and policy development services to U.S. federal courts. [ E-week - 14 June 2004 ]
• The state of Mississippi has launched a Linux-based, mobile public safety system that links police, fire and emergency services. [ E-week - 30 Jun 2004 ]
• German Federal Office for security in the information technology (BSI) presents Linux Government Desktop on the largest fair and conference to the topic "Linux and free Software" in Europe - LinuxTag. [ BSI - 22 Jun 2004 ]
• The Indian President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, today advised defence scientists to shun proprietary systems and opt for open source codes to enhance software security in defence networks. [ The Hindu - 1 Jul 2004 ]
• All Government technology procurement will now have a preference for open source software (OSS), under the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Masterplan made available to the public this morning. [ TechCentral - 16 Jul 2004 ]
• The French internal revenue service announced that it has chosen JBoss's open-source application server to run the next version of its tax applications. [ News.com - 5 Aug 2004 ]
• The state of California should more extensively consider use of open source software, which can in many cases provide the same functionality as closed source software at a much lower total cost of ownership. [ California Performance Review - 30th Jul 2004 ]
• Iran has become the latest country to edge towards ditching the ubiquitous Microsoft computer operating system in favor of the open-source Linux solution. [ The Daily Star - 21st Sep 2004]
• The software company Trusted Computer Solutions, also known as TCS, is currently testing the secure version of Linux, which will provide its customers. The company's customers include the FBI, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence.
• Mandrakesoft, joined by Bertin Technologies, Surlog, Jaluna and Oppida, will boost Linux so it meets the Evaluation Assurance Level 5 (EAL5) of an internationally used security certification called Common Criteria, the companies said Thursday. The certification is particularly important among military and government customers; the French Ministry of Defense is funding the project.
• Centrelink, the Australian government agency responsible for distributing social security payments, is expecting delivery of Novell's Open Enterprise Server technology early next year. [ ZDNet - 28 Oct 2004 ]
• English Office of Government Commerce has concluded that Open Source software is a viable and credible alternative to proprietary software for infrastructure implementations, and for meeting the requirements of the majority of desktop users. [ 29 Oct 2004 - The Office of Government Commerce]
• State of Massachusetts, US, will follow two possible development paths: 1) new applications must follow Open Standards, Open Source, while 2) existing applications will be evaluated for 'encapsulation' or migration to Open Standards, Open Source. [ 21 Jan 2005 - InformationWeek ]
• The Austrian capital city of Vienna's local government is due to start migrating its desktop PCs to open source software in the second quarter of this year. [ 27 Jan 2005 - ZDNet ]
• The President of India, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, today advised defence scientists to shun proprietary systems and opt for open source codes to enhance software security in defence networks. [ 2 Jul 2004 - The Hindu ]
• The government of Brazil says it will switch 300,000 government computers from Microsoft's Windows operating system to open source software like Linux. [ 31 Jan 2005 - NPR ]
• City officials in Los Angeles are considering switching to an open-source platform for their computer systems to potentially save millions of dollars that could be redirected to other services.
• The U.S. Marshals Service is switching the databases at all 94 of its district offices in the United States and its territories to Red Hat Linux. [ 29 May 2006 - Federal Computer Week ]
• Department of Information Technology in Bhutan is launching Dzongkha Linux on 2nd June 2006. Dzongkha Linux created with the sole aim of providing complete Dzongkha computing capability in Linux operating system will be made available free of cost. The launch will be held at Banquet Hall and will be presided by Prime Minister of Bhutan. [ 2 Jun 2006 - Dept. of IT, Bhutan]
• Parliament in Denmark directs the government to ensure that the use of information technology, including software, within public authorities is based upon open standards. ( original text ) [ 22 Jun 2006 - GrokLaw]
• The China Earthquake Administration (CEA) has chosen SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell (NOVL) as its operating platform for CEA's Digital Earthquake Observation Network.
• Bahrain's Ministry of Social Development (MOSD) is to become the first ministry in the Kingdom and in the Middle East to base its entire IT infrastructure on open source technology.
• The Regional Tax Office in Lower Saxony, Germany is migrating 12,000 desktops to SuSE Linux and the open source KDE desktop. [ 9 Jun 2006 - ZDNet UK]
• From September 2008 on, all document exchanges within the services of the Belgian government will have to be in an open, standard format. [23 June 2006 - News.com ]
• Deputies elected to the French National Assembly in the nextlegislative session will find open-source software on their desktop PCs. [ 23 November 2006 - PC advisor]
• In about a year, through a public school grant program, State of Indiana education officials have moved at least 22,000 students from Windows-based desktops to Linux-based desktops. [4 December 2006 - CRN]
• Kent Police has cut the cost of running its major criminal investigations system by 90% using Novell Open Enterprise Server, the company's version of SuSE Linux. [ 4 July 2006- Computer Weekly]
• The U.S. Marshals Service is switching the databases at all 94 of its district offices in the United States and its territories to Red Hat Linux.[ 29 May 2006 - Federal Computer Week]
• Novell has signed a deal with the NSW Department of Commerce (Australia) to become an approved supplier of Open Source software and solutions under the Open Source (Linux) [ 8 March 2006]
• Linux is widespread on the desktop environment at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California
• Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to introduce the open-source operating system Linux for use within classrooms across the country in the near future. [ 07 Mar 2007 - gyaku.jp ]
• The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd. (ELCOT), a government-owned organization that delivers IT services to the southern India state of Tamil Nadu, has decided that its projects will be deployed on open-source software, including Linux. [ 03 Jan 2007 InfoWorld]
• Ministry of Education from Brazil is buying 90,000 Debian GNU Linux computers, with compatible wireless cards, wireless routers, laser printers. All computers will be installed at 9000 brazilian schools.
• The Republic of Macedonia decided to deploy 5000 Linux desktop systems in 468 schools and 182 computer labs nationwide, they chose GNOME on an Ubuntu distribution. [ 2 Dec 05 - Gnome Journal]
• The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) plans to gradually roll out the Turbolinux 7 DataServer operating system for all of its front-end banking operations over a three-year period. [ 29 Apr 2005 - TechWorld ]
• Intel will help the Vietnamese Communist Party's Central Committee for Science and Education (CCSE) set up a laboratory, called OpenLab, for testing and developing open-source software. Over the next three years, the lab will oversee the installation of the software on 27,000 PCs running Intel processors, the chip maker said. [ Aug 2006 - Digital Tokyo]
• All French government publications should be made available in OpenDocument Format (ODF), according to a report commissioned by the French prime minister. [ 3 Oct 2006 - InfoWorld ]
• Information technology policy draft released by government of Kerala(the state with the highest literacy rate in India) has stressed that Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) will be used in e-governance projects. [ 18 Jan 2007 - Hindu ]
• The South Africa-based CSIR (The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) has adopted the open document format (ODF) as its default document format as part of the organisation's move to free and open source software. [ 25 Jan 2007 - Tectonic ]
• According to the region’s Education Minister, schools in the Perm region will soon quit buying software from commercial companies and would start using freely distributed software like the Linux OS, Russky office and Open office desktop apps. [ 6 Feb 2007 - The Inquirer ]
• The City Council of Zaragoza (Spain) has decided to abandon the Windows operating system and move to open source systems that should save the Aragon capital city nearly €1M per year. [ 26 Feb 2007 - Linux Today ]
• The Korean government plans to spend 4 billion won ($4.29 million) this year alone proliferating open-source programs such as Linux across the country. The Ministry of Information and Communication yesterday said it would financially support universities or local governments, which adopt open-source platforms and software. [ Korea Times - 4 Dec 2007]
• The central government of Japan says it plans to spend around $1.25 trillion yen, or $10.4 billion, on IT over the next year. The government has said explicitly it wants to decrease its reliance on Microsoft as a server operating system platform. [ Network World - 5 Sep 2007]
• The Canary Islands have two derivatives of Kubuntu, one which is being installed in all (300) their schools and one used by the largest university. During 2008 and the first half of 2009, every single state school (about 1100) will have mEDUXa on their desktops. There are also plans for distributing a mEDUXa LiveCD. [ Ubuntu - 28 Sep 2007 ]
• Swedish National Police are implementing an enterprise-wide project for building all future IT systems on an open source software (OSS) infrastructure based upon Linux, MySQL and JBoss. Several existing systems are currently being migrated and all future projects will be developed on this OSS foundation. [ MySQL AB - 2 Oct 2007 ]]
• Ministry of Education from Brazil is buying 90,000 Debian GNU Linux computers, with compatible wireless cards, wireless routers, laser printers. All computers will be installed at 9000 brazilian schools. [ Tech Force - 30 Oct 2007 ]
• The Italian Ministry of Economics and Finance has selected Red Hat Linux systems to run the organisation's mission-critical applications. [ Computer Weekly - 18 Dec 2007 ]
• After a successful deployment of 13,000 Fedora Linux systems in Philippines high schools from a government grant, plans are underway to roll out another 10,000 based on Ubuntu.
• The French paramilitary police force said Wednesday it is ditching Microsoft for the free Linux operating system, becoming one of the biggest administrations in the world to make the break. [ AFP – 30 Jan 2008 ]
• The New Zealand Stock Exchange is moving to a Linux platform for its settlement and clearing system, replacing its existing HP NonStop platform and applications in order to reduce cost and increase flexibility. [ ComputerWorld - 18 Feb 2008 ]
• The IT adminstration of the swiss canton Solothurn will conclude the 2000 desktop migration to Debian GNU / Linux by the end of 2008. [ europa.eu - 19 Feb 2008 ]
• The Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) has announced that the agency will be migrating to OpenOffice.org office suite as well as adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF). [ Open Malaysia - 19 Mar 2008 ]
• The Russian government has now decided to make using Free Software the standard for *all* schools. [ ComputerWorld - 23 Oct 2008 ]
• The regional government of Sardinia, an Italian island usually thought of as socially and economically backward, has approved a bill designed to promote the use of open-source software throughout the region, a regional government official said Monday. [ Linux World - 27 Oct 2008 ]
• The Foreign Ministry of Germany is migrating all of its 11.000 desktops to GNU/Linux and other Open source applications. [ Open Source Observatory and Repository - 27 Oct 2008 ]
• Fujitsu Limited and Tokyo Stock Exchange Group, Inc. (TSE) today announced the launch of "arrowhead", the TSE's next-generation trading system developed in collaboration with Fujitsu based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux [ Fujitsu - 4 Jan 2010 ]
• Danish Municipality of Rødovre Expects Open Office To Reduce Costs Over Long Term [ e-Gov Monitor - 7 Nov 2009 ]
• The newly elected German government plans to support open standards and open source software. In its four-year coalition contract, the government led by chancellor Angela Merkel, writes it wants to orient its IT systems on open standards and include open source solutions. [ Open Source Observatory and Repository - 9 Nov 2008 ]
• Open Document format (ODF) yesterday became an official standard for South African government communications. [ Tectonic - 24 Oct 2007 ]
• Apoteket is Swedish State Pharmacy, (the largest state-owned pharmacy chain in Sweden) and recently chose to replace all its servers from almost 900 pharmacies with Red Hat Enterprise Linux as announced by Red Hat Inc.
• French General Directorate of Public Finance (DGFiP) is switching to Mozilla's Thunderbird email client for 130,000 users

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• Government funded project called SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) They run 2000 server clusters and are fast approaching 1 petabyte of data.
• Linux grabs big win with Reuters Reuters will announce plans Thursday to bring its financial information software to Linux in conjunction with Red Hat, Intel and Hewlett-Packard
• Credit Suisse First Boston (Red Hat Linux & Intel- mission critical app)
• Wall St. Leans Toward Linux: Merrill Lynch is in good company, with other New York-based firms such as Morgan Stanley Group Inc., The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston Corp., and ETrade Group Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif., all deploying Linux systems.
• Sherwin-Williams will upgrade their point-of-sales systems to Linux ... 'Sherwin-Williams Co., the No. 1 U.S. paint maker, plans to convert its computers and cash registers in more than 2,500 stores to the upstart operating system in the next year and has hired International Business Machines Corp.'s services division to do the job.'"
• Chrysler Group is using a new Linux cluster computer for crash simulation testing and analysis in an effort to make safer cars and trucks.
• Banco do Brasil will make significant cost savings and reduce administration costs by using Linux for its European back office banking systems. [ The Inquirer - 21 Nov 2001 ]
• Telstra's, Australia's largest technology company, giant SAP finance system, now on HP-UX, as well as web servers and applications servers, would eventually move to Linux.
• Motor giant Ford is switching to Linux for its sales systems, human resources, customer relations and infrastructure, [ The Register - 15 Sep 2003]
• The big news in Hollywood about Linux is it is no longer big news. Linux has won not only renderfarm servers, but the artist desktops of the top studios. [ TechNewsWorld - 30 Sep 2003]
• Oracle will finish switching its 9,000-person in-house programming staff to Linux by the end of 2004, the database powerhouse said Wednesday. Oracle is switching because "Linux systems are less expensive and faster". [ CNET News.com - 26 May 2004]
• McDonald's Germany deploys SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server for DNS, FTP, and proxy services on the Internet. [ Novel - 7 June 2004 ]
• Aeronautics giant Lockheed Martin plans a 10,000 seat migration away from Solaris over to Linux
• AT&T Corp. is testing Linux software as a replacement for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, which runs the 70,000 personal computers used by its employees.
• NASA has picked computer maker Silicon Graphics Inc. and chipmaker Intel to develop a major supercomputer based on Linux to simulate space exploration and conduct other research. [ CNET News - July 27 2004 ]
• First National Bank of Omaha said this week that it's nearing completion of a complete changeout of its distributed server infrastructure for a mainframe and blade-server architecture based on Linux. [Linuxworld - 16 Feb 2005 ]
• Australian company Kennards Hire is ready to replace Windows server with Linux at 90 branches, to accompany 400 desktops already running the open source operating system. [ 11 Sep 2006 - ZDNet Australia ]
• Phillipines: parliament member REP. Teodoro Casiño is expected to file a bill this week mandating the use of free and open source software and open standards in all government projects. [ 11 Sep 2006 - Manila Standard Today ]
• Novell South Africa today issued a statement in which it said it had reached an agreement with First National Bank of South Africa to standardize the bank's 12 000 desktops in its 680 retail branches on Novell's Linux product. [ Tectonic - 4 Jun 2007 ]

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