Omnilogic: Government should work with open source applications, not pay millions of euros for licences

The Romanian State should also consider open source technologies before allocating tens of millions of euros on computerisation of the central and local public administration, believes Gabriel Marin, general manager of Omnilogic, one of the leading distributors of IT&C products on the Romanian market. Open source applications are usually provided free of charge and can also be modified free of charge by those who use them. For instance, there is a suite on the market with similar applications as Microsoft Office - OpenOffice - which can be used for free, including by companies. Open source applications are developed by communities supported by large companies such as IBM, which promote alternatives to Microsoft technologies. Over the last five years, the Government has spent almost 112 million dollars (84.3 million euros) on Microsoft Windows and Office licences for the ministries and Government agencies, and has allocated another 100 million euros for the 2009-2012 period. "The various Governments have paid over a quarter of a million dollars to Microsoft in the last five years, no auction involved, whilst local firms either go bankrupt or become irrelevant to the market," commented Marin, citing the example of UK and German administrations, which use open source technologies.