Open source is answering the call on all levels of business as they look for opportunities to carve out costs and improve security, transparency, public participation, and collaboration.
Why?
Open source solutions are being used across all SME's to create efficiencies, eliminate vendor lock-in, meet mission-critical IT demands, and improve service delivery.
If you have ever received a document from a friend that your software could not open, then you know the frustration of proprietary formats.
You should now be using open formats so that users can freely exchange their data no matter what software program they choose to use. Complete interoperability is the ultimate goal of those who support open standards. And it's not just a matter of convenience. Public documents stored on closed, proprietary formats require citizens to pay twice to access information that already belongs to them, once for the document creation, and again to access them.
There is also the danger of losing the information stored in those formats should the vendors go out of business, or decide that they no longer want to maintain that technology. Proponents of open document formats believe all public information should be stored using open standards accessible to all.
Linux thin-clients have proven to be extremely reliable because tampering and viruses are virtually non-existent. It's distributed under the GNU General Public License, meaning it's free and always will be.
