EU: SUN and Novell to governments: there is plenty of Open Source support

Sun Microsystems and Novell, two IT services firms promoting Open Source, are telling government CIOs there is plenty of support for this kind of software, the IT news site Zdnet reports.

“CIOs who are thinking there’s a lack of support are probably people who are thinking solely in terms of spreading the risk over their existing infrastructure”, Zdnet quotes Simon Phipps, one of Sun’s Open Source evangelists. Phipps says there is enough support available for Open Source projects of any scale.

According to Zdnet, Phipps finds commercial support for Open Source or proprietary IT projects to be comparable. “The reason that open source works well is that it puts you back in control of what you spend money on and when; it doesn’t mean that you don’t spend money and doesn’t mean that you’re solely responsible for support.”

Support for the Open Source operating system GNU/Linux rivals that of proprietary systems, Zdnet last April quoted Paul Kangro, applied technology strategist for Novell. He suggests fears over support are spread by companies that feel threatened by this kind of software.

Both Open Source proponents responded to a study ‘The Australian Open Source Industry and Community Report 2008’, published in April, which suggests that a lack of support for this type of software is limiting its use by public administrations. According to the IT news agency, it is the main reason for a slow uptake of Open Source by the three largest departments of the Australian government, Defence, the Australian Tax Office and Centrelink.

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