SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It seems likely that everyone here has heard the old saw "No one ever got fired for buying|using Microsoft". Well, times change.
The government of the Italian province of South Tyrol wants to save money and, noting Munich's savings of over 10 million euros, it sees Free Software as a solution. (The freedom thing isn't lost on them either.)
Governor Arno Kompatscher says "We've started to review our license costs. If there are free and open source alternatives, and where the costs and risks of changing are justified, we will switch to these." The new policy is meant to reduce IT costs. Should this fail, the region must resort to reduce its workforce, in order to balance the region's budget.
Did you catch the nuance? If you are a gov't employee and they can't change software because you aren't adaptable enough to use something other than Windows, you can plan on being the first one out the door. Hat tip to Robert Pogson for just the right spin on this story.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday April 21 2014, @12:33PM
They set you up to fail. That way, when they got rid of you for their real reason (probably saving money on health insurance costs, and not wanting an underling getting paid more than they got), you couldn't sue them.
That's how a cold-hearted business mind works.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.