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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: 3, Insightful) by mojo chan on Monday April 21 2014, @09:11AM
Indeed, TFS is obviously bullshit. Budgets are limited, local government is making cuts to staffing all over and these guys found a way to keep some people in work by switching to a cheaper OS. It's not a threat, it's a simple statement of fact - if their plan fails they will have to go back to cutting jobs because there is no money.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)