I think all publicly funded software should be open source. The public paid for it, they should have a right to look under the hood, like they can with almost every other piece of government.

I’m also a realist, and have you met the EU? We’ve been working on architectural standards for organizational data for almost 20 years, and it’s nowhere near finished. :p

If we can’t figure out a standard for how to define a department or employee object in a data model, then how on earth will we ever maintain a universal Linux distribution?

I think your strategy for implementation is flawed though. You really don’t want to tear the house down and build a new one when people are living in it.

I realize I’m a bit of a conservative in that sense, but people’s lives depend on our critical systems.

As far as Microsoft goes, they are a company. I think they are a great business partner in an ocean of bad ones. It goes against my personal political beliefs to use proprietary software, but the public sector isn’t primary a tech sector and we don’t operate on personal ideology. We use the best and most efficient tools, at the cheapest cost, to support our primary function.