The universities also play a very important role in both training qualified ICT personnel and participating in OSS projects. I found this statement surprising. I studied at a Melbourne university, and when I spoke to lecturers of FOSS, one lecturer even went so far as to call
Interesting indeed. those people "crazy.. and will do themselves out of a job". The IT department was run almost exclusively by Solaris. The programming language taught was mostly Java - one of the most free-software-unfriendly programming languages at the time. It was also basically impossible to study without a Windows license due to the abundance of assignments handed out exclusively in MS Word format. Only a single lecturer actually expressed any interest in free software, which was a man who taught the subject "Linux System Administration"[sic]. If this statement is to be believed, either things have changed a lot recently, or other universities take [F]OSS much more seriously than the one I went to did. I don't have any additional information on the Australian public sector's involvement in any FOSS projects. The companies I have worked at were mostly good at making the most of it for internal use, but didn't do anything with it that the public would be aware of. This could be common, I suppose. Regards, Adam On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 11:21:20AM +1100, Adrian Colomitchi wrote:
Hi guys,
I think you might be interested to get a perspective on the degree of use of OSS around the world, at least the way it looks like from Spain.
http://observatorio.cenatic.es/images/stories/estudios_e_informes/empresas/i...
"The United States, Australia and the Western European countries lead the development and adoption of open source software."
"In the public sector, Europe has experienced greater penetration."
"In the Pacific region, Australia stands out as one of the countries with the highest degree of open source software adoption in the world, thanks to its active communities of OSS developers who participate in international projects. The universities also play a very important role in both training qualified ICT personnel and participating in OSS projects. The Australian business sector spends a significant part of its R&D budget on OSS projects, which results in the country having a large subsector of open source software companies within the ICT sector and in the presence of OSS centres of excellence in the country. This is accompanied by a policy of support by the government, which has encouraged the adoption of OSS by the Public Sector."
What? To me, it doesn't feel quite right, but maybe my "basement" is deep enough to "shield" me from the marvellous extent of OSS in the Australian public sector? Any additional info you may have specifically on this? The links at page 98 look rather old, are these policies and guides still actual for the public sector ?
Regards,
Adrian
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