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Israel to Suspend Purchases of Microsoft's Productivity Software

Posted on: Wednesday, 31 December 2003, 06:00 CST

Dec. 31--Israel became the latest government to embrace the open-source movement in software, saying this week that it would suspend purchases of Microsoft's productivity software and explore less costly, open-source alternatives.

Though the full impact remains to be seen, open-source advocates embraced it as another sign that their movement -- which involves using publicly available code to create software -- is gaining momentum.

"It's an extremely big announcement," said Louis Suarez-Potts, community manager for OpenOffice.org. "What we've been seeing in the last nine months is more and more national governments moving over and supporting open-source endeavors. Israel is an extremely important economy."

Suarez-Potts said his group would soon be able to release a Hebrew language version of its software as part of a broad effort to develop localized versions.

OpenOffice.org is an effort sponsored by Sun Microsystems to develop open-source versions of software that would compete against Microsoft Office, the suite of productivity software from the Redmond, Wash., company.

Microsoft's standard Office suite includes e-mail, spreadsheet and word-processing applications.

In the short term, Israel's government agencies will use existing Microsoft Office products rather than upgrade to newer versions. In the meantime, the Israeli government will encourage the development of lower-priced, open-source alternatives to Microsoft in an effort to expand computer use by the public.

"The move with Microsoft was a purely economic decision," said a Finance Ministry spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press. "The Israeli government will not be purchasing new products from Microsoft but will implement its contract to secure existing systems."

Microsoft said it would not comment on the Israeli decision. But "Microsoft is always willing to discuss how we can help bring the value of Microsoft products and services to the benefit of consumers and businesses alike," the company said in a brief statement issued Tuesday. "We will continue to work closely with the government to explore how we can best meet their business needs."

The Israeli move comes amid growing public-sector interest in open-source, or non-proprietary, software led by the Linux operating system.

Some federal agencies in France, China and Germany, as well as the city government of Munich, have opted to use Linux on servers and workstations. National governments, including those in Britain, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia, are exploring open-source alternatives to Microsoft.

But one observer said it was too soon to tell how much impact such developments would have on Microsoft because open-source alternatives have yet to prove commercially viable on a large scale over the long term.

"There's no question the open-source community is making some inroads," said Michael Cherry, lead analyst for operating systems at Directions On Microsoft, a technology consulting firm in Seattle. "They have some value to add. But you get into this interesting discussion about whether there is a business model behind open source."

In October, Sun Microsystems announced that the Chinese government had pledged to install Sun's Linux desktop software on as many as 1 million computers over the next year. In September, a Massachusetts government official instructed the state's chief technology officer to adopt a policy of "open standards, open source" for all future spending on information technology.

Governments are a huge software market, accounting for about 10 percent of global information technology spending, according to research firm IDC.

Federal, state and local governments in the United States spent $34 billion last year on huge systems to track everything from tax collection to fishing licenses.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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(c) 2003, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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