Sooful, who said the city already runs some of the "largest open source implementations around", said the Smart Cape Access project has 540 open source-based desktop machines in daily use. "Right now we have more than 40 000 users in the communities using these terminals. To those that say the open source desktop is not ready for wide usage we say 'we are already doing it'. There is no better proof than to see this number of people using an open source desktop."
"The city's strategy is a pragmatic one. We focus on niche areas where we see value and implement OSS there. Ours is not just a philosophical strategy."
Sooful said that where OSS has been implemented across the city there were no comparable proprietary projects to doing accurate cost-of-ownership studies is not possible. "But we are finding that managing the distributed Linux computers to be much cheaper to manage than similar Windows machines. Our costs are in terms of the people we need to manage the installations," said Sooful.
Sooful said the city administration was also looking at extending the Cape Access infrastructure to include the approximately 1000 clinics
He said the City was also looking at converting all of Cape Town's library management machines over to open source software. This would add another 500-600 computers running open source software to the city's total.
"Countries like Brazil have been held up as leaders in open source for installing a couple of thousand OSS desktops across their entire country. And yet in Cape Town alone we will soon be running as many as 1500 open source desktops," said Sooful.
Autor: Alastair Otter
Quelle: tectonic, 07.12.2005
