Linux World reports , "The Japanese government wants to go open source, as a way to rely less on a single vendor IT software infrastructure. And plenty of vendors are lining up to help make this happen."

The Japanese government has explicitly stated it wants to decrease its reliance on Microsoft as a server operating system platform.

This places Japan on a long list of other governments, including Spain, Brazil, Belgium, France and the Netherlands already heading in the direction of Open Source. After many years of paying a premium for software licensing, governments and companies alike are beginning to realise that operating costs can be cut, thereby reducing overall operating costs and cost to market, freeing them to provide a more cost competitive service or product to their customers.

It is widely claimed by many technical people that Open Source Software is

• cost effective
• flexible
  
• reliable
• secure 

Why should large percentages of the budget for a relatively small project be spent on licensing when excellent Open Source Software (OSS) exists that can take the place of proprietary software?

In a server environment, Open Source systems provide flexibility by allowing you to choose exactly what software runs on your servers. You also aren't paying for software you don't need, and you can trust that there aren't unknown components running without your knowledge. If you decide to add a new database server to your system there is no need to check with the accounting department first! This lets you implement your system the way you want it, not the system the budget limits you to.

History has also shown open source software is often more reliable and secure. An example of this is the GNU Linux operating system, which boasts high reliability and security. If you are running a website, you know it must be available at all times. If your desktop computer crashes sometimes, or does things for no apparent reason that may not be catastrophic. But if the web server your company website is hosted on behaved that way I'm sure you would be far less pleased!

The sum of all these benefits really means Open Source is a great enabler, one that enables you to do what you choose to do. For all these reasons and more, Division by Zero recommends the use of Open Source Software wherever possible.