John R.

Birmingham

Information Officer

I live in Birmingham and - like a lot of local authorities - I wouldn't exactly describe them as visionaries capable of long term strategic thinking.

Obviously a few strings were pulled by Microsoft, and the council are going to stick with something which will turn out to be unsustainable and inherently unstable, not to mention insecure.

Ironic that local authorities are tied to the Government's efficiency agenda, but have a huge blind spot when it comes to IT. Linux is free, MS is not.

That freedom is about much more than cost, but they won't look far beyond those very short term savings.

Of course there are costs associated with training staff and migrating to Linux in the short term (and I mean over a period of about 5 years) but in the long term these would reduce.