Blah blah blah, tax payers' money, blah blah open source, blah blah blah, idiots.
There you go, saved 50% of the comments from being written. You're welcome.
Microsoft has confirmed that under the forthcoming Public Sector Agreement (PSA12) government customers will pay just 1 per cent more for volume licences. The development was revealed by El Reg late last week but both the Cabinet Office and Microsoft refused to comment on the financial details at the time of writing. The firm …
Well, I work in the NHS, and we do use Linux. The problem is that 95% of the vendors of clinical systems don't support Linux.
Because these are the things that are used in safety critical things (tracking of patient health etc.), simply saying "We'll try WINE" isn't an option.
Any behemoth organisation will only change slowly, and the NHS has been steeped in Windows for many years. It won't change overnight (though there have been some vendors being a little more enlightened).
This agreement tends to cover things like desktop licenses as well as server, so there's a lot of churn there, and a lot of cash if you need to track it to the exact license count for circa 4k machines (per hospital) for desktop alone.
Covering licensing areas as part of a deal actually lessens ongoing management costs, saving ongoing money. It also strikes a good deal (1% instead of 30% increase).. Again, this saves money..
It's a simple fact that the government needs to buy servers, and a large portion of those are tied into what vendors will supply (usually Windows, with the odd few Linux/UNIX). This looks like a big saving where necessary purchases are made.
"Because these are the things that are used in safety critical things (tracking of patient health etc.), simply saying "We'll try WINE" isn't an option."
I would trust Linux over Windows every time ....
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/12/drone_consoles_linux_switch/
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-air-forces-secure-linux-distribution/9618
Is M$ is completely integrated in all facets of public sector in the UK, there is hardly any open source penetration in public sector, with the exception of the Eee PC's for schools and the like, any transition from M$ to OpenSource would cost far more money than the 1% increase in price that they are now offering, after some good bartering/blackmail from the government. I'll take my hat off to them (UK.gov) for once in my life this time, they did some good ol' british haggling.