Estonian Ministry saves money with open source

The Estonian Ministry of the Environment has saved millions of Euro over the past 10 years by using OpenOffice, the open source office suite, according to Meelis Merilo, the head of the Ministry’s IT department, in a news item posted on OSOR.

Using the open source package has cost the Ministry no more than €64,000 over the past ten years; and this was solely the annual budget for training users. Had the Ministry continued to use a proprietary office suite, the costs for purchasing or renting proprietary software licences and user training would have ranged between €1.4 and €2.8 million Euro, Merilo showed in a presentation at the Latvian Open Technology Association (LATA) on 18 January in Latvia’s capital, Riga.

Read the original article.