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Malaysia moves to OpenOffice

OpenOffice has won the hearts and pocketbook of the State of Pahang in Malaysia.

Matt Asay Contributing Writer
Matt Asay is a veteran technology columnist who has written for CNET, ReadWrite, and other tech media. Asay has also held a variety of executive roles with leading mobile and big data software companies.
Matt Asay

Citing cost and ease of use considerations, the State of Pahang in Malaysia has officially moved to OpenOffice. I wrote yesterday about how emerging economies may prove to be the best source of growth for desktop Linux. Here is one more proofpoint:

The driving force for this migration seems to be cost of proprietary software and the fear of unlicensed software. OpenOffice.org is the obvious solution to these two pressing problems (thanks, BSA!) What is good is that they have chosen ODF by default, and they are not changing the file format to the binary proprietary ones.

What is interesting is that the public sector in Malaysia is moving towards FOSS independently from any government directive or mandate....

That is good, though the memo (see link above) does reference a preference for open-source software. That preference, however, seems to revolve around cost, not freedom. At the end of the day, lower-cost software that is of equivalent (or better) functionality will win. It just so happens that open source increasingly provides this value.