Malaysia opts for open source

The government has said it will give priority to open source over propriety software, when the merits of using either are equal.

According to the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Masterplan, public sector suppliers will have to make 60 per cent of new servers and 30 per cent of office networks run OSS.

Other objectives of the plan included reducing the cost of ownership and increasing freedom of choice in the public sector.

The Malaysian Government IT and Internet Committee (GITIC) created the plan.

* Oracle has revealed that one-third os its software sold to China is now running under Linux.