The government has announced a preference for opens source software in the new Government Service Design Manual, designed to standardise government service approaches.

The manual released on the 14th March detailed how open source software should be used: “in preference to proprietary or closed source alternatives, in particular for operating systems, networking software, web servers, databases and programming languages.”

The manuals promotion of open source services isthe first time that the government has stated such a preference for open source services over the commonly employed licenced services of the past.

By promoting a move to employ open source services and software, at time where such services are able to compete effectively with licenced alternatives, the government seeks to generate significant costs savings and increase agility and ease of use, while avoiding obstacles posed by proprietary product licences and T&C.

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