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Government plans to implement open source code system

The government is planning to implement an open source code project between next year and 2005 by encouraging R&D in office software systems and opening the source code to government agencies and private establishments, an official of the National Center for High Performance Computing said yesterday.

Chuang Tze-nan (莊哲男), director of the National Science Council-affiliated center, said it is expected that with the application of locally developed software systems, the government can save NT$2 billion from royalty payments to foreign manufacturers, while the benefits to the private sector can be as high as NT$10 billion.

The technology and information industry commission of the Legislative Yuan convened a meeting yesterday with the participation of officials from the National Science Council, the National Center for High Performance Computing, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Education, the Industrial Technology Research Institute, Academia Sinica and the Public Construction Commission.

Legislators commented during the meeting that the government has failed to react to Microsoft's monopoly on Taiwan's office software market. Although some government officials have voiced their support for the development of free software, public investment in software development projects this year is less than NT$60 million, according to DPP Legislator Liu Shih-fang (劉世芳).

Answering a question from Liu on the possibility of the government providing subsidies to all levels of schools for the purchase of software, Vice Education Minister Wu Tieh-hsiung (吳鐵雄) said that the ministry provides each university, college, high school and vocational school with NT$1 million annually for this purpose.

NSC Vice Chairman Hsieh Ching-chih (謝清志) said that for quite a long time, Taiwan's consumers have had little choice but to use imported software.

Government statistics show that as of the end of 2000, government agencies as well as schools had a total of 1.23 million personal computers. Should these computers use Microsoft software systems, the royalty payments to the US software giant might exceed NT$10 billion, Hsieh said.
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