The government of Andalusia, one of Spain's autonomous regions, is preparing the ground to use a complete open source desktop environment.

According to a presentation made in July 2010 by José Félix Ontañón, one of the software developers involved, the analysis of requirements of such a desktop system is nearly completed and the next step will be a few small scale tests. Mr. Ontañón talked about the plans of the Andalusian government at the Guadec conference that took place in The Hague, Netherlands in July 2010.

For the first test, several workstations in the administration will be running a number of open source applications on the proprietary operating system currently used. In a second phase, a limited number of these desktops will be converted to run a locally tailored version of a Linux distribution. This distribution is called the 'Administration Edition of Guadalinex' (GUA).

Guadalinex itself is based on the Ubuntu Linux distribution. It is common in many schools and community centres in Andalusia, said Ontañón. It is, for instance, used on 300 000 school desktops and on more than 180 000 laptops for pupils and teachers in over 2 000 schools in the region. In late 2011, another 100 000 computers running Guadalinex will have been delivered to Andalusian schools. The open source operating system and applications are also used in 764 Gaudalinfo community centres, where every month they are utilised by at least 40 000 citizens.

Andalusia's policy to use free and open source software dates from 2003, when it was decided that schools and public Internet centres would use this type of software. The use of free and open source software aims to help towards modernising the region and to bridge the digital divide for disabled and socially disfavoured citizens.

Andalusia adopted in 2005 a decree stating that all the custom applications made by the public administration should be published as free software. According to Ontañón, "the development of this distribution shows that government Information Technology (IT) application development teams can cooperate successfully with open source projects". He also added that "administrations need to work with companies that understand how open source is developed, that relate to the community and are willing to contribute to open source projects."

"In Andalusia, the government's involvement has helped create a sustainable free and open source IT industry which is helping society break its proprietary software habits", Ontañón concludes.

Further Information:

• Original news article - OSOR.EU
• José Félix Ontañón's presentation at Guadalinex
• Guadec Interview with José Félix Ontañón