http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/7605219.htm

``It's an extremely big announcement,'' said Louis Suarez-Potts, community manager for OpenOffice.org. ``What we've been seeing in the last nine months is more and more national governments moving over and supporting open-source endeavors. Israel is an extremely important economy.''

Suarez-Potts said his group would soon be able to release a Hebrew language version of its software as part of a broad effort to develop localized versions.

OpenOffice.org is an effort sponsored by Sun Microsystems to develop open-source versions of software that would compete against Microsoft Office, the suite of productivity software from the Redmond, Wash., company.

In the short term, Israel's government agencies will use existing Microsoft Office products rather than upgrade to newer versions. In the meantime, the Israeli government will encourage the development of lower-priced, open-source alternatives to Microsoft in an effort to expand computer use by the public.

``The move with Microsoft was a purely economic decision,'' said a Finance Ministry spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press. ``The Israeli government will not be purchasing new products from Microsoft but will implement its contract to secure existing systems.''
- posted by sankarshan @ 1/12/2004 07:38:00 PM