The Communist Party of Vietnam plans to switch its 20,000 desktop computers nationwide to open-source software until the coming year, this way avoiding problems with copyright infringement.

The efforts made by Microsoft to reduce software piracy in Vietnam, where an industry group has estimated more than 90% of all software is counterfeit were useless. The applications got sold as cheap as $2 per CD.

The Communist Party has announced that it will replace Microsoft Office with the free software product OpenOffice, to avoid breaching the law or paying a lot of money per licensed program. The council that took the decision met on Thursday, October 10, to decide how they will choose the open source programs.

The products selected for this campaign must meet some conditions: they must be created under a general public license, be user-friendly, satisfy the fundamental requirements of state agencies, and meet international standards. Also, they should be highly integrative and popular.

Nguyen Anh Tuan, Head of the IT Industry Agency under the Ministry of Information and Communications said that office programs are the most expensive applications, costing almost 70% of basic software expenses and by moving to free alternatives, the users can save from 25% to 90% on expenses. After the choice of open source office programs, the council will select an operating system, browser, email client and other necessary products. It seems that Ubuntu is the preferred Linux distribution at this moment.

Some state agencies, like Ho Chi Minh City's departments of trade, post and telecommunications, science and technology were already using OpenOffice on a trial basis, before the governmental decision.

If the government offices, local consumers, shop owners etc., adopted open-source software, the piracy could dramatically fall.

Hoang Le Minh deputy director of the city's Department of Post and Telematics said: "Open-source software will be the answer to help the Government save money and allow ordinary customers to have access to affordable authorised software."