14 DAY TRIAL // Regardless of the corporations' efforts to promote their proprietary software solutions, it seems that the general trend is to go in the opposite direction, which is switching to open-source.
The Redmond company has already lost one important battle with the open-source armada, and that was not in some god forsaken location, but in Massachusetts, home state of one of the most famous technology institutes - MIT.
According to the Associated Press, the Norwegian government is planning to use more and more open-source software to reduce its dependency to companies like Microsoft.
"It should no longer be necessary to use software from the major, international computer companies to gain access to electronic information in the public sector. Now that dependency will be broken," AP cited a government statement.
In fact, Microsoft is also facing some difficulties in the UK, where BECTA (The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) is currently scrutinizing the company's software, under a "value for money" review of their educational licensing programs.
At the beginning of March, Andreas Pleschek, head of open source and Linux technical sales across North East Europe, said that IBM will not switch to Vista and that gradually, all the employees will start switching from Windows XP to the open-source solutions.