90 % of public authorities and 75 % of companies in Spain already use free software, according to the latest figures released by the National Statistics Institute.
The data was presented by Miguel Jaque, managing director for the Spanish Open Source Software National Observatory (Centro Nacional de Referencia de Aplicación de las TIC basadas en Fuentes Abiertas - CENATIC, in Spanish), to coincide with Extremadura regional government’s commemoration of Software Freedom Day on 17 September 2011, a global event to educate the public about the benefits of using high quality free and open source software (FOSS).
Mr Jaque outlined these figures which demonstrate the importance of open source (OS) in today's society: "Free software is already contributing a great deal to our society," he told a Spanish news agency prior to the day’s celebrations, which were mainly devoted to "making the industry aware" of the progress being made.
"Today we focus on mobility," said Mr Jaque, who believes that the future lies in mobile technology, which will increasingly allow access to information through mobile devices. Moreover, he argued that OS saves costs and improves efficiency in public authorities and that the public is already seeing the benefits it brings.
Mr Jaque also discussed CENATIC’s progress. He said that its development at national level mainly among public authorities, which is a primary objective, "is performing extremely well." This is a result of the regional government of Galicia joining the CENATIC board of trustees in 2011, thus bringing the board’s autonomous communities to nine. He considers this action as key given that public authorities are engaged as drivers in the local IT sector. He further added that with the autonomous communities of Aragon, Asturias, Baleares, the Basque Country, Cantabria and Galicia supporting free software, it meant that IT businesses established within their territory had more opportunities as well as business options.
Note: The original article in Spanish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
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