451 CAOS Theory 
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Open source tour of Europe: Czech Republic
Matthew Aslett, June 17, 2008 @ 9:23 am ET
To coincide with EURO 2008, I’m embarking on a virtual European tour, taking a quick look at open source policies and deployment projects in the 16 nations that are competing in the tournament.
The Czech Republic team was just three minutes away from qualifying for the knockout stages of EURO 2008 on Sunday before Turkey managed to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 win. Publicly available information on Czech open source deployment projects suggests that the country has had rather more luck when it comes to open source.
Key projects:
There was early success in 2001 when Prague began to migrate wholesale to open source software, while in 2003/4 the Vysocina Region deployed two open source-based projects: e-PUSA, the electronic portal of the regional self-governments and KEVIS, the regional registration and information system.
The e-PUSA backoffice portal links Czech regional and local governments to facilitate data sharing and was expanded in 2005 to connect to the then Ministry of Informatics, and the Ministry of Interior (which later subsumed part of the Ministry of Informatics).
KEVIS, meanwhile, is a regional registration and information system based on Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Software consulting firm Marbes was involved in both projects.
2004 also saw the migration of Czech Post to Linux for 4,000 servers at 3,400 post offices across the country, as well as at 12,000 client terminals used by 20,000 employees. Novell’s SUSE Linux got the nod for both server and desktop roll-outs. Other deployment projects include long-term adoption in Ostrava.
Key policies:
Following these projects the then Informatics Minister decided to encourage the use of open source and helped form the OSS Alliance to provide technical analysis, recommendations, cases studies and support services to schools and public administrations.
A survey of open source usage followed, as well as the Open Government 2006 conference and training courses for students in Linux, Mozilla and Thunderbird. Since then, however, news of open source projects has run dry.
As was pointed out in the comments below, Liberix is a Czech non-profit organization set up to support the development, documentation, translation, and distribution of free and open source software.
Additionally, as noted by Kyo in the comments, the Czech Republic recently signed two strategic agreements with Microsoft for software licensing and a proposed security partnership that are designed to save the government CZK 700 million ($42m). Those may well have an impact on future open source deployments.
And another thing:
Red Hat invested 1.3m euros in opening a development centre in Brno in the Czech Republic in 2007. As I pointed out at the time, based on my limited experience of Brno if extraordinarily cheap lager, good food, bizarre desserts, strange tequila shot combinations, friendly locals and a warm welcome is what Red Hat had in mind, then it chose the right place.
As always we welcome your input. If you have examples of open source adoption in the Czech Republic that we’ve overlooked, please leave a comment below. For more stops on the European tour, see this post.
Comments (17) Categories: Software
[...] A Switzerland Czech Republic Portugal [...]
i am from czech republic and i must say: everybody (except a few freaks) is using proprietary closed sw, and planing to implement proprietary ms-based solutions as a substitution to already used open solutins. and the goverment says to public: “hey, we like microsoft and we are pleased to pay them astronomous charges! and you freaks go to hell!”
Thanks Satan! (There’s a sentence I didn’t imagine myself stating today – at least not publicly.)
umm, they don’t say it directly, but they mean it.
hi
i would be nice to make mention about worldwide Bata shoe stores (http://www.bata.cz/, http://www.bata.com) which at least in Czech republic (cca 70 shops) has all infrastructure on Linux (POS terminals, server at the store and DB servers in headquoters).
In oposition to Satan, I see all around OSS solutions. A lot web developers are using PHP, MySQL of course, but OpenOfice, Firefox and Thunderbird is in wide usage too.
In our company we have 130 Linux desktops and 5 key Linux servers. Now we are testing Linux for notebooks and I hope at the end of August we switch about 30 notebooks to Linux. A lot of users, we switch from crapy Outlook Express to Thunderbird …
We use OSS software not becouse “It just works …”
, but because “It works well.”
Qaxi
Thanks for the information Qaxi.
sorry, my fault, my english is terrible and i mean a state sector(jak se to sakra přeloží do angličtiny:)) where i work and see this.
Hi,
also state betting and lotery company Sazka use linux for thier terminal. I have seen restart when trying to buy some lotto. Very nice tux logo has appeared on screen
Regards
Bloud
In the Czech Republic there is also non-profit organization Liberix with its mission to support the development, documentation, translation, and distribution of free software-open source code, open standards, security, data a telecommunication. Liberix has summoned such scheme of the interest under the shortened concept of free information technologies.
Thanks lzap, I’ve added it to the post.
Please note that the government very recently decided to buy more than tho hundred thousand licenses of proprietary Microsoft software in order to “save” some US$40 Mio. in license fees. I am not aware of any selection procedure that (as the law requires) should have been performed before such a decision.
Of course, thanks Kyo, I’ll add that note as well.
Well, there is a big development center of SUSE/Novell in Prague with 80 people working here.
The development center is in Prague since 1998, and it is among the biggest development centers of Novell. They have also recently opened a new Novell Technical Services center in Prague.
I think, that status of linux in cz is very good. Some of czech schools is running on linux (servers and dualboot on PC). Community is also very large. http://www.abclinuxu.cz, http://www.root.cz, http://www.linuxsoft.cz High school make a lot of action for propagation of linux and open-source. http://www.avc-cvut.cz/avc.php?id=1302 Except CzechPost are running on Linux (Unix) a lot of other czech companies. Skanska, etc… http://www.avc-cvut.cz/avc.php?id=1302 (I am sorry for my english
[...] are all more advanced with policies and/or projects in place. However, despite early successes the Czech Republic’s flow of open source projects does seem to have run dry and the recent deal with Microsoft is [...]
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