Norway coughs up the kroners to support use of open source software in the public sector

Norway has decided to commit money to adapt the OpenOffice suite for various government uses.  This follows a commitment by Norway in 2006 to use more open source software in government functions.  It will be interesting to see if any developments and modifications get picked up and used or modified by other governments.

From the site:

"Minister of Government Administration and Reform Heidi Grande Roeys said she was granting 2 million kroner ($285,000) to the national center for free software to adapt and promote OpenOffice for such government use as public reports, accounting and archives.

'I want to simulate increased competition in the market for office software. OpenOffice is a good alternative to the supplier owned programs in this area,' she said. 'The problem is that the specialized programs and OpenOffice don't always give optimum performance together. The grant is to solve that.'"