Microsoft Lost

Following on last year's bold announcement that they will attempt to migrate from proprietary Microsoft Office products to an open-source alternative like LibreOffice, Italy's Ministry of Defense now expects to save up to 29 million Euro with this move. We said it before, and we'll say it again, this is the smartest choice a government institution can do. And to back up this statement, the Italian Ministry of Defense announced that they expect to save between 26 and 29 million Euro over the next few years by migrating to the LibreOffice open-source software for productivity and adopting the Open Document Format (ODF).

I went to high school where another student went on to run his father's business.

He had some real problems with Microsoft!

On a quiet Friday morning in 2000, the headquarters of Ernie Ball Inc., a popular guitar string manufacturer in Coachella, Calif., was suddenly raided by armed U.S. Marshals.

The agents seized the company’s computers, shutting the business down.

 Sterling Ball, the company’s owner and president, later learned the federal agents were acting on behalf of the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which received an anonymous tip that Ernie Ball Inc. was using pirated software inside the company.

“I would have liked for some other things I accomplished to be on my headstone,” he said. 

“It still bothers me to this day.

 But after we went open source, life’s been just wonderful.”

Here’s the article, link: After Software Piracy Raid, Ernie Ball Rocks On Without Microsoft .

 Article was originally written by Rob Wright and posted at CRN. 

By the way, Ernie Ball  and Sterling Ball are legends in the music world.

More Information:

More about how Ernie Ball Inc. went “open source” written in 2003

Ernie Ball Inc. Company history