The Junta de Andalucia has paid 12 millions euros to a “major international software company” in order to settle a complaint about the illegal use of software.
It appears that government offices across Andalucia have been using pirated copies of this software, and an external audit of government computers detected “massive” use of pirated software on government PC’s.
(I assume we’re talking Microsoft and Windows here).
Anyway, the PP have revealed that earlier in the year the Junta’s software department agreed a 12 million out of court settlement with the company to put the issue to bed.
According to Zoido of the PP party, the Junta decided that paying 12 million would end the problem quickly, and that the real cost of the pirated software was probably much greater.
It always annoys me that large public institutions still use proprietary software, given that there are plenty of free/open source alternatives that have full, professional life-cycle support available (SuSe, Red Hat etc.)