Swiss tax office distributes open source software

IN A MOVE THAT WILL HAVE some interesting repercussions, the tax office for the canton of Geneva has been giving away open source software to every tax payer in the area.

In what must be seen as a major boost for the open source projects of Mozilla and Openoffice.org, the Swiss authorities decided to bundle the programs along with their GEtax 2002 program, according to Heise Online. The French version of the Mozilla web browser is supplied in Windows, Linux and Mac OSX versions. Openoffice.org is supplied for Windows or Linux, also in a French version.

It is perhaps proof of the power of open source that the tax authorities consider it worth handing out and can only increase the standing of the two programs. If a commercial software house had managed such a feat you can be sure its PR machine would have gone into overdrive. µ