South Korea reveals that the country is planning to move away from Windows in the coming years and go for open source software entirely, thus trying to reduce licensing costs and escape from Microsoft dependency.

A report published by TechEye today and citing a government statement rolled out during the weekend reveals that South Korea is planning to go for open-source software by 2020, with several pilot programs to be started in the coming years.

The country says that it has only recently moved from Windows XP to Windows 7, but it does not want to do the same in 2020 when support for this particular operating system also comes to an end.

As a result, although it has invested in Windows 7 to replace all XP machines, the South Korean government isn't willing to do the same in the future, so open-source platforms are the only way to go.

A total of 10 public and private institutions will be included in a pilot program that will allow the country to determine whether open-source operating systems are the right choice or not. If everything runs smoothly by 2018, South Korean authorities are then willing to continue the transition for all systems.

A similar case took place in the United Kingdom, where the government also tried to switch from Microsoft software to open source.

Local authorities, however, revealed that open-source applications in the end proved to be even more expensive, as the whole investment doesn't only come down to licensing costs.

“We use Microsoft [for our desktops]. Each time we've looked at open source for desktop and costed it out, Microsoft has proved cheaper,” UK government CIO Jon Creese said.

“Microsoft has been flexible and helpful in the way we apply their products to improve the operation of our frontline services, and this helps to de-risk ongoing cost. The point is that the true cost is in the total cost of ownership and exploitation, not just the licence cost. So I don't have a dogma about open source over Microsoft, but proprietary solutions - from Microsoft, SAP to Oracle and others - need to justify themselves and to work doubly hard to have flexible business models to help us further our aims,” Creese added.

On the other hand, the city of Munich already moved from Windows to Linux a few years ago, and as far as German authorities are concerned, this is the right decision for everyone looking to cut costs.