Greece is in news for unfortunate reasons related to IMF and EU these days. But there is a good news coming from Greece for Open Source enthusiasts. The administration of Greek town Livadeia has decided to get rid of Microsoft Office for open source alternative LibreOffice.

This switch to LibreOffice was announced in May this year as a part of the city’s government modernization plan. Other parts of this modernization plan include upgrading the Municipality website to WordPress (an Open Source CMS, It’s FOSS is also built on WordPress) to make it more user friendly. It also include a new electronic management system to open new requests and track their status online. Live coverage of City Council meetings are also part of this modernization plan.

Opting for free and open source products has been a growing trend in European cities for past one year or so. Several Italian, Spanish, French, German and Swiss cities administration have been ditching propriety software like MS Office to replace it with LibreOffice or OpenOffice. Cost cutting is a major factor in the times of economic slow down. Some cities saved as much as a million Euro just by opting for open source office product.

And it’s not just city administrations that are going gaga over open source. Few universities are also attempting to get rid of propriety software in favor of open source alternatives. French University that ditched Adobe Photoshop is one of numerous examples.

Read the official announcement (in Greek) here.