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The National Archives
Open Office

Open Office

Trials and pilots

A number of trials and pilots are ongoing. These are being carried out in preparation for when large volumes of data are accessioned to the Digital Archive.

Open Source Software Pilot

Open Source Software (OSS) is software whose source code is openly published. It is usually developed through voluntary efforts, and is made available to the public at no cost under a licence that prevents it being commercially redistributed. OSS has leapt to prominence by starting to command a significant share of the software services market.

For further information, see the Cabinet Office policy on the use of Open Source Software within the UK Government.

OSS solutions offer many potential benefits to government departments: they use open standards that allow for interoperability between systems, they are often cheaper, and they are considered to be more resistant to crashes, bugs and viruses. With these factors in mind, the government has formulated an Open Source Software Policy. This states that the government will consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in all future IT procurements.

To assess the benefits to digital preservation offered by using open source software, and to uncover any possible difficulties, we are testing a range of open source products such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and the Open Office suite.

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