Copy of the email sent to the SW Police

To whom it may concern,

Hello, my name is Chris and I am contacting you on behalf of the Ubuntu-Cymru team[0]. It has been in the news lately that the police departments of Swansea and Neath Port Talbot are under pressure from the current financial crisis and are planning a merge of both departments which could lead to a dilution of police resources.

Of late, you may have heard about the French police departments who have managed to save €50,000,000 (~£46,000,000) by switching their computers[1] to a free operating system, namely Ubuntu[2], instead of Windows XP/Vista. There are also instances of changeovers in the UK and other countries where the benefits have assisted in adoption[3]. It should be noted that the cost of a single Windows XP professional license[4] is £90, with the Microsoft Office 2007 Professional license[5] costing £345.

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution founded by a UK-based company; it is not unlike the Windows operating system yet with more advantages including; easy of use, advanced security (there are no known active Linux viruses), networking and has a integrated package manager that allows for the installation of near 27,000 software applications. This includes; OpenOffice (a free Microsoft Office competitor) which supports many file formats. GnuPG, which is an application that encrypts files so that they cannot be read by those who do not possess the decryption key, as well as LUKS which encrypts hard-drives preventing them from being read by unauthorised parties. With most of the applications licensed using the General Public License (GPL)[6], they are easily accessible with the software package manager which is by default inaccessible to non administrating users. Ubuntu also can be updated at any point without the need to restart the workstations in the majority of cases of software upgrades unlike Windows which may have updates that could result in more than 10 minutes of downtime in one day.

As you can see there are many advantages to using Open-Source software such as Ubuntu, however it is likely that you may have questions regarding Open-Source software and Ubuntu, if so then please email back to this address.

We look forward to hearing from you,

Ubuntu Cymru


[0] http://wiki.ubuntu.com/WelshTeam
[1] http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu.ars - "Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy." - Lieutenant-Colonel Xavier Guimard
[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu - "Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing."
[3] http://www.articlesbase.com/careers-articles/police-career-linux-computer-systems-in-law-enforcement-148535.html
[4] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Windows-XP-Professional-Service-Pack/dp/B00061H58I/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1237060422&sr=8-2
[5] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Office-2007-Professional-PC/dp/B000HEV6ES/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1237060453&sr=8-2
[6] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

--
Christopher Swift
http://launchpad.net/~chris

PGP Key: 0x10A0B8E
<Chris@Chrisswift.eu>

CategoryWelshTeam