As government agencies are being forced to do more with a smaller budget more agencies are turning to the open source movement for a solution.In Mississippi three counties and 30 agencies formed a jail management system to pool all law enforcement and homeland security forces together using Linux.

Proprietary companies that do not share their code bid at $1 million.The Open Source Software Institute did the job for $300,000 because all they had to do was customize the already available open source software and offer support, said John Weathersby executive director of OSSI.They then donated the code so that any government agency can use the system for free.

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