Members of the Swiss parliament (Nationalrat) say that the government's dependence on a single IT vendor for its desktop operating systems is causing a chaos and is leading to increasing IT costs. The government three years ago decided to pay for proprietary licences in order to standardise on the then current version of Microsoft's operating system. This standardisation was estimated to save some 15 million CHF (about 9.9 million euro). However some departments now prefer to move to the company's newest edition, according to Swiss newspaper reports. [...] "The federal administration will be using four versions of Windows: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7", said Edith Graf-Litscher, National councillor for the Socialist Party in a statement published on Monday. She says the forced upgrades of the operating system will lead to increasing costs. "If the administration goes on like this, it will never see the synergy that comes with using a single system." She says that using open source would offer a more sustainable alternative. Here upgrade cycles are inherently more responsive to the needs of the users, she says. "Open source users have a freedom that prevents them to be forced to upgrade." http://www.osor.eu/news/ch-parliament-members-say-vendor-lock-desktop-is-cau...