The government on Friday announced that it would not renew a contract that gave Microsoft a near monopoly on supplying software to the Norwegian public sector. Minister of Labor and Government Administration Victor D. Norman said he wanted to make it easier for other software companies to compete in the public sector. He said Microsoft now has up to 95 percent of the government market for some programs. "The use of open source codes, such as Linux, could promote competition," Norman said in a news release. "To make use of programs based on open source codes a real alternative, there will be no new Select 5.0 contract with Microsoft Norway."
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