While reading my RSS feeds this morning I was very much surprised to see a post on Digg about a South African bank that is switching to Linux. Sure it’s great news for the Linux community to see that FNB plans to convert 12000 desktop clients in over 680 branches to use Novell's Linux product, but when I read the actual article on Tectonic I realised it was even greater news for the open source community.

I would like to quote a section of the article: "Marius Agenbag, managing director of Ubusha Technologies, said, ‘Novell was chosen based on the freedom and flexibility it afforded the customer. While much of the overall solution uses standard technology, a fair amount is being customised for FNB's unique needs. Without access to open source code and adherence to open standards, those changes and customisations will not be possible’."

This is where the true power of open source is demonstrated - not in the fact that it is cheaper/free like most people believe, but in the fact that you can take an existing software product and customise it to the specific needs of you organisation.

How many companies out there are forced to change or adapt their inner workings to make the software work for them? Well if the software were open source, it wouldn't have to be the company that would have to adapt to the software but rather the software that would adapt to the company.

This is one small step for open source software, and one giant leap for FNB. I might just consider switching to FNB now ;-)