Speaking at this year's Linuxworld conference in Sydney last week, James Purser, WIN Television development and network administrator, said the company's high priorities around the cost of IT led it to adopt more open source solutions.

"Four and a half years ago there was no open source at WIN -- it was all Microsoft and some SCO; since then we have introduced a few things," Purser said. "We now have a Postfix e-mail system on Ubuntu Linux with Amavis and SpamAssassin [and] they have been working quite well."

Cost, however, was not the only driver as reliability, support, features, and standards compliance -- particularly with the advent of digital television -- are all considered before any software is installed.

Purser also spearheaded a company-wide intranet which was a new concept at WIN and provided a beachhead for further open source use. The intranet comprises "wiki" technology which lets people share knowledge through a Web browser.

"We set up a three-part intranet with forums for information sharing between production departments, a wiki for IT-specific information about server configuration, scripts, and passwords, plus we have a general wiki used to document general information for users, for example, how to set up your e-mail client," Purser said. "The IT wiki houses support and development standards information and uses the Mediawiki package which is easy to setup, use and lock down to specific users."