Quit teasing me
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| freethinker Jul 22, 2010 10:54 AM EDT |
Here I was, getting all excited about this story, followed the link and there, not surprisingly, did I discover a question mark at the end of the title; "UK Gov. to switch entirely to FOSS?" Hopes dashed, like fragile porcelain thrown down a canyon . . . sigh! -- Marcel |
| azerthoth Jul 22, 2010 11:03 AM EDT |
Yeah, the leaving of the question mark in the article title does change the connotation of the article title. |
| hkwint Jul 22, 2010 2:10 PM EDT |
That's funny, because I clearly see five question marks after the title. |
| Ridcully Jul 22, 2010 5:51 PM EDT |
Nevertheless.......think about this article as a whole.....You do NOT often see the recommendations to move to Linux coming as a very serious suggestion from **within the organisation itself** and by actual users of the software. Normally, as I know only too well from Australian circumstances and personal experience, this sort of move is smothered instantly by the Microsoft moles in the IT purchasing and controlling sections of the government. There is a Microsoft "wall of death" built around government IT deployment that is very, VERY hard to get through and anything goes when they think something is threatening their little empire and of course, Redmond Castle's income. That such a suggestion has actually reached the limited number of brain cells in the British civil service administrators and then been made public is even more startling, given that most of them are computer illiterate (and I mean that in a "kindly sense" to the extent that they know which buttons to push to run their software.......and only that) and also given that the Microsoft Moles didn't manage to kill this suggestion before it got up and running. You can round this off in another way too: It is amazing how tight purse strings can alter perceptions. If you are broke, and the UK pretty much is just that, then you are forced to look at options that either save money, cost nothing......or both....Linux is the obvious answer. If you lead them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow. In that sense, the fact that the UK is broke is very damaging to proprietary software, but open shop for Linux and FOSS in general. Watch this space I think...or hope ????? [ Note: five question marks :-) ] |
| hkwint Jul 22, 2010 6:43 PM EDT |
Microsoft is seriously losing ground in EU governments. Today, I read a story about 1 million computers with Linux installed for Portuguese school children, meaning almost all (!) of the children will encounter open source software. Russia is asking the source code from Microsoft because they want to get rid of their vendor dependency. That's why they bought Alt Linux and saved Mandriva from bankruptcy, it seems they want to create a state Linux-OS. When done, they'll almost certainly start to 'try to' dump Windows. Turkey already maintains their 'own' Linux distribution (though it's debatable whether they're part of Europe). We have the Gendarmerie migrating 90k desktops to Ubuntu and web-apps, the Swedish Police, the French Assemblee Nationale (lower house) are running Linux(!), and of course there's Munich. But also lesser known cities such as Katowicze in Poland are currently migrating, there's Schwabisches Hall in Germany, Zaragoza in Spain, and there are many pilots running all around the EU, such as in (small) parts of Amsterdam. Then there are efforts in my own country, the Netherlands, to favour open source over proprietary if both are equally suited to do the job. That policy also caused a little-known earthquake in the GIS-branch (the forgotten open standards I'd say), as far as I understood. In Spain, there are some regions like Extremadura who have found out Linux is very well suited to adopt to their needs. However, Microsoft tried to bypass them via Madrid, by signing a contract for delivery of Windows to almost _whole_ Spain. From what I understood however, it seems Extremadura is fighting back and demanding they may keep using Linux. Then, in the past, there have always been deals between EU governments and Microsoft. Those were made without any discussion. That era is over, however. Recently, we have seen the case for the court in Switzerland in which an open source organization, Red Hat and some others tried to fight the contract. Until now without success, but nowadays, there is awareness! About the same happened in Hungary and Romania, and people over there also protested the deals. That's a change in mindset, when my country had secret negotiations with Microsoft and Linspire offered to deliver software with the same capabilities for a twentieth of the money, nobody gave it a thought and it didn't even make the news. Probably, I have forgotten important projects, but the overall picture is clear: -It doesn't go without saying to buy Microsoft software anymore, -Governments consider alternatives. It seems Ms. Kroes is doing her best to bring more open source to European governments as well, and she's warning them for vendor lock-in, which she even called a waste of public money! Outside the EU, I have seen the president of Brazil speak at an open source conference, which was pretty stunning in my opinion; though I couldn't understand what he was saying. So it seems Microsofts "wall of death" around governments is just as bad as their "wall of security" around Windows: It's full of holes, and the open source virus gets through it. Moreover, more and more people find out they can live without Windows, and _lots_ of migrations are done because Microsoft forces their government clients to update, while those clients don't _want_ to upgrade, and therefore give Microsoft the finger. Back when Munich decided to dump Windows NT in favour of Linux, Mr. Ballmer quit his skiing holiday to try to talk them out of it, and migrate them to Win2000. However, I'm pretty sure if Mr. Ballmer would continue this behaviour today, he wouldn't have any holiday left, because the word is spreading! |
| henke54 Sep 27, 2010 10:20 AM EDT |
Quoting:The obstacles currently facing advocates of public use of open source are rarely anything to do with the software itself. As Mark Taylor of Sirius IT pointed out in his speech, the top five companies take 80% of the governments IT spending. In the US, this figure is 50% and in the Netherlands as low as 20%. This means that UK Government IT projects is centered around these incumbent companies, who have historically supplied proprietary software.http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Calls-for-action-on-U... |
| Bob_Robertson Sep 27, 2010 2:16 PM EDT |
Maybe the govts that didn't write Stuxnet are wondering who's next on the list of the govt that did. |
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