Slashdot Mirror
Germany Withdraws Open Source Article
leine writes, "The statement written by a part of the German government to use Open Source Software (see this article) has been withdrawn from the public. The German magazine
c't cites in an article the spokesman of the German ministry of the interior, that the paper has been withdrawn on an order from the ministry.
(The article is in German, babelfish is your friend.) "
The paper was only intended for the internal use and for the public, did not say Kiel.
Worrying should not be doing, because obviously just decision internal was, knickers should not be twisted until elucidation forthcomes.
Open source still may be option that is by the government preferred.
Uhm, the study was from "Koordinierungs- und Beratungsstelle der Bundesregierung für Informationstechnik in der Bundesverwaltung", that is kind of a central authority for IT knowledge of the german government ("Authority of coordination and consulting for IT in the german administration").
If someone decides to buy 3000 lincenses of windows 2000, it could happen that he has to justify his decision against the "Bundesrechnungshof" (central authority of accounting in the administration) which are very strict. He now officially has information about a competing product which at least is cheaper and evaluated positive by an official authority.
This report could even get companies like Suse ground to sue the government if they are not asked for a bid.
It is all a bit different then you think. Whenever a government organisation wants to buy something they have to check if the services or goods do not exceed 200,000 Euro. If it does, they are obliged to start a European Procurement Procedure. This Procedure is such that by formally announcing the intent to buy something in the publication paper of the EU you ask people to bid for the contract. It is an entire procedure that I could explain to you. (I wrote a 80 page report on it) The important part here is that one of the things you are not allowed to specify what product you want. Only what it is intended to do. This all became clear in the UNIX-case, where a government agency specified they wanted several UNIX-licenses. The judge ruled that they could not specify that. They should say that it had to be UNIX or similar.
In short this means that no government agency in Europe can just buy Windows 2000. The procedure has to be open to everybody supplying an Operating System, that is capable of doing the things which are specified. If Suse is going after the contract for an operating system then they have to be given an equal and fair chance against Win2000. (you ofcourse do understand that when government agencies really want a certain product they will change the specs in favor of the product they want. But this sometimes fails)
Use Adsense for Charity
I am a native english speaker and have lived in Germany for more than 8 years. My German is exceedingly good so let me take another crack at it.
-------begin translation--------
The cowardly Ministry for Internal Affairs draws back the Open Source paper
Obviously, the internal analysis which was released to the public was the work of some "Linux Crazed" programmer. The document, in which the experts of the ministerium stress the advantages of the free software as to it's security and possibilities of savings, was withdrawn immediately by higher ups who have consistently received payments from an unnamed west coast based U.S. software company.
The letter entitled "Open Source Software in the German national administration" was made available on the Internet last week by the so-called "Coordination and Advice Office for Information Technics at the German Administration" (KBSt, the letter was KBSt 2/2000). KBSt was obviously not recieving sufficient payments or the payments themselves were late in arriving for the month of February.
The text was withdrawn from the KBSt server after heise online reported about this letter, then it reappeared during this week again, but now it has finally disappeared. Answering a question from c't, Roger Kiel, the speaker of the Ministery, stated that the programmer who masqueraded as an official spokesman for the Ministry of Interior has been sacked. The supervisors of the programmer have also been sacked. The pointy headed boss of the supervisors has returned to Redmond for reprogramming.
Right now the letter is still on the list of KBSt letters, but the link itself points to an IIS server which is almost always down for maintenance.
Among the experts in the field, the idea of usage of Open-Source-Software as a possible alternative to commercial Software is widely approved. Daniel Riek, the member of the head-commitee of the Linux group "LiVe", said he regrets the decision of the Ministery and sincerely wishes that the Ministry could "shake the shackles of commercial corruption". This radical Linux advocate has been promoting the usage of OSS for a long time, and would gladly see a public discussion on this subject. "Those ministry of interior guys are a bunch of brainwashed cowards. Sure, they don't want Open source software. They're too stupid to know how to configure it without some sort of wizards", said Riek.
More informations about the details of this study [= KBSt letter] can be found in c't 7/2000 (which appears on Monday).
-----eof translation-----
Finally, Ive set the record straight. The original poster was obviously not a native German speaker.
r/
Dave
-------begin translation--------
The Ministry for Internal Affairs draws back the Open Source paper
Obviously, an internal analysis about the use of free Software in the German administration was not appraised by some higher officials. The document, in which the experts of the ministerium stress the advantages of the free software as to it's security and possibilities of savings, was withdrawn from the Internet on the command "from people up there".
The letter entitled "Open Source Software in the German national administration" was made available on the Internet last week by the so-called "Coordination and Advice Office for Information Technics at the German Administration" (KBSt, the letter was KBSt 2/2000). KBSt is subordinated to the German Ministry of Intenal Affairs; the letters are supposed to give other administration offices a view and expertise about the developments and experiences in the field of computational techniques.
The text was withdrawn from the KBSt server after heise online reported about this letter, then it reappeared during this week again, but now it has finally disappeared. Answering a question from c't, Roger Kiel, the speaker of the Ministery, confirmed that the letter was removed due to a direction of the Ministery. The letter is supposed to be only for internal use and not for the public, said Kiel. Checking whether Open-Source-Software is fit for the use in the Ministery is - so Kiel - not finished yet.
Right now the letter is still on the list of KBSt letters, but the link is pointing nowhere, whereas all other KBSt letters since 1997 are still available.
Among the experts in the field, the idea of usage of Open-Source-Software as a possible alternative to commercial Software is widely approved. Daniel Riek, the member of the head-commitee of the Linux group "LiVe", said he regrets the decision of the Ministery. This Linux group has been promoting the usage of OSS for a long time, and would gladly see a public discussion on this subject. "The KBSt letter calls price- and security advantages as core arguments, which, so our analysis, support the usage of OSS", said Riek.
More informations about the details of this study [= KBSt letter] can be found in c't 7/2000 (which appears on Monday).
-----eof translation-----
Regards,
January