Slashdot Mirror
German Parliament Considers Linux
daramannen writes ""The committee is examining whether switching the Bundestag's more than 5,000 computers to open source would improve stability and security, as well as save money, Schroer said. By the committee's estimate, implementing open source software throughout the federal government could result in savings of 250 million marks (US$116 million)." "
That such a well respected government can further the cause of linux.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
I don't think using Microsoft products is an option for them... They aren't on very good terms to begin with (since their dispute over Microsoft's EULA).
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Tomorrow Linux will conquer the world, starting a thousand year rule of a proper operating system, administered by uber-users.
"...because I was just considering hijacking an airplane and flying it into the German parliament for their support of the bombing of our glorious nation! Heil bin Laden!"
Oh you mean that sorry attempt at a nation called Afghanistan? That pack of murderous dogs called the Taliban. Well guess what your days are numbered. So give it a rest before someone else gives *you* a rest.
With all this news about large organisations thinking about switching to Linux, I predict that Microsoft will reconsider their new licensing scheme and go back to their 'old' way of doing business. They're digging their own grave if they don't. One thing that interests me is that the 'the main cost is in the maintenancei, not in the price of the licences' argument against Linux doesn't seem to work anymore.
-- Cheers!
Even if they need 5x the number of support techs to run on Open Source, this has to be A Good Thing for the German economy. Why spend all that money on a foreign product when you can spend it on your own engineers? Quality jobs instead of low quality imports.
Any government could use that as a driving reason for change - especially with a downturn happening around us. Every little helps!
Seems kinda obvious in retrospect, huh?
It's well-known that all Germans love David Hasselhoff, so I'm thinking that when he's not headlining as the Prince of Lies, Satan, he must have a secret thing for Linux.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I think that it is great that foreign governments are considering Linux seriously. It makes it harder for legislation in America, such as the SSSCA to kill the OS and makes it more likely to succeed in the long run.
And it will probably save them a bundle of money for as long as they get decent support contracts or have the people in house. This will be a great thing for SuSE...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I could actually imagine the German government using SuSe Linux, it would be a great coup! But I am sceptical still, the bigger the organization, the less likely they are to adopt an open-standard for their system. I would love to be proven wrong, but ever here at my company (banking industry) there is a lot of reluctance towards linux... Not everyone wants to move away from a commercial solution, be it for maintenance reasons, or just maintaining a standard with other companies. We'll that's my two cents for whatever they are worth
"116 *Million* Dollars".....
:-)
At least now we know where they are getting the money to fund the Sphinx.
Anways, I'm packing my bags and moving to Germany. Seems like they are the current holders of the Free World torch
...SuSE had IPO'd, now would be the time to be getting that stock bought...
;-)
(and don't try telling me the *German* government is gonna buy Red Hat...)
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
...and it it (predictably) Germany that got there first. German has always been the second language of the Internet as far as I can see (large quantities of KDE are commented in german - took me a lot of time with the dictionary, that did). Germany is establishing itself as a very technologically-conscious country.
Even relative technophobes are less inhibited about using an out-of-the-box Linux installation. Germany is where it's all happening in the computing world...
nt
It's a good thing in the long run, but what are the costs of switching that many people over? Sure the OS is free, but all that tech support time is quite expensive, especially in the beginning. How long would it take for them to recoup in savings the loss for the switchover?
Steve Ballmer Says: 'So, you think you can get avay vith abandoning the reich, eh? Don't be so sure. Ve haff vays of makink you upgrade...'
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
You mean.. the NSA isn't gonna be able to figure out how the Germans engineer such wonderful cars anymore? This is an outrage! What else does the German gov't have to offer, anyway?
I am too old and too slow... Shit.
Strom Thurmond; the dean of the US Senate...
the deadest fart on slashdot.
It's sad that they are willing to spend on certain solutions and not others. Why must free be FREE? Why do we need an invoice to justify an expense?
Don't get me wrong, this is good news for Open Source, but if you can't give back in one way why not give back in another. If Linux was not there they would be traped in spending these funds.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology help fund the development of GnuPG.
Check out the press release.
Hopefully if they do switch to Linux, they have a good experience with it, this may pave the way for other governments and/or Large company's to consider linux as well.
Snoozer.
That alone is reason enough to change.... Government employees would finally be able to open all the I LOVE YOU attachments that they wanted to without consequence.
--- http://foo.ca
Seeing that suse wasn't in the greatest of shape, supporting the German Gov't will definately boost its profits!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Well I remember germany sponsering GPG development, and lately encryption extensions to both kmail and mutt. This seems like one giant step forward in this process.
It is a good thing that they consider this, but can you see this happening?
.doc documents as they were shown in someone else's Word 2K (with correct table dimenstions, bullets, idents and images), it would make people laugh hard at them. If they give a Linux desktop solution a try, Bundestag staff will probably make Linux go away again because they will get many problems they didn't have before.
If the Bundestag administration is not able to print
They won't do it, I say. They'll buy WinXP. Maybe they are just trying to get a good price for it.
If this actually happens and succeeds, techies worldwide will have something they can show their bosses during debates on whether they should switch to Linux or not. I really hope it works, for the future of Open Source. Even if it fails, it won't set us back that far. We simply review what went wrong and figure ways to improve it.
Gotta agree with one poster though, the EU seems to be more "modern" in terms of the digital era than America. They seem to actually be ruled by common sense and a willingness to look at the big picture. This is of course in contrast to the USA's approach of "oh, a big company says it's good then it must be good".
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
The administration of the state
Schleswig Holstein already switched to Linux some time ago.
Other administrations (or parts of them) are switching currently.
The main reason is not the money but Germans fear that there are hidden backdors in US commercial software. After Echelon they don't trust
US closed source software anymore.
There are rumors (and proofed facts) that the US is doing economic espionage on German firms.
The administration could be the next target...
So they try to become independant.
--- censored
Figured I'd just put this in...
They may not go towards linux because it is hard to decide whom to blame if something goes wrong. I guess good support staff would be a good use for that money not spent on software.
I'd really like to see more governments harnessing the zeal of open source advocates and realizing that we actually like doing this stuff and would do it for a resume addon or certificate. Just my thoughts on the issue.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
If the Germans lead the European governments into using Linux (or any other Open Source OS) and the US goverment makes it illegal to own any non-trusted (non-Microsoft) OS through the SSSCA, then it is possible that people on different sides of the Atlantic would be split to using different computer systems.
Personally I think this would be great for European software companies as they would have opportunities that US companies would normally go for.
Not so great for any non-Microsoft software companies in America though, if they aren't allowed to write non-secure software for Europe and M$ keeps forcing other companies out of the market place by bundling features with the OS.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
heh. appropriate moderation. Too bad you're too stupid to understand what (score: 0) implies. You're probably an "editor" too.
See, AC's can serve a useful purpose by absorbing mod point hits that could have been directed at trolls posting at (score: 1) or higher.
Sure its a good news. But wouldn't ANY organization migrating to linux (assume they were with M$) need to get rid of those linux incapable support staff and hire new ones. Or need to x-train the old ones? Leading to job cuts.... well their hire some people else....
"Tomorrow Linux will conquer the world, starting a thousand year rule of a proper operating system, administered by uber-users."
how does an operating system do that?
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Not really.... you haven't seen more overbearing, ridiculous levels of nit-picky, frustrating bureaucracy until you've seen Germany from the inside.
"...implementing open source software throughout the federal government could result in savings of 250 million marks (US$116 million)."
I'm a bit curious as to how they're going to save all that money. If they just stop using whatever software they already have paid for, will they get a refund? Or do they spend huge amounts of money each year on licenses, and that figure represents the savings over several years? The money they'll _spend_ in the process will probably be mainly domestic, and that's pretty good (for the country). But I still don't see how they will _save_ all that money. Anyway, it's still A Good Thing. Almost no matter what the cost. It takes somebody big and reliable (governments are supposed to be that) to encourage everyone else.
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
Consider the history of government computing, They still run old mainfraimes because of the software they built decades ago, Tax and voting software is still running on hardware fom the 1970's and 1980's. Why? because re-writing something that works is economically dumb. Plus they have the source code so if a modification is needed, hire a programmer or use the in-house programmer to change it, no vendor needed, no more "at the mercy" of other companies. you can impliment changes and new projects in-house without having to spend another $2.9 million in order to upgrade the OS again.
Linux has that advantage... The source code, and you OWN it. Hey, I have linux and noone can take it away from me,
Linus cant stand up and say "everyone with the last name that starts with A can no longer run linux" like microsoft can, or IBM can or Apple can, or SCO, etc....
This isnt about the software, it's about the licesnes' The german govt cant tell everyone to "go to hell in a handbasket" if they use a open source system. Noone can sue them for contract breach, charge them millions for illegal search and seizure (Microsoft audit) or be blackmailed (Microsoft audit)
Any company or Government that has any brains would see that geting out from under the control of another entity will save thousands and even millions. and hiring Linux guru's at a paltry $60K USD each saves even more money.
as for user training... XP is coming out and will require the SAME amount of training... so that point is only typical Microsoft FUD.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If the buying public continues to blindly lick the boots of MS, while governments move to *nix (for the desktop) solutions due to costs (and as well they should .. I prefer my taxes going to something like social programs rather than MS), they might just find themselves aligned with *nix geeks. Who else thinks governments would find themselves in a very good spot if they became a main source of employment for OS and *nix pundits? I don't want the tech infrastructure of my government to depend on MS's marketing strategies rather than actual need and opportunity for IS improvement.
"Old man yells at systemd"
....I'd look for alternatives too. I'm just curious what the heck they ARE spending it on. $23 THOUSAND dollars a PC. Hmmmm..... something smells fishy. I've never experienced anything near that kind of cost for downtime, data loss, support, or licensing fees, pretty much always working in a Windows environment.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
This is how a successful switch to Linux could be accomplished. It's hard for 3 people in an organisation of 100 people to switch to Linux and live comfortably. But if the entire government switches to Linux, there won't be any issues with doc/data compatibility. And their support network will find it much earier to support Linux if it's the only desktop/server platform. I hope this works out on this large of a scale. Maybe it really will get Microsoft's attention.
The basic problem is that the PC market is saturating. Perhaps the server market too but that is not so sure. If Microsoft continues in their "old way" I think that they will have to raise prices substantially. This is why they are going to the new scheme. It is not so much a lack of competition as it is an inability to meet their current revenue needs as the market shifts.
This is the great strength of open source. Proprietary software requires that one company absorb all the R&D costs and then distribute that cost on to their customers. Fewer customers means higher overhead, and this is a very steep trend because R&D is such a large cost. Open source on the other hand, distributes the cost of development by distributing the development and thereby passing the cost on to the consumer without needing to rely on sales. In essence, it is a strategy where needs are met at a price, and any need can be met.
OK. So how is this on topic? If the German government wants to save money and retain quality as this industry continues to saturate, they have no reasonable alternative than to go to open source solutions. FreeBSD is great and all, but my experience is that the Linux Documentation Project is far enough along to make Linux a real compelling buy. And much of the material is either available in German or could be easily translated. And Linux is to the Windows desktop at least what DOS was to the Mac desktop (since when has ease of use really been a defining factor, and I have found that when properly set up, Linux can result in less reliance on tech support than a new version of Windows when given to beginners).
Linux is the obvious choice.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I really think that is wonderful. It will show that there is a great deal of savings to be had in these types of solutions. The bad part of it is is that microsoft has catered to spoon feeding people for so long, i doubt that the majority of our people in the US will have the technical wherewithall to run linux on a day to day basis. It takes everyone a little time to get people aware of things like permissions, using the command line to copy or move files, etc... If they did try to switch they would probably whine enough to make it a nonviable solution.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Maybe I should move to Germany...
..To escape the Nazis in the usa.
Having used both Win and *nix desktop OS's, I can say that migrating to all Linux could be difficult for those users who have grown accustomed to the speed and ease of Windows. Pretty much anyone who uses a PC day to day can configure and control a Windows box on Day 1, the same cannot be said for Linux. The screens and menus are different, as is file management. There's also the question of "Office" apps. that need to be learned, StarOffice is good, but it's not MS Office that EVERYONE (virtually) can use!
There's also the inevitable transfer of data from Windows platforms to Linux platforms. Yes, the data should transfer seamlessly, but ITRW, we all know that that doesn't occur.
An interesting idea, and good for Linux as a whole, but I doubt the German govt. will pocket ALL of that $116M US.
The government often "back" international trade contracts, and therefore likely have inside information. Some of these compete with US companies, who would just love to know what their german competitors are bidding on a contract.
More to the point of NSA (or CIA), Germany traditionally have a more arab-friendly foreign policy that the US. The US government would probably like to know any changes (like e.g. lifting the embarco against Iraq) in the German policiy before it becomes official.
For the longest time, if you want to work with the US Armed Forces, you couldn't submit anything but Wordperfect documents to them- if you did, it got filed in the bit-bucket. Same goes now for the Legal profession. Most courts will not accept anything but Wordperfect documents. An MS Word document will get a request for a resubmission in Wordperfect format.
All it would take is the German government insisting that they don't accept Word/Excel 2000 documents from ANYONE and the people will have to deal.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Yes. Linux for the german parliament. That is a Good Thing (TM). But wait. There is no decision yet. It is under consideration. Under consideration only. No doubt the party who's not gaining from such a deal (now who would that be) will put much effort into convincing the german parliament that it should decide otherwise.
... advocates: Do your thing and do it well. And hurry!
A few months ago there was talk of Linux for educational institutions in Mexico. Where are we now?
So
European mail endings accounted for 37% of all contributions!
http://www.ibiblio.org/osrt/develpro.html
for more including graphs.
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
Yes, ha ha, that document created in one crappy program doesn't open right in another program. Ha ha ha. Ha ha.
Maybe they'll laugh hard at the people who created the docs in a non-portable format instead. Maybe they'll require that documents get converted to a useful standard. Yeah, that's what will happen.
And where might here be?
Somewhere where people think that one has to use the command line to copy files when working with Linux?
Spreading FUD are we?
I think the point is that they're big enough to set standards. .doc files. If the Bundestag announces that .txt or StarWriter (or AbiWord) files are the only acceptable formats for submissions, period, they can get away with it.
It's one thing to laugh at a business if it can't open
People submitting Word/Excel documents could be requested to use a "standard" format, and referred to the appropriate software.
I'm a bit curious as to how they're going to save all that money. If they just stop using whatever software they already have paid for, will they get a refund? Or do they spend huge amounts of money each year on licenses, and that figure represents the savings over several years?
The article mentions that.
They currently use NT. In a year (or so) MS will stop supporting NT, so they'll have to go with XP, or switch to Linux. (You can't have government computers running an unsupported proprietary OS - someone creates the next NIMDA, and there is no way to patch the hole.)
The cost savings mentioned are projected across the entire federal government, (presumably) for MS licenses.
I keep reading about different companies and agencies that are thinking about switching to open source, but I never hear how they plan on doing this, and if it is ever done. If one of these agencies really decides to go for it, where do they turn? Do they just call up Redhat? Are there companies out there specializing in this sort of thing, or do they just hire a few geeks to switch the whole company to linux? Where do these companies or agencies turn when they actually want to implement something like this?
"more than 5,000 computers"
I'll say 8,000 to be nice...
"federal government could result in savings of 250 million marks (US$116 million)"
That comes out to $14,500 a computer... I built my linux box for about 500 bucks and it's nearly top of the line...
Have a look at StarOffice 6 beta. I'm having no issues at all moving .doc documents between it and MS Word 97 and MS Word 2000. My company IT department is currently taking a serious look at StarOffice as a drop in replacement for Microsoft Office. It really is a lovely piece of work.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If you are using GNOME or KDE, you pretty much never have to use a commandline for anything. I havn't used GNOME in a year or so but KDE's konquerer is a very able file manager (and browser and ftp client, and etc). I personally use the shell for most file management but that's just personal taste, I use ksh when I'm using MS-Windows also. I think that most people who are used to MS-Windows would be able to work with a Linux system running KDE with too much pain.
It's possible to set up KDE (haven't used GNOME for a year, so can't comment) so that it looks and works almost indistinguishably from any M$ GUI you care to specify. The biggest difference is finding and fiddling with system settings (which Joe Government won't need to do, that's what IT training is for) and dealing with mounts instead of drives. I honestly think that it's do-able.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Pretty much anyone who uses a PC day to day can configure and control a Windows box
This is not as much of an issue as you might think.
First off, in any decent organization, individual users DO NOT configure their own workstations - that's IT's job - there is just too much of a mess that a "regular" user could make, that they are not allowed to do it. So for configuration, the only people that need to be retrained are the IT staff.
Second, "controlling" KDE is pretty much the same as Windows - mouse moves the pointer, click on the icons, etc. Put the appropriate icons on the desktop, and minimal training is required. Apps training is even less of an issue, as all WYSIWYG word processors work basically the same way.
Yes, the biggest hiccup is data transfer - this will consume the largest amount of time and money, but most governments use some form of indexed central storage, which may not need to be changed right away. If they have a database of scanned images (ie. dead-tree paperwork that has been scanned and filed) then the transfer would be pretty painless.
They need to inflate TCO to make their CIO-wannabe readers think they're saving money when they buy whatever's being advertised.
sulli
RTFJ.
Also my city, Turku (in South-West Finland) is seriously considering switching all city computers to Linux and OpenOffice. This would mean about 3000 computers. The topic has been discussed in many news.
The simple reason is that with new Windows and Office licensing, the software costs would be about 1-2 million euros per year.
"The Microsoft has changed its licensing policy from stealing to plain robbing. Cities simply can't afford to make such contracts," says the information management officer of the city.
"Finland is nowadays a Microsoft nation. This sort of changes would create certain kinds of problems."
Turku will not pay any licensing fees to Microsoft before the examination about Linux is finished before the end of this year.
At least 20 other cities are waiting for the City of Turku decision, and will follow its strategy. Turku has about 160,000 citizens.
I see these kinds of stories -- "gov't organisation x is considering linux" -- more and more in different european countries these days. And not only on "linux web-sites" like slashdot, but in local papers and national papers, both here in Scandinavia and many other EU countries I visit. In Germany and France there seem to be politicians aware of linux, mostly in local gov't but also on national level, and they are two of the biggest and most influential countries of EU (they are also the "homeland" of SuSe and Mandrake).
Still, there seems to be a lot of inertia to overcome to move away from MS dependency. The articles are usually full of keywords like considering, debating, testing. But I would think that the signal effect of a German government switch to linux could be huge. All these local politicians/activist could win over enough support the day they can point to Germany as a success story of open source. Germany is known as a fairly conservative society that don't jump into changes with out thinking about it, so if "the Germans do it, we can do it".
It feels a bit like the Borg is starting to cave in, when you see all these signs of change in mentality and then on top of it all a friends stop by and ask for help to install Mandrake 8.1. His company is considering to move to linux after hearing about new licenses from Seattle. I think MS can wake up with a bad hang over after introducing XP...
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
So StarWriter and AbiWord are now standards?
When does the standards committee meet? Is there a draft standard out yet?
Oh, and those are proposed standards that are going to be locked down and complied with, correct? No code forking permitted? Who's the compliance officer on the AbiWord project?
> If the Bundestag administration is not able to print .doc documents as they were shown in someone else's Word 2K (with correct table dimenstions, bullets, idents and images), it would make people laugh hard at them.
Actually, I've never been able to print with any of MS tools with right dimensions. When I set width to 10cm, it's always either 10.1 or 9.9cm. Dunno why, tried on many different installations/printer configurations.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
While this could well be adopted in Germany, such a move would stand virtually no chance of adoption in the US. Legislators from both American political parties recognize that government spending has at least two intended consequences.
1. Provide a needed service to the citizens
2. Provide an economic benefit to the area/region/local in which the spending occurs.
The commercial software industry in the United States (led by Microserf, Oracle, Sun and others) has been one of the major economic success stories in the US. It is a major source of export income for the nation and a significant source of wealth.
Despite the obvious technical advantages of adopting open source solutions, the business case at the macroeconomic level makes the decision to employ open source software far less clear cut.
It may make economic sense in Germany or other countries that are net importers of operating system and application software. It makes far less economic sense in the United States.
We are a nation that continues to pour money into federal road projects in West Virginia because the populace depends on the jobs that are created (regardless of the amount of traffic on those roads). Don't underestimate the loyalty of those same politicians to the commercial software industry.
Whoever posted this has to know that it's forbidden to sing the first two verses of this anthym in germany (especially the first one).
This post is insulting me.
Billy Joe is considering installing Linux on his home LAN : "I won't be saving anything, since Windows came installed on my machines anyways, but I figure the additional security and stability are worth the free download", he said, before asking how to properly secure a Linux box.
His wife Bobby Sue, on the other hand, steadfastly continues to use Windows on her desktop, but says she "is seriously considering switching from Notepad to Emacs".
Son Billy Joe Jr indicated that he will be staying with his "Speak and Spell" until Linux incorporates speech synthesis into the kernel.
You've got to do better to interpret context in your translations from other languages.
The correct translation is obvious to anyone that has been involved in negotiating Enterprise Licenses with Microsoft lately and bringing up the issue of Linux or any other option to Windows.
In case you still missed it, it is
"Provided by the management for your protection."
So Excel and Word are now standards?
When does the standards committee meet? Is there a draft standard out yet?
Oh, and those are proposed standards that are going to be locked down and complied with, correct? No code forking permitted? Who's the compliance officer on the Word project?
f the Bundestag administration is not able to print
Poor sod, never heard about staroffice or koffice.
Well, the only "problem" they will have is that they will miss their daily systemcrash.
But overall, I don't think that they will miss them that much.
On the other hand, they don't have to change their mailsystem.
They are using Lotus notes now and when they'll switch to linux they still can use lotus notes.
The biggest problem will be that most windoze games won't run under Linux.
And that can be a bad thing ((-;
But the fact is, that it will save them a lot money, problems and virus infections.
No more nimda, i love you and other crap means no more downtime and lost work.
That's also a big plus.
Well it shouldn't be. There's really nothing offensive about them. The "Germany above all" part is about estimating your Fatherland above all, not that Germany should rule the world. And what the heck is wrong with "German women, German loyality, German wine and German song"?
> And what the heck is wrong with "German women, German loyality, German wine and German song"?
:-)
We want to keep the good stuff to yourselves
Beyond simply comparing financial outlays between the MS and open source alternatives, a highly relevant factor for governements is WHERE that money is spent.
Each $ spent locally has say 25cents recuperated in taxes, of the remaining 75 cents, it is likely spent on something else that generates 25% taxes and so on, and so on. Some of the money leaks out of the govt controlled economy, but most of it doesn't. A $ spent on imports is gone foreever.
For international governments, each $ they spend on MS licenses is probably worth $3-$5 spent locally.
I expect Germany to go through with the linux conversion.
I get excellent fps that only compares with 9x kernel code (which was very surprising to me) and it uses less memory and runs faster than win2000. I'm not a MS lover by any stretch but they did an excellent job on this one.
Unfortunately for MS i'm switching all my servers to linux>oracle>sendmail b/c my servers are getting hacked so frequently it's insane. I keep ALL the patches available installed and to no avail.
And the choice is Linux? Thats a joke right... okay it is better than windows but not as good as FreeBSD or OpenBSD.
Well thats what I think.
The german SPD (social democratic party) which is leading the country nowadays seems to be going back to the true social values they stand for traditionally. It's social to support their own sysadmins and pay for good people and to minimize the paid for unneccessary proprietary software. If this shows some serious effort (which I doubt a little since Mr Schröder talks a lot but does little) I'm gonna vote this guy on the next election :D
BTW.: the location near munich down town
you was talking about is known as
the "Schilicon Valley", derivede from
"Schillerstrasse" (where most of the PC
shops are located)
and really appreciate the comments from /.ers who praise the German government for it's Open Source effort, I really think this whole thing is not so important for German Joe user or even for the government itself.
Taking my German friends (no Geeks) as a reference they could hardly tell what difference this would make politically, economically or ethically for the Germans.
This news means: The German division of Microsoft will ask in Redmond for some special licensing agreement, that they will offer the government. They will come back with a better offer and as long as it will take to process this whole thing, people in charge at the German government will change through elections or otherwise and probably forget what they said about Linux. At the end it's all about the money, no matter what they say about possible Backdoors and security aspects. And Microsoft will make sure that they don't loose such a strategic important customer to the Open Source community.
Furthermore, concider an important German government official making a decision about this. He has absolutely no knowledge of computers (which is sadly true for most of these people), he has a big software company, which will try to do all to make him comfortable buying their products and he has a 28 year-old nice-looking secretary who tells him she does not want to change to another office package because she could not handle it.
I predict they won't change to Linux but I hope I am proven wrong.
Probably the only country where you could ask the IT managers to port all their word documents and excel spreadsheets to something as shaky as StarOffice and hear a universal "Javohl!".
It may make the Russian campaign in WWII look pretty.
there may be a (substantial) fraction of people
inside the German government and administration
that wants to go the open-source route.
But in the end, they just want to hit Microsoft with a big stick and threat them into lower
licence-costs.
They have already strong-armed them into a special upgrade program with "confidental" price-reductions that allows to minimize the impact of the subscription-model that is now slowly moving in.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Eurotrash, go get in your little go-kart of a car and drive off a cliff.
using the command line to copy or move files, etc.
first, you have to teach them the concept of "files" and "directories" - hard enough
Wrong!
It was never forbidden to sing, print or recite the first two verses.
It was just a kind of consensus that it would be more acceptable to use the third verse for offical events. Short after WWII the German people (notabene in the west of G.) knew quite well the difference between "Unity and Justice and Freedom" and their opposits.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
...to run their Gas Chambers?
Apologists for corporate efficiency simply slough off the recent dotcom debacle as the price one pays for a free market.
Yes, indeed, if millions of people simultaneously make stupid business decisions, you will indeed see economic failures like the dot-com bubble. Do you have a better idea? Would you care to point out to me the specific congressmen who were acting as the voice of warning, whom you trust enough to make the members of the Committee for Central Planning? Would you point out to me the authors of reasonable, technologically literate legislation whom you trust enough to be in direct control of the evolution of computers and computer networks in the future?
I'd like to see it. As bad as it is to live with an economy that can be easily trashed by 5 million idiots, I suspect an economy that could be easily trashed by 500 idiots would be worse.
Besides, it's a somewhat self-correcting problem. When someone in the private sector wastes his company's or his investors' money, he doesn't usually get the chance to repeat the process.
When someone in Congress wastes the nation's money, we call him an "incumbent".
You'll begin to see a lot of movement in the software industry. Mainstream companies may consider bringing their software over to Linux. You might even see MS change how it does business.
NOT!!!
An US Citizen saying "Technologically speaking, we're the cream of the digital era crop." LOL! /. embaresses me every time. So please give us a break on this bull. What kind of world do you live in? I wouldn't be suprised if you'd think the Nazis still ruled germany because of all the WW2 movies you've seen on TV. I've met people who believed that - no kidding! And of course they were americans.
How do I know you're an US CItizen? You say "we" without mentioning an oganization or a nation.
For your information: I'm just know sitting in Krefeld/Germany, way across the pond, writing this. It's called Internet and is somewhat "international". Take a dictionary and look it up ( i-n-t-e-r-n-a-t-i-o-n-a-l ). And you've wondered where that "Inter" in the "Net" came from. Believe it or not, there are other Nations in the World and - would you guess? - most of the technological inovations come from outside the US. Because the outside world is a little bigger than you might think.
As a former american citizen this stupid talk on
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Linus was heard muttering: "Today Germany, tomorrow, the world!"
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Of course, paying people to make Linux secure and solid would be fine, too. :-)
There are plenty of recourses on taxes:
1. vote the govt out along with other citizens
2. (dunno about the US) go to the ombudsman or local media to protest
2. move to another jurisdiction
Tax is *not* "stealing and plain robbing"; it is a payment agreed by citizens to support services provided by that level of government. It is, say, the equivalent of membership fee of a club; if you don't like it, try to change the club's fee policy or join another club.
With Microsoft, there is *no effective* commercial alternative (they've crushed the competition) and the company is only responsible to its shareholders.
Doesn't anybody have to take history classes anymore?
The bit about "from the Maas to the Memel" just might conceivably upset the Poles, Lithuanians, and Russians just a tad, considering that they acquired the bits of Germany east of the latter river and west of the Oder in 1945. Note that one of the prerequisites for German reunification was that united Germany was required to renounce for all time any claim whatsoever to those territories. In fact (IIRC) a clause stupulating this was added to the Grundgesetz (Basic Law, i.e. Constitution).
I suppose one could make a case for changing it to "from the Maas to the Oder" but I imagine it would still leave a bitter taste in the mouths of those whose nations were intended to provide Lebensraum in the Nazis' Drang nach Osten.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Surely they mean "trawling" ?!
/. reference to a troll !
A troll is just a "gigantic ogre-like creature", and that's what I have in mind when I see a
The alternative definition is "(to take a) prowl, wander or cruise. This alternative form of 'trawl' has existed since the 15th century. It acquired the sexual sense in the 1930s and was a vogue gay term of the 1960s"
(From xrefer.com)
Yes, and remember that the com, net and org TLDs are actually international, so they also include non-US citizens.
Claus
So XML is now a standard?
When does the standards committee meet? Is there a draft standard out yet?
Oh, and those are proposed standards that are going to be locked down and complied with, correct? No code forking permitted? Who's the compliance officer on the XML project?
Oh, wait...
Disregard.
>Gov't jobs don't really add anything to the economy, though. It's definitly not the case when we're dealing with open source. I often consider the Open Source movement being a world wide decentralized public service: volunteers, universities and private companies release their work to everyone else. If German governement pays engineers to work on Linux, their work would be useful for a lot of other people, and not only in germany, since it's open source. That is a net benefit for the economy.
"Among the arguments in favor of Linux: reports that some versions of Windows contain backdoors designed to grant the U.S. National Security Agency access to users' data." Not just the U.S. Security but Redmond as well.