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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
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!
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
...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...
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...
If the tech support costs are paid to German IT workers, that's much better than paying a US company for software from a political standpoint even without any overall savings.
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
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....
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
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
Information on all European Union internal policies and planning? Incriminating evidence of them cheating on trade deals?
The US and the EU are of comparable size in population and economy, and are in fierce competition in many areas. Things like banana trade wars might sound like a bad comedy sketch, but it's a serious multi-million dollar dispute, and there's plenty more of them out there.
So, how would you feel about Germany monitoring your financial dealings through their own version of Echelon? Wouldn't you want the NSA to protect you from that? There's a valid (though specious) counter-intelligence excuse for putting in back doors in popular products, to spy on those who might be spying on you.
Not that I'm buying that this is actually going on, but there's plenty of reasons why it might be, and why it's better to be Open than sorry.
Consider that the new generation of US warships will be running Windows for Warfare. You can damn well bet your life that the US Navy is going to want to evaluate every line of code that goes into those systems. They aren't just going to take Microsoft's word for it, especially as MS subcontract work out to third parties, some of them in countries where a little bribery would go a long way.
Similarly, no sensible government (including the US!) should be using closed binaries for critical functions.
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.
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 ---
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
The German supreme court decided, that MS has no right, to distinguish into retail- and OEM-copies, regardless how often they stamp Only for sale with a new computer on the package.
Might be one of the reasons, why MS introduced those wretched recovery CD's (yeah right, recovery)
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk