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Germany, IBM Sign Major Linux Deal
Skip Franklin writes: "IBM and the German government are getting together to implement Linux as the government's computing platform of choice. The deal is being touted as a big blow to Microsoft, although personally I prefer the glass-half-full perspective of a big win for Open Source. The BBC has the story."
"It limits choice rather than increasing choice."
Yet another jaw-droppingly hypocritical statement from a Microsoft spokesperson.
Asikaa
Come in, twenty-seventy-seventy, your time is up.
If you'd read the article, you would've noticed that they are, in fact, using SuSE's Linux.
IBM is the service company doing all the work, though. I guess the government wanted to go with a big guy (either for support reasons or in order to take the "unreliable partner" argument away from M$).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
How come Linux, Free Software and Open Source advocates can provide answers to the "difficult" questions but Microsoft's advocates CANNOT?
While I agree that the argument was incorrect as a whole, there is some truth in it.
AT&T did sell source code to corporations and gave it away for virtually nothing to Universities and other educational institutions. Hence one could say open source. Open Source however is indicative of the Open Source Initiative (OSI http://www.opensource.org). If one would be nit-picking, it isn't incorrect to say that UNIX was `open source'.
To further go into matters, some historical AT&T code is now released with a less restrictive license, thanks to Caldera. SCO used to govern the code and provide it for a fee to enthusiasts, which I believe was $100. While it has little value for todays computing, it is nevertheless out there. (At this time I can't seem to find the site, perhaps some kind soul can provide that).
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
"Linux ist Koenig", which translates into Linux is King. Would I say this not likely? However you could say "Linux is geil", which translates into Linux is cool, but with emphasis on the cool factor. But I would say "Linux is cool, man!". And yes it translates into what you think. But a few years ago there was the Milka commercial with a "typical" Swiss old guy who said "Its cool, man" with a Swiss accent.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The original Unix code, written by Bell Labs, who couldn't sell it, gave it away free, to universities, and whoever wanted it. Eventually Berkley got thier hands on the license, and BSD was born. In the early days, it was free, then it got licensed. Now, a version written from scratch is free again, thanks to our friends in the Linux Community
So there was, and then there wasn't but now there is now again free UNIX's.
I almost forgot to mention, there is now freebsd. Which is BSD with the copywrited stuff filtered out and re-written under a new bsd license that is a free for use license.
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
The BBC article does not mention the fact, that SuSE is actually involved in this deal. The German Linux Distributor will deliver its Linux software while IBM will manage the IT infrastructure.