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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."
I thought seeing this as a large hit against Microsoft WAS looking at the glass as half full!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Wow, I'm pretty psyched about this news. Combine IBM, the company with the best track record for Linux products with Germany, the European nation with a similar reputation, and only good can result.
I've used Linux solutions by both of these companies (IBM's Linux superclusters and Germany's excellent SuSe distro) both at home and in high-impact low-failure-rate enterprise contexts. I have not once been let down, ever. Contrast this with the closed source free-as-in-shit Winbloze ME95NT, which nearly brought my life to its knees.
I can't wait to see what comes out of this groundbreaking deal! Linux may finally be able to compete against the lesser operating systems.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
All they need to do now is integrate open source with Oktoberfest and they can have free software AND beer. What would be some good (funny) names for a German Gov't Linux distro?
Linuxkraut?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
From the article:
"We are raising computer security by avoiding a monoculture, and we are lowering dependence on a single supplier," he said in a statement.
This is not really a valid argument, since all systems need to be secure. More systems, more potentially open doors.
Nevertheless, great step up for free software!
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
The huge amounts of anti-Linux trolling speak volumes about MS' fear of becoming another Novell.
How does one say it in English?
HAL 9000 may have been a who(m) as opposed to a what/which, but crashing was certainly an option for HAL!
Ich bin ein Penguin.
"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.
Unix? Open source? I don't think so.
While the software itself is free to download from the internet, companies - such as SuSE, the German distributor whose version of Linux IBM is using - can still charge for technical support and other services.
They can, of course, charge any amount for any part they want. They just can't restrict your rights to sell it again (at least on the GPL'd portions)
In proprietary software such as Microsoft's Windows, on the other hand, a single company controls the code, setting licensing terms for users but blocking outsiders from accessing the code.
They'll let some select few view the source code... but it's a look, don't touch sort of relationship. "Shared Source" and all that crap.
I really wish people that wrote about this stuff had more of a clue about what they were writing..
I'm sure is the support and roll-out assistance that is being paid for... this is the government of a strong world power, not a h@XX0r site on the net. People (at least those that matter) don't mind PAYING for a good SUPPORTED product...
What too many people don't seem to understand around here, is that "free as is beer" is not NEARLY as important as "free as in speach."
NAM
The two rules for success are:
1) Never tell them everything you know.
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$).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
How come Linux, Free Software and Open Source advocates can provide answers to the "difficult" questions but Microsoft's advocates CANNOT?
The german government doesn't buy Linux, and IBM isn't selling Linux. Just in case you've been living in a box for the past 5+ years: IBM has turned into a huge SERVICE company, and that's what they're selling here: The service to make a solid concept, implement it and provide support for a Linux-powered government infrastructure.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Not alone
:-) There does seem to be an encouraging trend towards the use of Linux by big institutions and governments. And since people tend to "buy what they know" perhaps we will see a top-down pattern to Linux usage -- companies first, and then their employees at home -- rather than the bottom-up approach everyone seems to be expecting.
Mexico, for instance, has mandated open source in its education system - although it is widely believed to have botched the implementation. And Peru is considering a law mandating open source software.
Microsoft wrote protesting about the law and warning of collapsing software markets and portraying a nightmare scenario of incompatibility. But the answer - from a Peruvian congressman - refuted the letter point by point.
Hee hee! Viva la revolution!
I wonder what is going to happen to the .doc format.
I hope that ppl will start using open formats to comunicate important documents.
If more govs do the switch. I wonder what will happen to closed file formats.... ( or will M$ port office to *nix )
--=.=-- www.cyber2000.qc.ca
Monocultures are prone to being wiped out by a single disease. If you have diversity, that won't happen. It's the reason that there are different sexes.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
well, suse is the distro most known and used (and made) in .de and IBM is the biggest company that promotes it (and they make A LOT of hardware), so it's not like IBM has their own distro anyway.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
I am not sure I agree with the Open Source vs Microsoft paradigm that everyone seems so caught up in. I think that people pick on Microsoft because they are big and visible, but no one picks on Adobe, or any of a number of large closed source companies when they lose contracts.
I think that there will always be some areas where closed source software is the best option (OrCAD being a good example), but many other areas are ones where open source simply is a better model of development-- operating systems, office productifity apps, some games, dev environments, etc. (there will always be closed source games, I think, though).
This is significant because it indicates that the Germans are making the very logical choices with regard to security (not trusting a foreign company), etc. and shows that open source IS the best solution in many cases.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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
To Quote Richard Purcell, Microsoft's director of corporate privacy
Is it really going to be another 5 to 10 years before Microsoft's products security becomes "Trustworthy"?
For example, simply look at the nature of all life. There are many different types of life, even among the same species there are variations. Within a single species, there is usually enough variation that if a nasty disease spreads throught that species, there are likely to be many (of the same species) that are varied enough that they will not be destroyed by that disease.
Another example, MS Outlook. While it's arguable whether or not MS Outlook is responsible for the security breaches related to it, you simply cannot argue that these problems would have been less disasterous had organizations not used one single email program.
While a monoculture isn't necessarily more prone to have security breaches, they are definately more prone to disaster.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Someone has to do the work. A contract that size doesn't just get dumped into the lap of your favorite linux script-kiddie.
You may not know this but companies, including MS, were bidding and working hard to get this contract it's big money. IBM spent a shitload of time and energy into landing this contract, it's how businesses make money. This is how Linux will win, not by selling cd's and shit. Big support contracts that implement Linux solutions that are supported by large respected corporations, ok maybe just large corporations.
Because Germans like things that are large, expensive, and over-engineered?
:)
Oh wait...
To this question, three possible answers:
I'm sorry, I should have said 'why didn't they go to SuSE DIRECTLY. Thanks for your non-assholeish second paragraph though.
"Reglas del Linux," according to Babelfish. Not knowing German myself, I couldn't tell you if lelling this would get you a fist pump or a glassy-eyed stare in downtown Berlin.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
They're migrating the servers only to, i think, suse. The commission that had to decide which way to go came to the conclusion that, in a nutshell, linux is not ready for the desktop and that trainig expense would be way to high...
The US is going to have to play catch-up on this one. In about five years the US government will be wishing it had been as smart as the germans.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
"Any policy that favours one thing over another isn't helpful," a Microsoft Europe spokeswoman told the Journal.
"It limits choice rather than increasing choice."
I think it's time to proclaim this Microsoft representative a troll. Two way reality is "their monopoly is greatest tendency to achieve what he says it isn't good in this case".
By the way, I don't recall they would say anything good about any other platform or software. They are always favouring their side and limiting choices with their "Security by obscurity" and closed formats.
Well, things you say must really depend on one fact "Who got it and who hasn't"
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Good question! The party line at IBM is that Linux is a server solution. If there are desktops involved this would be significant.
Man, 30 years ago I would not have believed a statement beginning this way would imply victory for the little guy!!
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
> linuxrichtlinien
It interpreted "Rules" as "Rules and Regulations", rather than "it's really great".
As far as I know, the idea is to migrate the servers to Linux and keep Windows XP on the desktops. Sound more like Tux has one foot in the door and the glass is about 1/8 full.0 2285.html
Check out http://www.bundestag.de/aktuell/presse/2002/pz_02
[sorry, German]
As far as I can tell, it's a virus, not a worm.
Under Windows NT, the "mortal" and "administrator" roles are ordinarily mingled in the same accounts, meaning some users running e.g. Outlook may also have write permission to the executables they use, which is required for a virus to spread.
In the default configuration of most Linux systems, no "mortal" users have write permission to any of the executables they would normally run.
In the case of a virus, at least, running together with Windows systems does not increase the risk to the Linux systems.
DNA just wants to be free...
BSD
BTW The Beeb uses a mix of Solaris and Linux for its servers.
a) I find the family trees involved here pretty confusing, and people find plenty to argue about. That's not my point :)
b) the UNIX trademark is one thing; de facto "acts like UNIX" is another. "Variant" seems a fair word for me, though -- if I came up with a workalike system similar enough to the Dewey decimal system that it could be used interchangeably in many circumstances, I think "variant" would be an alright way to describe it. Same with Linux and the BSDs -- based on UNIX, whether or not they're stamped with the name by The Almighty.
c) OS X is widely touted for its UNIX underpinnings (and is an official UNIX, I'm 99% sure, though the right link isn't slapping me in the face yet), and Darwin is open source (and available separately, incl. for x86), even if Aqua isn't.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Once again, something got lost in the translation. "Free as in beer" got translated to "free beer", and the Germans couldn't sign the contract fast enough.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"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
A lot of folks believe IBM provided Nazi Germany with electronic cataloging support which allowed for the Unpopular to be shipped-off to death camps:
Since its publication in February, Edwin Black's book "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" has stirred unprecedented controversy among students of the Holocaust, American enterprise and information technology.
Of course, an informed person might not believe every little thing they read. ;)
LOL,
gänse fleisch mal den küfferüm üffmache?
linüx rühls
a german from hamburg
0 001 11 1
Actually, the use of linux has received its start from the bottom up. But, the numbers are hard to come by.
Many professionals in IT have started using linux on their home and personal systems for many reasons. And, when they find (found) that open source systems work just fine and can contribute, those technologies have worked their way into corporate systems.
But, the major bump will first come when the top companies in the industry openly support a linux/unix solution across all systems including the desktop.
It is stupid to sell Microsoft desktops and linux/unix servers when Microsoft designs its technology to harm those customers who try to benefit from non-Microsoft technology.
IBM, Hpaq, DELL, SUN, Gateway and others have to wise up and avoid the companies that design its products to interfere with the effective use of the technologies out there. And, that is precisely what Microsoft is doing. So, Microsoft is the company to avoid.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
When was the last time you actually used Linux? From the apparent ignorance of the current state of Linux you display in your post, I'm guessing you installed Red Hat for a week 5 years ago.
All the modern distros have extremely easy to use update tools that beat the pants off anything I've seen from Microsoft. SuSE's YOU (YaST Online Update) is a prime example. It handles everything installed with SuSE, and is about as difficult as checking email. No mailing list involved.
Easy to use GUI? Take your pick. I like KDE, personally, but there are plenty more that fit the bill. KDE is at least as easy to use as Explorer.
In contrast, Windows has what? An update website that I have to somehow know about (since they don't seem particularly eager to publicize it) and check manually, unless I want to open myself up to script viruses, and which doesn't cover most of my apps (except MS Office, of course, which has its own update site). A GUI with all the Admin tools intentionally obfuscated. An obtuse and often self-contradictory security model, the tools for which are also intentionally obfuscated. A kernel which requires regular reboots to function properly.
If what people want is an easy to use GUI and rock solid security without mailing lists on an OS that just works, why the hell do they keep using Windows?
For the record, I know the answer to that question. Do you?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Unix? Open source? I don't think so.
You don't have a good IT background have you ?
www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/books/mos2/sample-1.pdf
The history of UNIX has been told elsewhere (e.g., Salus, 1994). Part of that story will be given in Chap. 10. For now, suffice it to say, that because the source code was widely available, various organizations developed their own (incompatible) versions, which led to chaos. Two major versions developed, System V, from AT&T, and BSD, (Berkeley Software Distribution) from the University of California at Berkeley. These had minor variants as well. To make it possible to write programs that could run on any UNIX system, IEEE developed a standard for UNIX, called POSIX, that most versions of UNIX now support. POSIX defines a minimal system call interface that conformant UNIX systems must support. In fact, some other operating systems now also support the POSIX interface.
(This is copied from elsewhere, look it up on google for a history lesson.)
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
It says that switching to open source can damage a country's indigenous IT industry, because some varieties of open source software place restrictions on copyright and intellectual property. "Imagine if the software industry were tied in to restrictive licenses with unreasonable terms. How could anybody want to function in an environment like that?"
It also says that it is a more reliable partner than smaller, less well-established open source distributors. "Consider IBM, this open-source dot com the German government has decided to do business with. What's their track record? How long have they been around?"
"Any policy that favours one thing over another isn't helpful," a Microsoft Europe spokeswoman told the Journal. "That's why we support our applications on a wide variety of operating systems. We want users to have the choice of where they want to go. That's why we provide software for all version of Windows!"
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.
Now tell me what's not easy to use in SuSE-Linux (= KDE/Linux with all Linux-stuff embedded into the KDE-control center. Everything desktop-related can be done 100% graphically and is reachable at a central place (the KDE control center)).
KDE/Linux is even a lot easier to use than Windows because all the settings are organized tree-like and are not just random tools thrown into a directory like in Windows.
and rock solid security that doesn't involve watch a mailing list and sitting in front of a console 20 out of 24 hours in a day.
Linux has a much better security track record than Windows. I haven't updated my webserver the last 6 months and I've not been infected NIMDA-style so far.
For infrastructure, it's top notch, for ease of use, it's a lumbering elephant. Just remember, some people don't care how or why it works, just that it works.
Oh, no, I've just fed a troll...
Does this mean RMS will now want us to call Germany, GNU/Germany?
In a somewhat related story, Taiwan is pushing free software.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
You need some serious counselling. Please click here.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
IBM offers SuSE on their servers, which, according to people who have actually read the article, is exactly what the Germans are buying. Red Hat is the default Linux for IBM servers, but several other options are available. It's quite likely, actually, that SuSE will have a share of the support contract, and so will benefit quite a bit from this, if not as visibly as IBM will.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I noticed this too. Is this spokeswoman even aware of what policy means. Here's the dictionary definition.
In laymens terms "policy" is when you favour one thing over another.At least the C-S dreams are a lot more interesting and have more narrative depth than the Tetris dreams I had when I was addicted to that game.
The C-S dreams are a little familiar. Back in the 1980s I had my clock radio set to the local National Public Radio "News And Information" station. I usually had the alarm set to "radio", waking me up in the middle of "Morning Edition". Which led to a lot of half-dreams about guerrillas in Central America....
But also check out the links, they even have the Peruvian government one listed next to this story.
Interesting time are ahead I think and hope.
StarTux
So IBM is thriving overseas, yet here in the US they are laying off countless employees. Am I the only one who sees a problem in that?
My god this is moronic - and not funny at all. Please, please, please can we keep holocaust jokes modded down? They will never be funny for relatives of the 6 million Jews or millions of others who were murdered, tortured, and forced into hard labor in this way.
The big difference between Microsoft and the other closed-source software companies is that Microsoft actively tries to destroy the healthy software ecosystem that open-source creates. Oracle has not released press statements saying that the GPL is "viral" and "dangerous". Adobe has never tried to cut off the gimp's air supply. Even historical control freaks like AOL, Apple, and even IBM have embraced open-souce for parts of their flagship products. Microsoft is the only company I can think of that's actively trying to destroy open-source software through bullying OEMs, illegal bundling, and generally spreading FUD.
Adobe's also on my shitlist for the Sklyarov arrest, but nobody is fighting open-source the way that Microsoft is. That's why they get so much attention and garner so much hostility here on Slashdot.
This
Think about it people. No more Solitaire, no more .WMV porn, no more games.
What impact will this have on Shockwave and Flash games? Will there popularity rise? Those questions remain unanswered, only the future will tell.
wow, looks like they're just like me. I'll be sure to visit Germany then.
but...but the anti-US/anti-corporation sentiment is growing strong
Three Rings for the Linux-kings under the sky, .NET Developers doomed to die,
Seven for the Kernel-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for
One for the Dark Lord on his Dark Throne
In the Land of Microsoft where the Shadows lie.
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them
In the Land of Microsoft where the Shadows lie
I found this fitting since in the end, it is not a massive army that defeats the ring, it's the little people, the ones that were never considered by the Dark Lord himself. The Dark Lord launches his own attacks, "Microsoft wrote protesting about the law and warning of collapsing software markets and portraying a nightmare scenario of incompatibility." But in the end his armys are defeated, one by one, "But the answer - from a Peruvian congressman - refuted the letter point by point." The end is nigh, do you know who our Aragorn is?
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
The disk defragmenter that ships with Windows 2000 and XP was written by Executive Software, a company wholly owned and run by scientologists. The German government and people, being thoroughly familiar with totalitarian philosophies and regimes, are VERY anti-scientology. They recognize and understand that scientology is Nazi-ism taken one step farther, it is a nazi-esque philosophy dressed up as religion. I should know, I once was a scientologist. Scientology is the closest thing to an amalgamation of the mafia, fascism, big business, and a mind control cult, with a money scam thrown in for good measure. Because of the relationship between Microsoft and Executive Software the German government has refused to implement computing solutions that utilize Windows 2000 or XP. At one point the German government was demanding that Microsoft provide them with a version of Windows 2000 that was free of Executive Software's code. They didn't want to support a group overseas that they were working very hard to eliminate in their own country, with good reason I might add. On top of this add things like Echelon and the accusation that Microsoft has installed back doors into windows at the behest of the US intelligence community and Linux makes absolutely perfect sense as the platform of choice. Using it doesn't help support an evil cult and it doesn't make you vulnerable to US government spooks. I'm very glad to see this.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
...another one.
Just as a matter of interest, did you honestly believe that this comment had some relevance to the substance of the story?
If no, what problem do you have that forces you to share with us the first thing that comes into your head?
If yes, you might like to join the privileged elite (10%) of your country and travel outside it occasionally to improve your sociability in international forums.
"Any policy that favours one thing over another isn't helpful," a Microsoft Europe spokeswoman told the Journal."..."It limits choice rather than increasing choice."
Your nose will pay for it.
Find the SuSE press release about this (in German).
my other sig is a 500 page novel