Slashdot Mirror
Countries Ponder: GNU/Linux vs. Microsoft
koody writes: "IDG has an overview of how many countries are getting drawn into the debate over the relative merits of using open source software rather than Microsoft Corp.'s Windows applications. Seems like many countries would be slowly moving towards the open source community, while a few still pledge allegiance to Microsoft."
I knew something smelled fishy in Denmark...
:wq
And Microsoft is expensive. If they don't want to get in trouble with Microsoft (and their friends in the US Government), then really it becomes their only choice. If they have some tech-savvy people who know linux and such, it's an even easier choice. In some cases, it's cheaper to pay local people to learn the open source stuff than it is to pay Microsoft or other companies for software and support.
Even for richer countries, open source is attractive because it means the money that would've gone into software purchases can go into other projects.
and to the FUDness for which it stands
once workstation, under Bill, with bloat and BSOD for all
You are not the customer.
When Linux first debuted and the world-tide started to turn a bit anti-Microsoft, I felt very angry. I mean, who cares what operating system one uses as long as it works, right?
Well, after reading through this article, I think I am glad that the computing world really offers OS choices as it once did so many years ago. It allows people and countries that can't pay large fees to become part of the modern computing age. They'll be able to do things that, maybe, they couldn't possibly afford going with a more expensive O.S. -- especially if it were the only solution.
And really, allowing more and more people the fun and efficiency of computers is a very noteworthy goal.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
this is so stupid. People will use whatever software that best fits their needs..choosing one thing simply because of some set belief that one is superior is dumb and p0intless.
What are the numbers there? How many use Linux? How many use MS Windows? I would guess that, for now, Linux == few and MS == many. But, I would like to see real numbers.
Michael Loves Me!
I really don't care what government decides to waste its money on (after all, if it wasn't software, it would be gold toilet seats).
But I do care when government sponsored research into software is used by companies to make money. Last I checked, I didn't give Sun/MS/et all my tax dollars to make them richer. I want that research GPL'ed so that I know its available, that I, as a tax payer who paid for the R&D gets the benifits, and that it can be made even better by the world (and thus can help my government/business/etc).
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
They should pick an OS and go with it, preferably what's best for the person that has to use it every day, regardless of cost (or in some cases, taking total end cost into consideration) I'm all for standards. Standards solve issues ranging from product compatibility to addressing consumer safety and health concerns. Standards also simplify product development and reduce non-value-adding costs thereby increasing a user's ability to compare competing products. They also are fundamental building blocks for international trade. Only through the use of standards can the requirements of interconnectivity and interoperability be assured and the credibility of new products and new markets verified enabling the rapid implementation of technology. It's too bad so many of you bearded linux hippies insist on doing things your own kludged-together way.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I think we should definitly lift the trade embargo on Iraq, but only for Microsoft products. ;-) For obvious reasons. Just put something about billions of barrels of oil in the EULA.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
I thought it was a little odd that there is no mention of the status of Linux/Microsoft in the US. I would be interested to see what is being done with Linux at a federal level here in the US.
.:diatonic:.
Microsoft probably loves the idea, but I cringe at the statement about "taxpayer dollars".
If an Open Source option is available, tax money would be better spent using/improving those products, that benefit all, instead of a single organization declared to be a monopoly by the U.S. DOJ.
As much as I despise Microsoft I have been unwilling to recommend anything other than Windows or MacOS to my friends and family.
...
I honestly feel that I may be able to recommend open source software to non-geeks in the near future. I'm using OpenOffice and Mozilla and both are holding up well -- indeed OpenOffice is less annoying than MSOffice 2000.
I think if UnitedLinux and Red Hat can just make that final turn into providing MacOSX like reliability then I will start recommending Linux and Macs and tell everybody to avoid Windows like the plague it is.
Sooooooo close
the relative merits of using open source software rather than Microsoft Corp.'s Windows applications
Uh, there are more than two options in the world of operating systems. I'm assuming that everyone here has heard of small companies like Apple and Sun, who seem pretty effective at marketing their own OSes.
(Yeah, I know, they both fund some open source efforts too. But this whole "everything is either Microsoft or free-as-in-lint" dichotomy is too simple for anyone but retarded schoolchildren.)
--saint
This just goes to show how monopolistic MS is, Intentionally and blatantly making it hard for governments to switch from Proprietary software. But even the US has started making some strides toward Open Source, last i checked both fbi.gov and whitehouse.gov are running linux/unix based OS's, must have gotten tired of script kiddies.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
There was a lengthy debate (took about a year) about the usage of Linux vs. Windows in the german parliament. They ended up using Linux for Servers and Win2k for Desktops, which was interpreted as a loss for microsoft by the media. Microsoft actually offered to let a government agency review the windows source code. They paid $$$ - lobbyists but didn't succeed. Actually, this has been seen as a sign for other government agencies and open source is 'in' right now. Let's see how long it lasts...
Fleur de Sel
Do they it 'cos they see the benefits of open source or are they just anti-USian ?
Like the "evil NSA key windows backdoor" rubbish.
I doubt they would ditch Windows if it was produced by a company of their own.
You are the dot in slashdot !
Well to help get a wider accecptance it is a good thing that governments are deciding to look at alternitives to MS stuff. And this helps to push more MS People to understanding and even perhaps liking to use Linux. With more people using it more software will be made (Open Sourse and Closed Source). Thus helping of actually giving people a choice in OSes. We long got away from the Idea of the Right Tool for the Right Job. I think it is time that we come back to that Idea.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
For those countries sticking with MS products:
Would you like to try this great, flexible, free software? Or how about this closed, expensive buggy software with 'lettuce'?
Subject obviously prefers software with 'lettuce'.
It's under attack for it's business practices here and abroad. It's FUD is not swaying many decision makers anymore and their "terrorist gambit" is not panning out as planned.
Because M$ has never been known as a service company it really has no model to fit into the Open Source idea. Since it has no direct way of benefiting, other than stealing code for use in their own products, they have to fight against it's upsurgence
M$ will move into the arena of small commercial packages, proprietary embedded systems and OS's and will fight tooth and nail the entire way. Of course the argument that they stabalized and helped build the current computer industry is partially correct, but had open standards been used to begin with (and not the embrace and extend crap) we might have a much more competetive landscape.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. -Samuel Johns
.... isn't one of supporting open source because it's good for your life-long karma, but having someone to hold the end-user's hand when something goes tits-up.
Microsoft comes in a pretty package, and is so widely used, that someone in a given setting is bound to have experience with it.
It's not that open source is or isn't better than MS, but which one gives the user (not the IT guys) a warm fuzzy.
Haha... this is like the axis and alliance. One hand we have denmark, austria and mexico. On the other side is germany, france (who thought they'd ever be on the same side), china and a bunch more. I'm surprised Microsoft just hasn't bought a country yet. No i don't mean lobbying and free software packages or whatever. I mean legitmatly going into a nation saying "hey we got $40 billion and we want to buy you" and doing it. I think that would be more impressive than 30% market share for iis. Then again as my supervisor at the helpdesk showed me the corporate structure of Microsoft... you have your ceo and board, followed by some software groups, etc. Then in the marketing department towards the basement... you find the US DOJ. Guess thats going to help dictate whos side we'll be on.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Government administrators should note that it is their duty to insure that all government work be done on completely open systems. The citizens and taxpayers of a democracy must have full access to all documents, even 40 or a hundred years from now. There is NO room in a democracy for proprietary, hidden ways of doing things.
What we need is not a better monoculture, but a polyculture (is that a word?) In a polyculture, one company (MS) can't create a format that's impossible for anyone else to implement properly and expect it to be widely used, because users will EXPECT interoperability. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot. By the same token, in a polyculture you have many different products that foster true innovation. I mean ... as much as office sucks, some parts of it have been truly innovative (some parts of Outlook, Excel.)
Hell, in a monoculture half the time software isn't compatible with its previous version (think Office 95 vs. office 97.)
I wouldn't want any government to mandate *one* operating system. Instead, I think that governments should mandate operating system diversity. That's the way to get true, robust reliability and ultimately save money.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
It cited compatibility problems, namely among users trying to receive Microsoft World documents. Microsoft World Documents?? Has Microsoft taken over the World format already? Otto Schily, the German Federal Minister of the Interior, announced last Monday a deal with IBM to promote, for the pubic sector, hardware and software products that support Linux. The pubic sector?? I thought that was my private business! Oh wait, an "L" accidentally got moved. Calming down now.
The comment that just... |3p7 g01/\/g...
0xC3
Regardless of the quality of the solution, there is an argument for avoiding closed solutions from *any* single vendor. Large organizations not only expose themselves to security threats, but also economic fluctuations affecting the single vendor.
instead of a single organization declared to be a monopoly by the U.S. DOJ.
Read the Constitution. It's called an Electoral College. It ensures equal representation among the seperate states.
Did you notice how much won states by something like 2-1?
Remove your head from your ass and stop listening to Dan Rather. You fucking idiot.
Democracy = Rule By the People United States = Democracy More people vote for gore than bush in the US Bush wins Anyone else confused?
The US is not actually a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. Gore even agreed: he campaigned with the electoral system in mind. Want to change it? Fine. Just don't do it to undo the results of an election that did not go the way you want it to. Change the system before the next election if you want to. Only losers play the game under the rules and then whine to change the rules after they lose.
Seems like IBM is making out like gangbusters in
these deals.
Perhaps there was something to that slashback article
last night....
"As my first act as Software Architect, I will create a grand army to counter the increasing threat of the Open Source seperatists"
War ensues..."Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
I am surprised at the low number of developing countries especially African countries. They are the countries which really NEED to use free software. But in my experience they are the ones least likely to. Too bad the big companies have already targetted these countries and the free software movement has no real marketing marketing strategy for these countries.
From the article (about a study in Finland): "It cited compatibility problems, namely among users trying to receive Microsoft World documents." [emphasis mine]
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Government officials the world over are getting drawn into the debate over the relative merits of using open source software rather than Microsoft Corp.'s Windows applications and other software developed by vendors who closely guard the intellectual property of their source code. Some countries, such as Germany, have decided to replace Windows and other commercial software products with open source applications. Other countries remain committed to commercial software, and yet others are straddling the fence. Here are examples of how some countries are dealing with the debate.
Nations wading in the Linux waters:
Finland:
Homeland of Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Finland has embarked on a government test of open source software. Twenty-eight employees from 13 government agencies (out of 100 total) completed a project in April to test the free Open Office open-source desktop productivity suite and its commercially available version, called Star Office, from Sun Microsystems Inc. The project coordinators determined that it would recommend use of the suite, mainly for users who do not exchange documents on a regular basis with users of competing software. It cited compatibility problems, namely among users trying to receive Microsoft World documents. The government has also begun hosting seminars for employees to introduce them to Linux and other open source software. About 13 percent of government servers are running Linux, but the country has no policies that mandate what software government agencies use, according to Arja Terho, a counsellor in Finland's Ministry of Finance.
Peru:
A bill currently under debate by PerFA's Congress would require government agencies to use open source software. Proprietary or commercial applications, such as those from Microsoft or IBM Corp.'s Lotus Development Corp., could only be used when no open source alternative was available, the bill proposes. Proponents of the bill, which include several congressman who have introduced follow-on legislation, say it will save the country money on IT expenditures and reduce software piracy, which in 2000 accounted for about 60 percent of all the software in use at public institutions in Peru, according to the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an industry trade group. The issue has drawn opposition from critics, who say the government has no business mandating what type of software should be used, and that the law would be counterproductive for the country's indigenous developers.
Korea:
Korea's HancomLinux Inc. signed a deal in January with Korea's Central Procurement Office to supply the government with 120,000 copies of its Linux desktop office productivity software, HancomOffice. The open source software, which is compatible with Microsoft's Office applications, including Word and Excel, is expected to save the government money in t he long run and stimulate business for local companies competing against Microsoft in the software industry.
Thailand:
A government-subsidized technology development group, known as the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre, or Nactec, announced in Apr il that it has developed its own package of open source software for use o n government desktop computers and servers. Linux-SIS (School Internet Server) for servers and Linux TLE (Thai Linux Extension) for desktops are based on the version of the Linux operating system from Red Hat Inc, a Raleigh, North Carolina, software company. Nactec has made the software freely available to government groups and small businesses. The project , government officials said, aims to narrow the gap between pirated software and legal software use, and promote local business development.
Philippines:
Similar to Thailand, the Philippines government has an effort to develop a package of open source software products for government agencies. The Advanced Science and Technology Institute, which falls under the Philippines' Department of Science and Technology (DOST), said in February that it will release a Linux sampler to users. It will include an operating system and desktop productivity applications on a single install disk. A separate effort by DOST led to the development of an open source database that is being used by the country's National Computer Center. So far, there are no government mandates to use Linux or other open source products.
France:
In February 2000, the French Ministry of Culture and Communications decided to replace software on some of the government's servers, which were running Windows NT and AIX, a version of Unix from IBM Corp., with Red Hat Linux. It has already made the change on 50 of the 300 targeted servers, according to Bruno Mannoni, head of the agency's information systems. Software it has adopted include the Apache Web server and Zope, an open source application server. Mannoni said the effort has saved money and the new software is more reliable than what was used previously.
Germany:
Otto Schily, the German Federal Minister of the Interior, announced last Monday a deal with IBM to promote, for the pubic sector, hardware and software products that support Linux. IBM has agreed to sell the country products at a discounted rate. IBM said that it will use the version of the operating system from SuSE Linux AG in NFCrnberg, Germany. Germany's lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag, also considered a switch to Linux in October 2001, but managed to work a revised deal with Microsoft that lowered the cost of its software acquisitions.
Taiwan:
Motivated by Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission investigation of Microsoft's pricing practices in that country, legislators are seeking ways to rein in Microsoft's dominance of the software market. Some officials advocate funding development of open-source software, including Linux. Discussions within the government are still at a preliminary stage.
China:
Beijing government officials in January awarded local Chinese software vendors software contracts, passing over bids from Microsoft. One such deal was with Beijing-based Red Flag Software Co. Ltd. to outfit government computers with its version of Linux. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government has installed more than 100 Linux servers in various departments in the past three years. Public pressure to avoid dependence on single-vendor products has prompted government interest in open source. According to government statistics about half of the US$23.2 million spent on software during the 2000-2001 fiscal year went to Microsoft Hong Kong Ltd. President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Flag, Liu Bo, said in January that by using open source software, the government would strengthen security, have ownership of the intellectual property that is the foundation for its technology, increase competence of local software vendors and cut down on software piracy, which in 2000 reached 97 percent, according to the BSA.
Nations with renewed support for Microsoft
Mexico:
An ambitious government project to build out the country's IT infrastructure and move its 100 million citizens online passed over open source software after Microsoft agreed to pump an estimated $100 million into the effort if the country adopted its software products. Through a series of deals, the software maker is donating training for tens of thousands of teachers, technicians and professionals. The project, dubbed e-Mexico, was first introduced by the government of Vicente Fox shortly after Fox took over the presidency in December of 2000.
Austria:
One of Microsoft's flagship government customers, the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Austria, is the first government body in Europe to become a member of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative. As part of the program, the Austrian government is allowed access to the Windows XP source code. Program benefits, according to Microsoft, include better understanding of the technical underpinnings of the operating system, better protection against security vulnerabilities and a resource for writing custom applications.
Denmark:
Despite some efforts to investigate open source software for use in the Danish public sector, the country has maintained close ties to Microsoft, according to Niels Svennakjaer, president of Commercial Linux Association of Demark. Apparently, the country's job retraining agency, called the AMU, experimented with Linux at its offices in Copenhagen, and they like what they saw, Svennakjaer said. A switch, however, was shot down by government IT decision makers, he noted.
Playing both sides of the fence
Norway:
New software subscription fees that Microsoft has imposed on its customers has fed interest among Norway's government agencies and schools in open source software. Few tests of the Linux operating system or other open source products have taken place. However, there is talk among public agencies and school officials to investigate ways it could use such software, said Fred Arne Odegaard, assistant IT consultant with Norway's Department for Trade and Industry. The country is also waiting for more direction from the European Union, which is set to present what it calls the eEurope plan later this month, which will include discussions on open source, Odegaard said. Some issues that could stand in the way of open source adoption in Norway include security and vendor-level support, he said.
U.K.:
An increase in licensing fees for Microsoft software pushed the U.K.'s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) into negotiations with the software maker to lower the cost of desktop software used by nearly 500,000 government employees. Microsoft agreed to new terms with the U.K, which is expected to save tax payers there a reported $150 million over three years. Still, the government is allowing individual departments to acquire open source software in place of Microsoft products, according to an OGC spokesman. Separately, the U.K. police force embarked on a study in January to test Linux for use on its 60,000 desktops used by police officers in England and Wales.
Don't hold back. Tell us what you really think Mr. Gore...
In all seriousness it is true that the Republicans do favor business more than the Democrats. But that does NOT mean that they don't like open source software. How Bush decided to influence the Microsoft case has nothing to do with his opinion on Open Source Software. Nor is the inverse true, Democrates don't all use Open Source Software...
Now if you believe that any political party doesn't listen strongly to their big political backers then you are a fool. Every party does! The Republicans are no different with this issue.
As far as BIG CAMPAIGNS... anyone who runs for President is going to have a huge campaign.
As far as the SUPREME COURT... they really didn't decide the election, Gore just took their decision and gave up. The outcome would have been the same no matter which way the decision came down. It just would have taken longer.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
I pledge allegiance to the OS of the Corporation of Microsoft, and to the monopoly for which it stands. One corporation, under Bill, with proprietary injustice for all.
But I do care when government sponsored research into software is used by companies to make money.
Actually, quite the opposite is true. In the real world, real people have to charge real money for the products they peddle. Most GPL'ed software comes out of government labs [like JPL], or educational institutions [like MIT, or CMU] that are heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. If Dubyah and Congress really gave a rat's ass, they'd require all government funded software to be released under the BSD license, not the GPL.
at that rate they won't keep me on their good side...
Or I can take the software and use it in my business instead of paying the $$$ for development, I can contribute to it to make it better (and use other people's contributions for the same).
Now that $$$ I'm *not* spending on development can be spent on more employees, admins, maybe even a developer just to get in the pieces I need.
IT Depts usually do not *make* money, they *save* companies money, increase efficiency, and safeguard/provide data. Just because I don't *sell* a product doesn't mean that my *service* isn't just as valuable - or just as marketable.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I'm sorry, i can't stand it when people call Linux GNU/Linux. I fail to see why people feel the need to bow to RMS's ego; the GNU utilities are primarily rewrites of existing utilities, not innovative new technologies. All the comparisons of lines of code are pointless - the kernel is one single chunk, making it much much more complex to work with than any of the hundreds of GNU utilities packages in the standard distro.
Seriously, if you are going to start referring to it as GNU/Linux, you should change your website's name to Apache/Slashdot; maybe you should start telling people who use slashcode that they have to have 'Slash/' at the beginning of their website name. It's just as retarded.
-- Patience is a virtue, but impatience is an art.
If you look at stories from the best news sources that are collected at this link, I think you will agree that secrets cause more harm than good: What Should be the Response to Violence?
The stories say, basically, that if there were less secrecy, there would be far fewer reasons to have bombs.
saying "Countries deciding" is kind of misleading.
Government, as an office/business that needs to use computers & software, is debating using Linux.
Saying it's "Countries" makes it sound like countries are passing laws requiring EVERYONE to use it.
The article mentioned a few developments in Finland.
...' " (references to German decision, etc.)
There's also a newer one, made by a member of Finnish parliament Kyösti Karjula (Center Party):
"Member of Parliament Kyösti Karjula and three other members have made an initiative for the government to take practical measures towards to adopt the Linux operating system in public administration. According to the members, the advantages of Linux are financial savings and better security than in Windows.
'There is also a significant technology political reason for changing over to Linux, because a system based on open source makes it possible to advance [Finnish] know-how.
In December 2001, the IT Department of City of Turku published their final report on adopting OpenOffice and Linux for the city computer systems. The report takes a "negative" approach, listing the problems encountered, so it's rather interesting read. In the conclusions, they recommended the adoption of OpenOffice and Linux, and to proceed with an extended study and a pilot period.
Turku (my home city) has a population of about 160,000 and the city has about 3000 computers. However, if Turku adopts Linux, dozens of the surrounding small (and large) munincipalities will follow.
I pledge allegiance to Windows XP,
and to the operating system for which it stands,
one software, indivisible
with Internet Explorer for all.
Or the alternate form...
I pledge allegiance to Microsoft
and the Monopoly for which it stands
one indivisible OS, bundled w/o Netscape,
with Windows and Internet Explorer for all.
I think I am glad that the computing world really offers OS choices as it once did so many years ago.
.rtf, I can't read .doc!" As an Apple user, I've been having cross-platform issues since I first touched a mouse. I would love to see the world using only one OS. But only if it was free and open, of course.
Not me. I'd be happy with the Windows monopoly, if it was open-source. Imagine if Windows was the only OS that existed. The computing world would be slow, full of security holes and crash often right? But now imagine if Windows was open-source. I'm sure it'd be as tight as Linux by now. And life would be a lot easier--software developers would have to code and test less and get a larger audience, there'd be no more platform arguments in the office, no more "how many times do I have to tell you to send
c-hack.com |
As part of the program, the Austrian government is allowed access to the Windows XP source code. Program benefits, according to Microsoft, include better understanding of the technical underpinnings of the operating system, better protection against security vulnerabilities and a resource for writing custom applications.
And yet within other context they say that publishing source code (e.g. as in Open Source) is a huge security risk!
And aren't all three points originally part of the Open Source agenda? And didn't they say that while based on closed source the Windows API is supposed to be so very comprehensive and well documented that it's allegedly no problem for other software vendors to develop their own products (antitrust trial)?
Don't worry, it all works out in the end...
Daniel 11:40
And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the King of the North(west) shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall (buffer)overflow and pass over.
Who knew?
"You make the mistake of assuming that Government workers are making these programs."
Government administrators don't write the programs, they set the standards for what is used and what is written.
Are we on the same page? Speaking the same language? In the same gene pool?
As per hardware company with an OS on top: Sun has Sparc + Solaris, and weren't going to continue Solaris for x86 *until* a surprise release of v9 for x86.
Apple has Mac + OS X, and *do* have an up to date Darwin for x86 though it's limited through driver support to a select hardware platform.
Neither is trying particularly hard to push their OSes without their hardware; both have x86 for development and testing purposes.
As per wanting the Mac OS: How do you compare Java, a runtime, programming language, and a set of libraries, with an OS? Apple has Cocoa, otherwise known as Objective C, and it doesn't run *everywhere*, but it does run on Solaris 8, Windows 2000 (x86), and Mac OS X.
So what are you trying to point out? That Sun supports more platforms with it's variation of cross platform computing? That Macs are more hardware oriented than Sun? That x86 support is the end all and be all of 'effective'?
GPL Deconstructed
The IDG overview does not mention Argentina. There is a fairly big movement, and a new bill has been introduced to congress (the old one expired).
When you get down to where the most change is happening, worldwide, it's in the educational system, which appears to be jumping ship from MSFT to Open Source (BSD, Linux) in droves.
Think of the list of countries and look at where the largest number of seats and shift has occurred - and it's schools and universities.
MSFT has dug it's own grave in this respect, and have only themselves to blame.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
From the article:
>It cited compatibility problems, namely among users trying to receive Microsoft World documents.(emphasis mine)
Gad, I hope this guy doesn't have an inside on The Next Big Thing from microsoft that I don't. I suppose it'll be Microsoft Galaxy documents in a few years too. Or a Freudian slip perhaps?
Whoa! Bill should pay attention to what his marketdriods say. To wit:
Austria:
One of Microsoft's flagship government customers, the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Austria, is the first government body in Europe to become a member of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative. As part of the program, the Austrian government is allowed access to the Windows XP source code. Program benefits, according to Microsoft, include better understanding of the technical underpinnings of the operating system, better protection against security vulnerabilities and a resource for writing custom applications.
*blink* Wha...? *blink*
Microsoft admits - in full view of the world - that having access to the source improves the security and useability of an Operating System. Didn't some two bit think tank outfit just say that having access to the source was bad?
That's a keeper if there ever was one - Microsoft just made the case for Free Software in spite of itself.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
# telnet www.lp.org 80 /index.html HTTP/1.1
/index.html HTTP/1.1
/index.html HTTP/1.1
GET
Host: www.lp.org
Blah...
Server: Apache 1.3.23 (Unix) PHP/4.1.2
More Blah
# telnet www.democrats.org
GET
Host: www.democrats.org
Blah...
Server: Apache/1.3.22 (Unix) mod_perl/1.26
More Blah
# telnet www.gop.org 80
GET
Host: www.gop.org
Blah...
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
More Blah
What does this proove? That all three parties do what they say they will do. The libertarians dont want to spend money on proprietary software because they believe in absolute freedom for each and every person.
The democrats use free software because they hate big corporations and want communism. I have heard open source software described as being communistic in nature, and I dont entirely disagree.
The republicans are rich, like big companies, and like to support big companies. True capatalists, not nessecarily a bad thing.
My vote goes to the Libertarian Pary. Just my $0.02.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
This should be really simple. Microsoft has already said itself that some of its code is so broken and vulnerable that it would endanger national security to reveal the source. Now, given the option of going with A) open source code you can review yourself (and believe me, a government has the resources to do a fairly complete critical review of all the code they need) or B) code you know is insecure and that comes with zero guarantees about that level of insecurity, the choice is so blindingly obvious it doesn't need further explication. Heck, even after a patch, upgrade, version change, complete code rewrite, whatever, without the code you're still going on MS's word as to whether it's really secure or not. Considering their track record, I wouldn't trust 'em.
--
He lied to us through song. I hate when people do that!
I started my first job yesterday, and I am forced to use Windos at work. My employer is wasting thousands of dollars in M$ licensing fees. His server crashes 3-4 times a day, and my workstation crashes even more often. How can you still say that that fits anyone's needs?
Why waste money on an inferior product? Why lose money because of that investmenet?
Too many windows users are convinced that it is s better choice because more people use it. They are relying on the opinions of people as clueless as themselves. I have used both operating systems. I know that unix is superior to windows, and I know that linux is the best unix available.
This is a war of profits, yes.
But more importantly, this is a war about ignorance.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Basically, I do think it is time Microsoft gets the results of its actions.
/s"?). Everyone copied Windows 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11 for all reasons. Then, as soon as it was made possible, everyone copied Windows 95 and 98. THIS is how they made their user base. A lack of useful protection made it possible. It wasn't encouraged but it was certainly mainstream.
... Do I know someone? Nope!
Why was M$ so successful? Because people were pirating their software throughout the world. Everyone copied DOS for all the possible reasons (how many times did you do "format a:
And for businesses and new computers, of course, "strange" practices with agreements asking for the latest M$ software being installed on new computers made it real... not forgetting a few years ago when every computer was bundled with M$ Office.
... Yes, it's the same thing for M$ Office. Why is it so successful? Because mainly it was made available without paying, as bundled or as a copy. Because it was the "de facto" choice, everyone had it.
Now, M$ wants everyone to buy... and everyone to pay for all their software... and finding ways to inhibit/prohibit copy of their precious Windows and Office. It's fine but it won't work with people. That's why a lot of my friends still have Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows 2K. No copy protection. That's why everyone I know still have Office 2K.
The only people I know that have XP are bundled with new computers (no choice now, isn't it strange!). The only people I know that have Office XP are... mmm
There are other arguments too... For example, I have a small company (let say I never unregistered a name, it's dead since a few years ago). I received a letter from M$ saying that I should check all my licenses for their products, that I could be screened. I _HOPE_ I am screened, simply to tell them I never bought and I never will buy any of their crappy software (I run a Powerbook G3) and they should stop bugging me. -- That is the first argument, they harass people.
There is also that unwritten law stipulating that every new computer should have a M$ sticker with its WinXP serial number on it. What is that? I imagine hell in big companies where the unscrupulous employee will simply go and get that serial number for his home, and the company's face when the serial # for that computer will stop working.
So now, companies, gov'ts and people in general are seeking ways to get rid of that cumbersome giant. If they could find a way to get rid of it, they would. Because it's simply stupid to have to buy a piece of software as costly as a XBox simply to run a machine (Windows XP)... and totally stupid to have to buy a piece of software that is also totally mainstream with a price tag as hefty as a full-featured color WinCe PDA (Office XP).
What's left with Linux to do ? It have to be tested, recognized and endorsed by the general public. One first step in my opinion would be to make a X-skin for Windows, where Windows would work precisely as your favorite X, with all the features. A full office suite should be available for that precise X-on-Windows. And it should be user-friendly (let me rephrase: dumb-friendly). Finally, it should be free and compatible.
For me, M$ are shooting themselves in the foot with all these actions. And it's not by harassing people and companies they will get the result they want. I'm sure of it.
Have a nice day
Mike
with the phrase "So Microsoft's... excuse me, the AdTI's..."peppering the Roaring Penguin rebuttal, how are we (Open Source community) expected to be taken seriously? Grow up. This is like spelling Microsoft "Micro$oft". The weaknesses of the original document stand out fine enough on their own.
-yb
Otto Schily, the German Federal Minister of the Interior, announced last Monday a deal with IBM to promote, for the pubic sector, hardware and software products that support Linux.
teee hee. [blushes like schoolgirl]
-Rob Ewaschuk
If the US government would switch to open source software, it would save billions of taxpayer dollars. This should have been done the day Microsoft claimed that it's source code must remain secret because it is so flawed that revealing it could threaten national security. At my employer, we just configed a huge order of IBM desktops and notebooks for the USDA Forestry Division. Each one had Windows 2000, and other Microsoft apps. How much did all that cost American taxpayers? Way too much I am sure.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
compatibility problems, namely among users trying to receive Microsoft World documents
So... the rumors were true. They've finally seized power! Everyone burn your RHCEs and report to the island of Ballmeria for mandatory dance lessons.
The point is that Bush's administration is much less friendly to free trade than Clinton's. This isn't a matter of exchanging favors for money or votes, but of principled belief in following the best course for the country economically. Bush, much more than Clinton, doesn't care about the country's long-term economic viability because no matter how bad it gets people of his class will have fine lives. That's why he does nothing about global warming - his friends can just buy new ranches in Canada. And that's why he can't be counted on not to sell out to MS - his friends consider Gates a sterling member of their private club.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
It cited compatibility problems, namely among users trying to receive Microsoft World documents.
My sentiments exactly.
Second... now I haven't thought this all the way through, but one way of helping the software community would be to open up the Word and Excel format, give detailed specs of the formats to all past and current formats, and then require any changed to that format to be released as spec form for n months before the release of Office apps.
The closed nature of Word Docs (especially, though other Office docs have issues too) has several problems:
So with those, you get a monopoly on Office software, tremendous lock-in, and money to burn to try to open up other environments. Now, not that they don't have the right to sell software, but they are a monopoly. I believe this will do more to end that monopoly than hiding IE on the desktop.
This also helps Microsoft in a way. There are some people who don't want to use Word because they're worried about having their information locked in to a proprietary format. This will endure they can always get at their data.
Questions, comments, snide remarks?
Relating to Mr. David Skoll's quote: "Well, some large commercial entities like HP/Compaq, IBM, Dell and Sun are quite willing to use, produce and/or distribute GPL'd software." (Dave: Thanks for RPPPoE!)
He might also like to mention MS's own SFU*and Interix
Have a gander at that little GPL sidebar..
* MS's Shut the Fuck Up... "Netscape eng are weenies wit" at its best)
Nader said something along those lines recently... and has been since at least 1998. There is an article co-authored by Nader here that starts off "Everyone who uses a computer or depends on computers has an interest in seeing Microsoft's anticompetitive and anticonsumer practices curtailed by antitrust authorities."
(should have used Preview...) http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9811/11/nader.id g/
Contrary to the Free Software community press on these articles, Microsoft loves the Open Source movement. They love it because it speaks to their interest: proprietorship. Microsoft wants people to follow the advice of that movement and release software under the licenses most heavily advocated by that movement—the X11 and new BSD licenses. Microsoft rails against the GNU GPL and the Free Software movement because they don't want users to have software freedom. They want everyone to use software they're not free to inspect, share, or modify. Microsoft is capitulating by distributing GPL'd works (not what you'd expect of the company that called the GNU GPL a "cancer") but few bother to expose how Microsoft isn't following its own advice. Microsoft doesn't have a good answer to the multiple ways the GPL enforces software freedom so we get another round of anti-GPL FUD and rebuttals that don't understand the difference between the Open Source and Free Software movements.
Digital Citizen
A quote from the article:
I wonder what kind of hardware and software are used in the pubic sector.
This idg overview is extremely undetailed and not very useful. With several countries, like Denmark, it didn't cover all the Linux activities going on. The German parliament is actually going to use Linux on their servers, and their focus on multiple vendors in government IT spending isn't mentioned.
"Snapshots from the OS front" is actually a precise description of the content.
Yeah, I'm confused why you fuckhead Conservative asswipes hang around Slashdot.
The site www.greens.org is running Apache/1.3.24 (Unix) PHP/4.2.1 on Linux
see for yourself
Governments are thought of as slow changing, generally conservative, bureaucratic, monolothic and corrupt bodies that hardly ever do anything useful. They bow down easily tothe whims and fancies of special interest groups. After all, governments are run by politicians and civil servants. There trusted and liked by the people only a little less than lawyers.
The British prime minister openly adimitted just before the last general election (Jun 2001) that he was totally computer illiterate. I would not be at all surprised if most of the cabinet are in the same boat. I do not expect the situation to be any different any other government in the world.
Yet the government is a monstrous institution. It was government efforts that saw the rise of the modern computer, the internet and so on. A rich and powerful government like the US government can make or break an industry.
Tender procedures
Most governments use tender procedures for all forms of procurment. This concidered to be transparent, and is meant to keep the governments corruption free. Under these schemes, the cheapest bid that meets the minimum requirements always wins the contract. In theory this should help the open source community. In practice, though, few governments follow tender procedures to the letter. Most often, it is not the lowest bidder that wins, but the one who makes the highest bid to buy the relevant officials.
In all seriousness it is true that the Republicans do favor business more than the Democrats
This statement always bothered me. A truer statement is that Republicans tend to favor certain big businesses over others. Considering that these businesses have competitors (even MS), favoring certain businesses over others is in fact being hostile to business in general.
Are they also debating whether to call it just Linux, or GNU/Linux?
Peru is not moving towards any single OS. That is exactly what they DONT want. And it isn't really about the money for them either, though I'm sure that factors in. What they want is control over their own IT, and that means an open source so that you are not dependant on any one company. That doesn't block out Microsoft. Microsoft can certainly compete to serve Peru, but they must open the source on whatever they offer.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I think you have me confused with the government. It is the government that must be as transparent as possible. I am not, at present, the emperor of the world.
This debate is far more complex than a simple choice of what OS to use at a government level.
This isn't simply an OS jihad. Where Linux == Good and Windows == Bad. Making business (cause that's what a lot of government is) decisions based on software "religion" is stupid and misguided.
The points that the congressman from Peru (I forget his name) made about using open source software were some of the most valid, and well reasoned ones I have heard in a long time. But - clearly his argument progresses beyond simple selection of the operating system to the systems used to create, maintain, and access the data used to run a govenment.
Here in the USA - govenment money is used to fund all sorts of private development. Look at defense research. Boeing, and all those guys are _private_ companies that acquire patents on inventions that were paid for with government monies. They then sell finished product to the govenment, further profitting from this relationship. As a tax payer you might be more than a little outraged by this.
So the question you have to ask yourself is: Do you want your government funding the r&d of proprietary software? That's one aspect of this debate.
Another question is: Do you want your government using proprietary software? If they are, then it has a cost over time in licensing fees. It also leads to the following -
Do you want your government to store data files in a proprietary format whose layout is held by some private company? (it's one thing if the gov. develops it's own data formats and properly documents them, it's a whole nother game when the format is externally owned).
Probably, in many cases your answer is "NO" to all three of these questions. But, then you have to ask yourself whether or not there is a serious open source, free software alternative to some of the commercial offerings. In many cases, yes. But, in just as many, no.
Other questions that come to mind are: Would you really want your government systems run off of current open source/free software systems? Being fair, you have to consider the bugs in those systems (beyond the simple anecdotal evidence) - and the "spit and polish" of those systems.
Do you really want your government in the "software" business? Maybe, maybe not. There's a reason so many governments sub-contract work out to professionals and specialists. Sure, the gov. usually attaches all sorts of conditions (specs and requirements) so that the end product is well documented - but private companies do the work. Given how effective government is at some tasks, I'm not sure I want them writing software!
...Food for thought...
Every time someone posts something about democracy, someone posts a comment about the U.S. being a republic. Yet everyone knows what is meant: All citizens are expected to share in the responsibility of running the government. We cannot do that if the workings of government are hidden from us. Proprietary software hides the workings of government from the citizens.
My karma on my other account is at 50. (If there were no karma cap, it would be about 150.) My karma on this account is at 50. I'm not worried about karma.
They're not just considering Debian, they're considering RedHat, SuSE, and others; so why does this say GNU/Linux?
Maybe it should say "GNU/Linux vs. Microsoft/Microsoft".
Come on, there are plenty of great alternatives to both MS and GNU/Linux. Just because its open source doesn't mean it has to be Linux.
I pledge allegence to the Bill
Of the United States of America
And to the Monopoly for which he stands
One system to rule them all, endivisable,
With updates and blue screens for all.
- no incentive to add usefuless features which don't add to (and in some cases severely detract from) from the total user experience.
- no marketing department to push a piece of software out far before it is ready.
Government lacks the financial incentive needed to screw up software.Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Quoth Reuters:
I don't know about you, but that "a Microsoft certificate which is so advanced that some U.S. universities require that their students earn it to graduate" line sures makes me shudder.
:wq
My question is who will be the first geek to emigrate to another country because of that countires position on MS?
I have to say, as an American, that politically in this country we miss the point of this argument because of our trade protection concerns.
But to me it's just the same as our automobile strategies of the 1960s-70s. We imposed penalties to foreign makers simply because they were foreign. When the oil crisis happened, America was hit hard simply because the environment of limited competition that we had fostered prevented gasolene conserving cars from being imported.
I believe the Open Source v. Microsoft arguments being made by our politicians center around the same myopias. We desparately need to understand that Open Source is *not* about ruining American companies (ie, Microsoft) or even giving up control of our software. It's about freedom, choice and competition... the very things the country was founded upon.
Steve Hall
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Citizens should care very much about how the program works, in many cases. Programs written especially for government implement government policy. Citizens should be able to know if the program works the way the policy says. The only way this is possible is through open source software.
File formats are not a simple situation, either. The problem with Microsoft Word, for example, is that the file format is not only in the format itself, but in all the bugs and quirkinesses of the way a particular version of the Word program uses the format. Word is very, very buggy and quirky, in my opinion, but the bugs are more hidden than in Internet Explorer, for example, which has 18 security bugs (at the time this was written) that have not been patched. These are active security risks different from the recent 15 that have already been fixed.
Why would a company that has 40 billion dollars in the bank let itself get an extremely bad reputation because of software bugs? It doesn't make sense, and Microsoft is not the only software company that is self-destructive in this way. Proprietary software is subject to the self-destructiveness that sometimes comes over companies. Open source software protects us from that; if a company becomes self-destructive, someone other group, or even a single programmer in some cases, can take over and help.
Twenty-eight employees from 13 government agencies (out of 100 total) completed a project in April to test the free Open Office open-source desktop productivity suite and its commercially available version, called Star Office, from Sun Microsystems Inc. The project coordinators determined that it would recommend use of the suite, mainly for users who do not exchange documents on a regular basis with users of competing software. It cited compatibility problems, namely among users trying to receive Microsoft World documents.
If I had a nickel every time someone tried to tell me that .DOC is some kind of world standard -- now this!
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
Notwithstanding the hardware "limitations," Mac OSX/Darwin is probably among the most pervasively-used Unix distros out today.
a group of programmers etc. in norway is working on theire own linux distribution called "skolelinux"(school linux) wich is tailored for norwegian schools. i think they are nearing a final release date
From the section on Peru:
...Proponents of the bill, which include several congressman who have introduced follow-on legislation, say it will save the country money on IT expenditures and reduce software piracy, which in 2000 accounted for about 60 percent of all the software in use at public institutions in Peru, according to the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an industry trade group...
The BSA is creating more open source advocates than any die hard Linux user possibly could.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I fail to see why people feel the need to bow to RMS's ego; the GNU utilities are primarily rewrites of existing utilities, not innovative new technologies.
I say GNU/Linux, and I hardly consider it bowing to RMS's ego.
The GNU tools are a *huge* part of the Linux experience. The gnu compiler toolchain, the shell utilities, the autoconf/automake system, and the almighty emacs are like old and dear friends that make my workday more streamlined and productive every day. I find it such a culture shock whenever I work on a *BSD or Sun machine that doesn't have the GNU tools installed. The little inconsistencies and the smaller feature sets of non-GNU unixy tools all add up to make one realize exactly how convenient and powerful GNU software can be. Without GNU, Linux is just like a strange *BSD or a bloated minix.
The other reason GNU software deserves all the respect in the world is the portability. There are lots of portable utilities, but the GPL license and the high-quality of the GNU tools ensure they are available nearly everywhere. When I am far from penguin-land, I can still take comfort in having all of my favorite utilities available. Cygwin gives me a *real* shell with tools on Windows, autoconf makes my software build on OSX with zero changes, and a tiny little GNU sed even edits on my Palm3x!
And finally, GNU actually brings people to Linux. A friend of mine recently told me how much he like the PRC-Tools for developing PalmOS applications, and how he just discovered the same toolchain for Gameboy programming. He couldn't believe such good tools were available for free. I told him that he was using GNU, that GNU was awesome, that Linux is mostly GNU tools, and I can even make Windows binaries under Linux using yet another iteration of the same toolchain! Four hours later, he calls me back and asks "In going to install RedHat. Is that a good Linux?" I just smiled knowingly and said "That's a good GNU/Linux."
Apologies to any accidentally offended BSD users.
Nor should tax dollars be spent on Bic pens, or Bostitch staplers, or Lockheed jets, or any other product built by an evil moneygrubbing company!
Tax dollars should not be spent on products with closed architectures. As far as I know, Bic has not vendor-locked a government to use only its pens.
Like it or not, years ago M$ was the logical choice for software. And, like it or not, M$ has advanced, through a common user interface, the state of desktop computing.
I don't necessarily disagree with this opinion. But in order for your statement to be credible, back it up with supporting evidence. Otherwise, you're just trolling.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
A US based application of GPS is just as vulnerable to the official who controls the off button as an application based in Brussels. The fact the US security apparatus controls GPS affects all GPS users, not just those in the US. An EU based system would not likely be any better in this respect. On second thought, maybe if EU "consensus" was required to shut it down we could all rest easy, knowing that it will never happen ;-)
Companies don't need to act like they own a bit of software to re-use it in a modular fashion. There is infact nothing keeping all publically funded source code from remaining open while simultaneously being exploited by commercial interests. The only thing the Copyleft actually prevents is the easy creation of slightly incompatible interfaces with little or no investment on the part of the would-be Robber Baron.
Those of us that have actually moved out into the world realize this. Most "code for profit" companies actually depend a great deal on code and modules that they can't merely steal and treat as their own property.
To most coding shops, dealing with the LGPL is no more burdensome than dealing with Microsoft licenses.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It is a standard that defines the expectation of people receiving software products from a company.
There is a ton of variety in the world of GNU/Linux with a multitude of different vendors competing for the attention of Linux users. It is, in fact, the monoculture that Microsoft causes its products to exist in (by making interopability as difficult as possible) that is at the root of the discontent we are seeing around the world that is shifting the momentum away from Microsoft.
In fact, open source is the opposite of what you argue. By following standards, open source guarantees its users they will continue to have choices.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
I live in Brazil and Conectiva, leader in the (tiny) local market of Linux, got a great contract with the Navy to develop VPNs and things like that. The militaries wanted to make sure the software they were installing didn't have any secret tricks planted by alien governments (yes, these guys build a career out of paranoia feelings).
In some cases OSS can be cheaper, if you can pick in the internet a robust project with many contributors from around the world. But in other cases it can be more expansive, eg, if you can buy a closed source software off-the-shelf but choose to develop and open source program.
I pledge allegiance
To the Gates
of the Microsoft States of America.
And to the company
For which he chairs,
One monopoly
Under Ballmer,
Indivisible,
With forced upgrades, and blue screens for all.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Yup. That makes you wonder why Microsoft didn't learn from mistakes made (and fixed) 15 years ago.
When you know that something that you do causes bad things to happen, you should probably stop doing that...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Governments have very complicated software that implements social security and Medicare and driver's license issuance and other government efforts. The software is written by outside companies usually, and it should be open source, because then citizens can inspect it for the shortcomings that allow government corruption to occur.
None of this causes problems for Linus Torvalds. Linux is the backbone of open source, it seems. A lot of people know how to convert Linux programs to the OS of their choice, so Linux sets a standard that makes programs easy for everyone, even if they don't want to use Linux.
Don't forget, there is no way to put Linus under pressure. He does what he thinks is right. If the German government wants something different, it can fork the code and bring out its own version, and call it GerGovix. If the German government comes to Linus and makes a technically unsound request, I doubt that it would cause anyone anything more than amusement. If the German government writes drivers to make new hardware run under Linux, I think its contribution would be accepted with thanks.
I agree, government documents should not ever be in Microsoft Word format, or in any format defined in secret by a proprietary agency.
All of this FUD against OpenSource and Free Software that Microsoft is spewing only seems to be forcing countries to pick sides.
This is destructive to MS, because to making countries' leaders decide whether or not Open Source is "OK" will surely lead to what this type of people know best: legislation.Since the argument against Open Source is pretty weak, it seems the leaders would choose Open Source as being a wise alternative, economically, educationally and in a host of other ways.
At the very least, no one likes to be bullied with scare tactics to choose one way over another. It breeds rebelliousness.
As long as Microsoft tries to push this angle, I expect more and more countries to offically sanction Open Source and unoffically (and perhaps officially) condemn Microsoft proprietary software.
Just my two cents.Just so all my cards are firmly on the table, I'm a proud Libertarian.
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
Pretty easy to get around this though, because they claim it gives 'better protection'. It doesn't actually make the OS *better* or *safer* or *improve it* in any way. Having the code simply means Austria can know more about what's going on inside and potentially protect themselves against problems they can predict based on knowing the code.
Austria isn't 'improving the security and useability' of the OS because they have the code. MS is not being inconsistent here.
creation science book
Why not help them chose for themselves? You know, use an old 4 gig hard drive to set them up dual boot and let them figure things out for themsleves? The only thing really difficult with any Linux distro these days is talking to cameras and what not. Let them keep their M$ partition for that, but for email, browsing, word processing, desktop management and other general stuff, Linux kicks ass. It only takes about 1 visit to an advert heavy site without the adverts to make someone love Mozilla. You only have to look at Window Maker to love it. Some people even know how to make their Linux boxes sing and dance. Not me, sigh, but I'm never ever going to use MSIE to surf again.
This observation is far from unique =:>
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
remember, this is microsoft. they can make the "word format" and lie about it. easily. (oops,were not to spec, boo hoo), make it complex enough that its nearly impossible to use and by the time you have a decent parser written, your two versions behind. legal remedys have a pattern of never being more than a slap on the wrist for them. they always find loop-holes, outsmart them etc. its as if they buy out thier legal problems (or in the case of the gates foundation, try to buy out the pr problems that come from being assholes) and then its business as usual.
anyway, it seems enough of thier formats can be used by open office for now. hopefully that will become the de-facto standard... (ok, maybe its wishfull thinking, but open office is the most suited for being a de-facto standard). that would be a real solution. then even microsoft would have to make thier office suite compatable and we would have real choice instead of microsoft speak for choice.
until then, if you want to make sure you can use old documents, ascii (plain text) is the most widely compatable format. (cr/lf are trivial to translate) thats why the ietf uses it for rfcs.
for your old mac word files, try strings(1)
Governments usually have the "large end of the bat" in dictating whatever they want from whoever they want besides maybe other governments.
WHen I read that a governments allows the use of linux as long as the employees don't exchange microsoft proprietary format documents on a regular basis, it just makes me laugh. They could say something like: we only accept documents in pdf format, xml format, html format, rtf format or whatever format there is with open format specs. On top ov being portable from one platform to an other, standard formats are usually less prone to viruses than the microsoft formats. I have yet to receive a macro virus in a pdf file.
kill two birs with one stone and get rid of microsoft formats in governments and corporate communications.
At work, I have taken the habit of returning documents in non standard formats, educating the sender that it is very rude to send a proprietary format document especially one that can transmit viruses. I usually get a good response and more people are using other formats. I would never send a staroffice document to someone and I expect the same courtesy from others.
from the article:
"Thailand:
A government-subsidized technology development group, known as the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre, or Nactec, announced in April that it has developed its own package of open source software for use o n government desktop computers and servers. Linux-SIS (School Internet Server) for servers and Linux TLE (Thai Linux Extension) for desktops are based on the version of the Linux operating system from Red Hat Inc, a Raleigh, North Carolina, software company. Nactec has made the software freely available to government groups and small businesses. The project , government officials said, aims to narrow the gap between pirated software and legal software use, and promote local business development."
I submitted a story on this a while back, so I will elaborate here. The agency is actually NECTEC (not Nactec), and they have developed a Thai language distro. Thai is problematic because of it's eight bit characters, and vowels that can appear in front, behind, above, or below the consonant. Modifying the many English 7 bit centric apps in RH to work with Thai was no small feat. They also have a web page devoted to training ex-windows users. At this point, it is incomplete.
This is an attempt to curb the estimated 93% piracy rate in the country. It is causing all kinds of problems with the WTO. This distro has been featured front page in four major computer magazines in the last three months. The general review by all the magazines was that it is good, but shouldn't replace Windows. In a primary example of the poor quality of the reviews, the reviewers were unable to mount their windows partition or change the encoding on a web page in konqueror. I am using this distro right now, but have used the apt-get utility which comes pre-installed to dist-upgrade to RH7.3, and everything still works.
Tangentially, Sun has released an all Thai version of open office, called Pladao ("Star Fish") for free, and it is being widely accepted by the mainstream media because it runs on Windows. Solaris and Linux versions are also available. I use this program regularly along with OO 1.0.0 (why the extra 0?) on my machine. It is being written of and reviewed as open source, even though no source is available, so I am confused. I suspect people are confusing OS with "free to use."
Thailand is committed to OS, and has computer standard for OS retail machines and advocacy programs in place. The government wants to stop sending so much of its meager supply of cash to the west.
Put identity in the browser.
Can anyone find me a quote of GWB so much as mentioning the Middle East before Sep 11th, besides defending ignoring the Kyoto (sp?) Agreement?
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
BLAH. . . BLAH. . . BLAH
as most of your exasperatingly long comment is full of sh*t you read out of a magazine - your bible or what?? I can tell from your rantings that you've never so much as installed linux let alone used it or configured it.
so get the knot out of your panties and leave the debates to the people with informed, educated, and original opinions.
Just you wait. The internet will be the second coming of the messiah. Nobody can stop it! of course their will be a time when we will have to die to keep it going, but thats not quite yet.
all the other distros handle that just fine. with all the complaints red hat must of gotten by now, i hope they rewrote thier network settings gui. in 7.2 it was a strange mess that was actually harder to use than the windows 2000 one. (which is strange for linux distros) and did not work as advertised. 7.3 did not seem to improve much.
whats sad is that this is probably giving red hat a bad name that they otherwise dont deserve.
..Is Richard Stallman submitted this story to get it called GNU/Linux in the story's headline ;)
Like the rest of the world going metric, the U.S. (and other MS supporters) will eventually find interoperability to be a problem.
Unfortunately, in most companies, your service is *not* valued *or* marketed. It's *assumed*. In the same way that a guy who comes round to fill the water cooler is assumed. IT is something that is just supposed to exist. IT engineers are people who fix your IT. Very few manglement, (90% of whom seem to be salesmen by profession... ) have ever actually wondered what the hell they mean by IT.
~cHrisBoth Ralph Nader (USA) and the German government are focusing a lot on the fact, that there must be an alternative to Windows, and that prices must be set by having a competitive market, not by judging how much money you are capable of spending on an OS.
In order to create such a competitive market, the products need to become more interchangeable. You can do this by letting several companies sell Windows (like the judge Jackson split would have made possible), by standardizing the Windows API as an ISO standard (somebody actually tried this once!), or by making sure that most software products on the market run on at least two operating systems.
Linux is getting there - even MS Office runs on Linux. This is why the German government introduces Linux as the purchasing alternative to Microsoft and uses resources (tax money) to make it a real alternative.
There is no problem with having Microsoft around and Windows installed on a lot of PCs, as long as it's not the obvious choice.
If the taxpayer has the copyright on it (NASA, Mil, Gov, ...) then I think we should dual license the software.
GPL it for those that want a GPL, and sell it with a proprietary license for the highest we can sell it for to those that want to take it and make proprietary things with it.
The GPL'd versions will benefit us in ways we can all count, and more, the GPL'd versions will almost certainly keep the proprietary versions true to the GPL'd versions. And when the proprietary versions stray, the GPL'd versions will catch up in time.
Will this work? It seems to work for GhostScript. Are there any other examples?
This is a myth, and has been debunked so many times that further repetition can only be the result of intentional ignorance. I don't see how this Microsoftian FUD helps the open source cause.
Here is one of the better posts on the issue by screen name "adamba":
I worked at Microsoft for ten years, most of it on the core Windows NT/2000 (hereafter referred to as NT) networking code. [...]
I know a lot about the TCP/IP stack that is running on NT. Here is a short history of it (some of this may also be told in the book How the Web Was Won, but I haven't read it):
The original plan for NT was that a few members of the core NT team (which numbered about 15 developers) would write all the networking code. However, in 1990 a small team was started up in the LAN Manager group at Microsoft to do some of that NT networking work. Eventually that team moved over to be a part of NT (this coincided with the IBM-OS/2 "divorce", if anyone is interested).
Microsoft's networking software at the time ran over a network protocol called Netbeui, but it was decided that TCP/IP was gaining in importance, and should be included in NT. In addition, the user-mode API associated with Netbeui, which was called Netbios, was too Netbeui-specific and couldn't be adapted to allow user-mode access to TCP/IP. As a result, the decision was made:
1) To put a TCP/IP stack in NT
2) To adapt the sockets user-mode API for NT
#1 was solved by licensing code from a company called Spider Systems. However, Spider's TCP/IP stack was written to run within an environment called STREAMS, which was a wrapper that specified how the various parts of the stack would communicate with each other (TCP/IP is really several pieces of code -- two of which are TCP and IP -- layered on top of each other. Most network protocols are like that, which is why they are referred to as "stacks"). As a result, STREAMS also had to be ported to NT.
#2 involved the creation of the winsock API, which persists today.
It was recognized that using Spider's stack was a temporary measure, because nobody really wanted a stack that depended on STREAMS and its associated overhead. So, a short time after this, work was begun on a new version of TCP/IP, written entirely by Microsoft.
Along with Spider's stack came versions of various TCP/IP-related utility programs, such as ftp, rcp and rsh. Those were ported from BSD sockets to winsock (not a huge change) and bundled with NT.
Now, some of Spider's code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP stack in the BSD flavors of Unix. These are open source, but distributed under the BSD license, not the GPL that Linux is released under. Whereas the GPL states that any software derived from GPL'ed software must also be released under the GPL, the BSD license basically says, "here's the source, you can do whatever you want, just give credit to the original author."
Eventually the new, from scratch TCP/IP stack was done and shipped with NT 3.5 (the second version, despite the number) in late 1994. The same stack was also included with Windows 95.
However, it looks like some of those Unix utilities were never rewritten. If you look at the executables, you can still see the copyright notice from the regents of the University of California (BSD is short for Berkeley Software Distrubution, Berkeley being a branch of the University of California, for some reason referred to as "Berkeley" on the East Coast and "California" on the West Coast...and "Berkeley" is one of those words that starts to look real funny if you stare at it too long - but I digress).
Keep in mind there is no reason to rewrite that code. If your ftp client works fine (no comments from the peanut gallery!) then why change it? Microsoft has other fish to fry. And the software was licensed perfectly legally, since the inclusion of the copyright notice satisfied the BSD license.
I won't even swear on a stack of bibles that the "new" TCP/IP now shipping in NT/2000/XP and Windows 95/98/Me is completely free of the old code from Spider. Since I don't work there I don't have access to the source code. Certainly some parts of TCP (the checksum calculation comes to mind) are the same everywhere and once someone has written an optimized version, why rewrite it? And once again, this would be perfectly legitimate for Microsoft to do under the license.
But it is certainly misleading of the Wall Street Journal to say that BSD code is used "deep inside" the NT networking code, unless they mean the STREAMS wrapper itself, which I believe is still there in case someone wants to write a transport using it (I think there is an OSI TP4 STREAMS transport lurking somewhere out there, if anyone cares - but I just checked, nobody does). But the TCP/IP in NT certainly doesn't use STREAMS.
And implying that the TCP/IP stack uses BSD code is also false. As I said above there may be small vestiges of it in there, although I doubt it. Anyway the FreeBSD programmers who reported all this to the Wall Street Journal can't see the NT TCP/IP source either, so they can't have been referring to that.
From the article:
One of Microsoft's flagship government customers, the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Austria, is the first government body in Europe to become a member of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative.
Wasn't Austria the first government in Europe to become a member of another initiative by someone interested in total control?
OTOH, it's interesting to see Germany high on the open-source list. From my personal experience, Germans are the most anti-Microsoft of all computer users. And their biggest computer magazine (c't magazine) is one of the few that isn't afraid to risk their ad revenue by giving MS products negative reviews. Perhaps the Germans understand the dangers of putting too much power in one person's hands.