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."
and to the FUDness for which it stands
once workstation, under Bill, with bloat and BSOD for all
You are not the customer.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
And what if it would be that way?
As an european country I would find it hard to rely internal security soly on an american company. What if there is a bug, country XYZ can't do anything about it until some guy in the USA fixes it. Now what if the software would be used for something important? And what if we just would have diplomatic problems because of a embargo of product X? (maybe about cars, fuel, meat, who know what...)
It should be the same reason why we europeans or any other country can't use the GPS for anything important. (like i.e. steering the trains with it)
Here the situation is quite obvious. GPS can be turned of with a switch in the USA. Yes GPS is useable as comfortable add-on but non USA countries can never rely on it. Thats why the EU is planning to do it's own positing system, not because it's better than GPS, but we will be able to rely on it.
Same goes for software, a non USA country can not safely use unexchangeable parts like microsoft products for anything important. It's always important to have at least two possible sources for a product, if not more. And windows fills this requirement not.
Okay for the non-geeks, why does OpenSource software fill this need? You still don't have more than one source, _but_ you get all the construction plans with the software, plus the right to actually use them. As a country in time of need you are able to fix possible problems yourself.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
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.
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
>can't use the GPS for anything important. (like
>i.e. steering the trains with it)
You wacky Euros. Here in the US, the TRACKS tell our trains where they can and can't go.
-l
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) + (&)
Microsoft comes pre-installed on new computers, and is so widely used, that someone in a given setting is bound to have experience with it.
The pretty package probably has no real impact. Even the quality and ease-of-use are secondary to locking up all new PC sales with 'doze preinstalled.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
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.
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.
Actually certain versions of Office 2K has Activation...after 50 uses of the software, it will shut down and tell you to activate the software. From what I understand it is easier to fool this version of activation than Office XP's version, but it's activation nonetheless.
It's actually Office 97 that you don't have to activate. Funny, it's very hard to find that at the computer fairs nowadays...;-)
Microsoft made its monopoly on easy-to-pirate software. If anything, they should loosen, rather than tighten, their "security". Get them another raftload of more hooked users.
set irony mode off.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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...
Supporting the Open Source community is likely viewed more positively than funneling money into Gates' coffers, so it is quite possible that some of the decisions to go with Open Source are driven by a motive along these lines.
Another issue... I was dissappointed to notice that Canada was missing from the list. Some news coverage of the Canadian Government's weather office held some surprises: the desktop computers were running Linux or Solaris using KDE and GNOME.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
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.
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.
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.