German Free/Open Source Migration Project

Jaws writes: "BSI (the German equivalent of NIST) has announced a project proposal for planning and implementation of partial migration of certain federal government offices to free/open source products. Three sites in two cities, servers and desktops, each site with a few dozen/several hundred seats. They are asking for a full-service, detailed plan including infrastructure, installation, documentation, support, and education. Looks like a reasonable pilot project. (The original in German; Fish-English version)"

Comments

German?

[mobydill]

So it's going to involve scat sex then. No thank yoooou.

things are fishy...

[jeffy124]

the fish seems to be floating on it's side at the top of the bowl, so let's try Google's translation instead

Re:things are fishy...

[Gruturo]

The fish is alive and well, it only complains about the "bad referrer" but if u go to the front page and manually input the site's URL and translate German to English, it works like a breeze.

I guess they just blacklisted Slashdot fearing the Intermediate Slashdot Effect (Since many people dont speak German, they all go to babelfish and IT gets killed, instead of the actual destination :-) )

Re:things are fishy...

[jeffy124]

i dont know if it's a blacklist or not. I tried copy/paste into the address field and got the same error. Maybe they have something akin to a formkey buried in the URL?

bad news for Linux?

[tps12]

Now, when I first read this, I was a psyched as the next slashbot. Hey, I use Linux at home as a desktop OS, at work as a high-throughput workstation OS, and also at work as a low-downtime server OS. It's the closest thing to the "perfect solution" to yet come out of the software industry.

So what could be wrong with its adoption by the German government?

Basically, the problem is the German government itself. While it is ancient history to most Americans, the two World Wars (I and II) still loom menacingly in the minds of many Europeans.

Likewise, the hard line taken by GNU, the FSF, and people like RMS and ESR, has reminded more than one person of the fascism practiced half a century ago in Germany. Indeed, it's taken all of RedHat's marketing skills to overcome this image in selling Linux to corporate customers.

I just think that at this point, we don't want to be seen as "cutting deals" with those that might conceivably tarnish Linux's already questionable image. The general public already associates Linux with hackers and pirates; let's try to leave Nazis out of it.

That said, there are plenty of other places that we should be trying to woo with OSS. "Good guys" like France, England, and even Canada, could be great for Linux's reputation in the global community.

For all the evil that Micro$oft represents, one thing must be acknowledged: they understand the importance of public perception. I'd hate for Linux to underestimate this, and go the way of BeOS and OS/2.

Re:bad news for Linux?

[ichimunki]

*sigh* What an obvious troll. Thankfully, Godwin's Law now shuts this debate down pretty quick, and since you mentioned the Nazis first, you automatically lose.

Re:bad news for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the original poster was comparing Germans of WWII with Nazis, which is technically not a comparison as much as a statement of fact.

Also, you should look up Godwin's Law. It deals with the probability of Nazis and Hitler being mentioned, and has nothing to do with a thread being "shut down" or anyone "automatically" losing.

Re:bad news for Linux?

[ichimunki]

The original poster was an obvious troll with his/her attempts to paint the ideologues of free software as Nazis. That the post also contained to the current German government and somehow attempts to elide that government with all past governments does not negate this. As to Godwin's law, you are correct. I was remembering the following (from the Jargon File):

Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.

Re:bad news for Linux?

[Bobo_The_Boinger]

I'd hate for Linux to underestimate this [the importance of public perception], and go the way of BeOS and OS/2.

WHAT? That's what happened to OS/2! Damn those Nazis. Attempted genocide, AND killing off a fine OS. Will they never learn??

not only there

[dunkelfalke]

the police in a german state - niedersachsen (lower saxonia) will even completely move to linux. about 11000 desktop linux computers will be used from 2004 on. these clients will connect to a high speed linux cluster. the special police software is written in java, star office 6 and netscape communicator will be used.

the lower saxonia police tested win2k and xp against linux and found out that linux is more secure, easier to administrate and saves about 20 milliones euros in 10 years.

at the present time lower saxonia police uses 5500 x terminals with 200 unix mainframes.

the text in german is here
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/odi-17.0 4.02-0 00/

Funny post, but:

[uradu]

> the hard line taken by GNU [gnu.org], the FSF [fsf.org], and people like RMS and ESR, has
> reminded more than one person of the fascism practiced half a century ago in Germany

Even as a jokster you should learn the difference between fascism and communism. Faschism is in no ideological way concerned with the redestribution of wealth; that is the prerogative of communism. Faschism is what Mr. Ashcroft and his Bible buddies practice.

Germany is a good country!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if they only would reinstate their former good leadership and that cool black-white-red flag!

1. Heil dir im Siegerkranz,
Herrscher des Vaterlands,
Heil Kaiser Dir!
|: Fühl in des Thrones Glanz
die hohe Wonne ganz,
Liebling des Volks zu sein,
Heil Kaiser Dir! :|

2. Nicht Roß und Reisige
sichern die steile Höh,
wo Fürsten stehn:
|: Liebe des Vaterlands,
Liebe des freien Manns
gründet den Herrscherthron
wie Fels im Meer! :|

3. Heilige Flamme glüh,
glüh und erlösche nie
fürs Vaterland!
|: Wir alle stehen dann
mutig für einen Mann,
kämpfen und bluten gern
für Thron und Reich! :|

4. Handlung und Wissenschaft
hebe mit Mut und Kraft
ihr Haupt empor!
|: krieger- und Heldentat
finde ihr Lorbeerblatt
treu aufgehoben dort
an deinem Thron! :|

5. Sei, Kaiser Wilhelm, hier
lang deines Volkes Zier,
der Menschheit Stolz!
|: Fühl in des Thrones Glanz
die hohe Wonne ganz,
Liebling des Volks zu sein,
Heil Kaiser dir! :|

BSI software offerings + warning.

[gd23ka]

BSI = "Bundesamt fuer Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik" -> "Federal Department for Security in Information Technology". Their mission is comparable to NSA's Information Assurance Directorate. Their site is far more informative than NSA's site, chock full of security advice though as always in all things security I advise to take whatever anybody says with a grain of salt. They've also got that other mission just like NSA does.

They've opensourced Sphinx, formerly a project aimed at providing secure email within German government agencies which is essentially a plugin for various email clients (appa which implements S/MIME as well as an S/MIME incompatible national encrypted email standard called MailTrust (spec available in German only). Apparently they're integrating the Sphinx code in KDE's kMail and in mutt. You can find the Sphinx code here.

Another opensource project I could find right away is DiCop (Distributed Computing in Perl), a GPL'd distributed job execution environment consisting of an administration server and client/worker software. The administration server sends jobs to the client/workers and collects the results. You can get DiCop here.

Please keep in mind that BSI is an agency of a foreign government no longer outright sympathetic to American interests.

Fascism

[garyebickford]

IIRC Fascism is state control of private property, has nothing to do with religion.

Re:Fascism

[uradu]

> IIRC Fascism is state control of private property

Wrong, that's communism. Faschism is concerned with nationalism and xenophobia, the belief in the superiority of certain races over others, etc. It's focused on social order issues rather than economic ones. For example, Germany under Nazi rule was mostly a market economy, with the exception that party officials had lots of latitude in intervening in individual companies. After all, if you wield absolute power, laws of commerce don't mean all that much. You can always "expose" the proprietors as Jews if they don't give you your piece of the pie.

Re:Fascism

[garyebickford]

Communism/socialism are state ownership of all property. Fascism allowed private owvership but under state control - a subtle but important difference. A major component of the Greens' agenda is regarded by many in the US as fascist because it involves the loss of what little remains of personal sovereignty.

Your citation of Germany as being a market economy is correct - a market econonmy in which all economic activity was subject to control by the state. Krupp Steel's ownership was managed by the Nazis. About 1925 (?) the last remaining Krupp heir was a woman. She was married off to "some guy" who adopted the name of Krupp (see "The Arms of Krupp", a fascinating book.)

According to Merriam-Webster, you're correct as well regarding the social component. I was ignoring that aspect in the discussion, partly because I'm lazy :O)

M-W: "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."

This reminds me of Anakin Skywalker in SWII - "Someone should make them do the right thing."

Re:Fascism

[uradu]

> Communism/socialism are state ownership of all property.

That's exactly what I said, but you claimed that about fascism.

A major difference between communism and fascism is that while the former had a well formalized doctrine (e.g. Marx's writings), the latter didn't. While we can judge communist ideology by reading its writings AND by observing its implementations, fascism is really only defined by its implementations. There is no The Fascist Manifest to draw upon (unless you consider Mein Kampf and Goebbels' ramblings that), only the fascist reality under Nazi rule. Given that, you have to conclude that the heart of fascist ideology is social darwinism (aided by personal biases), rather than any economic considerations. Control of the economy was more of a consequence of opportunity rather than doctrine. Of course, since expansion was central to Nazi doctrine (Lebensraum), and this required military build-up and war, which in turn required huge sums of money and industrial production, you could argue that control and redirection of the economy towards these goals was vital to Nazi doctrine as well. But I would still consider it more a consequence than a goal. Nazis weren't at all concerned with redestribution of wealth and the creation of an egalitarian society. In fact, they were quite happy with the concentration of wealth in the hands of a devoted few.

Re:Fascism

[garyebickford]

What I said was Fascism was state control of private property, not the same thing as state ownership of all property. Otherwise, I agree with what you've said, and well put as well :O)

Offhand and without having read it, I'd say Mein Kampf amounts to a manifesto as well as Marx (which I have read - I wrote a paper in high school that compared communism to capitalism, and possibly in a prefiguring of my software engineering future, determined that a primary problem with communism was the lack of any feedback loops, which results in an unstable system:O). Certainly those corporations under Nazi rule that didn't enthusiastically participate generally were 'taken over' in all senses of the word.

One could argue that the Fascists were (as all governments) practicing redistribution of wealth - in the other direction. Outside of defense & international affairs, all government activity is by definition redistribution of wealth at the point of a gun. But that's a whole other topic - where are the points on a gun? :)