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Norwegian Government Expires Microsoft Contract
Jeppe Salvesen writes "The Norwegian sites are bristling with the news, and hopefully this will leak worldwide. The Norwegian Government has dropped their contract with Microsoft. Microsoft had an exclusive deal with national and regional government. Administration Secretary Victor D. Norman states that 'we feel that our contract with Microsoft in reality has given Microsoft a monopoly in a field where competition would serve us better.'. My translation. The race is on."
It seems to me that most governments would do more for furthering the independence from proprietary software by increasing dependence on open standards. For instance, if I were President for a day (mwahaha!), the first thing I woudl do is issue an executive order stating that no agency, department or NGO may use .doc formatted texts. Where documents are purely text, they must be sent in plain ASCII or rtf formats. Suddenly the "need" for Word is lessened considerably. Need spreadsheets? Send tab-delimited files everywhere. I don't have all the details worked out but it seems to me the reason why governments and the like are so dependent on MSFT is because they are dependent on what the software produces not how the software performs.
Interesting how here on /., when discussing an alternative to MS, the first (and usually only) alternative to be discussed is Linux. As far as a desktop OS is concerned, Apple's Mac OS X may be far better suited to the task. Since the subsystem is very closely based on Open/FreeBSD and hence supports all the "information wants to be free" technologies that Linux does, the real comparison is the user interface.
:)).
... this isn't a flame or a troll, just a commentary.
Now, I have a whole lot of respect for the GNOME and KDE efforts (I have Ximian on my laptop and KDE on one of my desktops), but they've got a ways to go to reach OS X's level of ease-of-use. I believe OS X is also localized in Norwegian, but I could be wrong on this count (if I am wrong, then that's a good reason to discount OS X
Apple's no longer *just* for creatives, designers, writers, etc. It is (at its core) a highly productive and functional operating system built on a highly stable and powerful subsystem. With OS X, you can *get things done*. For the novice computer user, OS X can be a good deal more intuitive than either Windows OR any of the Linux UIs.
*sigh*
Cheers.
I remember using Mac's in school for the majority of my time (from grade school on up through High School). If this chain were true, why am I not a Mac user?
Because of the OS/Windows Environment advances.
Ok, either you went to school in a time when the first and most intensive exposure to PCs (or Macs in your case) was in school, or you are wrong, because today nearly everybody at least knows someone being a "peecee"-guru, therefore school isn't as important as it once was in said "chain".
If you went to school in those old days, when MS Win (>= 95) came out, it was really advantage, at least Win 95 vs. MacOS 7 (8?) - software wise, because of the price and (maybe most importantly?) because of warezing.
So this advantage would break the chain also.
But today, it's really hard to get a strong enough advantage to "break the chain". Even MS has trouble to raise the bar, in order to get people to desire - and therefore buy - newer versions of their software.
So, Open Source (or whatever possible MS competitor, I just doubt there's someone else out there) finally has a good chance to level the field, to catch up. We can discuss all day if KDE/Gnome + Linux/BSD are "as good as" or "better than" as Windows XP, the truth is that people have decided, and - seemingly - they (still) prefer the latter.
But people believe, and I'm also inclined to, that this is it, today, where the "chain" comes into action. And I also belive that in many places familiarity with an user interface just wouldn't matter much, and therefore not lead to high (re-)training costs, and that at these places "alternatives" could be used and one could rapidly see the benefits.
So, perhaps Norway has some of those places, schools, public authorities, whatever. All I want is a small fracture in this wall of "just MS", so that people who would otherwise would never have gotten the chance to even *see* an alternative will now have a real choice.
Really, give it some time, and *nix distibutions will be easier to install, much more liberal in usage conditions and much more trustable concerning privacy - btw. most of this is true now, but people will then have realized that.
Fortunately, MS does what it can to strengthen these advanteges for open source.
I don't think the plan is to replace the hardware...also, compared to OS X, even Windows XP wouldn't be ready for the desktop. I think "ready for the desktop" has become the most meaningless sentence ever. I use Linux on my desktop, therefore it is ready for the desktop. Just because OS X has a nicer GUI (that's debatable) doesn't mean Linux cannot be used in a productivity environment.
;-)
Back in the 80's, end users were stuck with DOS, Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect - and yet they were productive. They knew how to use their computers. Perhaps the learning curve was a bit steeper, but somehow they managed. Have we suddenly all become so stupid that if we don't get enough eye candy we can no longer use a computer? I had a crash course in Maya at my job: that program has so many menus and options and whatnot, it's the opposite of user-friendly - and yet it's still the market leader...I find the trend to "dumb down" computers as much as possible quite disturbing, to tell you the truth. At some point we have to accept that computers must have a minimum degree of complexity if we are to have a good control of how they behave. So the hypothetical grandma can't use it? Well, that's to bad: she can't program her VCR either. But a 12-year old can learn UNIX - for him it's just a game...so why do we care so much about "usability" when the next generation is adapting itself to technology faster than we ever did? To hear the UI fanatics, you'd think that it's impossible for an average user to use Linux (which is totally false, I have had the occasion of testing it more than once). It's as if we were trying to encourage the user to be as lazy as possible...
Oh well, I still think KDE3.02 with Crystal icons and Kermakik style looks nicer and is more usable than Aqua on OS X. Not that I care...
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