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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."
why would governments be against microsoft. Which itself is very usefull software and a easy to use operating system. I mean a government ending a relationship with software that most of its workers use at home seems like a large expense.
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
Localization and language support are going to be an issue here.
There is no 'i' in team, but there is in fiasco...
De kommer krypende tilbake..
Translation: They'll come crawling back.
It would be cool to see a multinational "Knowledge Base" to be used by smaller countries wanting to go this route.
Not as an anti-Microsoft movement, but as a pro-alternative movement.
Don't read this!
The race is on... in Norway.
"And like that
The latest patch to IE no longer allows users to connect to any websites ending in .no for "security reasons". Also, future versions of M$ products will no longer support Norwegian due to "lack of market interest". So how many Linux migrations specialists will Norway be needing in the near future? :-)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
<TRANSLATE>BORK BORK BORK! </TRANSLATE>
Oh, sorry, thats Sweedish...
...Of course, that's the best way...you know, you don't want all of the PR flacks from MS having a chance to spin this in the wrong direction.....or give them a bunch of time to start blackmailing you over license violations....
Remember all the fuss about the German government?....How about Peru? Making such a decision without letting the sales force get involved is prob. a good thing. I imagine that they (MS) would dig up every thing they could find in order to keep everyone in "lock-step" with their goals.....
I hope that this does get played up....now that the decision is made, let the chips fall where they may. I expect that there will be a lot of "surprise" defections and I imagine that they will happen pretty fast.
Not really. I don't know how good Windows Norweigan support is (pretty good I'd imagine) but KDE has been translated into over 40 languages iirc, and many other Linux apps also have Norweigan translations.
You would never be able to tell normally as GNU gettext hides it all from the user.... in fact I just checked, and I have almost 30 norweigan translations on my machine, and I haven't installed any special language packages or anything.
If it's accurate, Norwegian is an extremely verbose language. The article looked like it had about 250 words to me.
--
E_NOSIG
Okay, lets see. They realized they wernt getting the cost-savings they could have in a truely robust, competative market. So they are biting the hand of their drug dealer.
And then everybody complains - hey, they're the only ones that sell suitable drugs! Well, DUH - because nobody's bothered asserting their desire to purchase drugs from another dealer.
Has the concept of 'investing in your future' totally gone out the window? Short term pain, long term gain? Hello, is anybody listening to how stupid people sound when they're saying that MS is the only suitable thing? Isn't it self-evident that the kind of attitude like, "Well, what else is there," is *why* there isn't much else in terms of choice?
On what planet do people live when they think, for some reason, MS is the only company *capable* of producing an OS with the 'ease of use' Windows has?
(As an aside, but related to the 'Well, what else can they use' quotes, does ANYONE realize how much sweeter life would be had MS not been able to squeeze beOS out of existence?)
"Old man yells at systemd"
Lets see... who you gonna call when Open Source stuff breaks? IBM? HP/Compaq? Sun? Redhat? SuSE? Caldera? One of the thousands of consultancy companies that would love to sell you time? And, you know, if one of them wont solve it, you can call another one.
So... who you gonna call when Microsoft stuff breaks and Microsoft refuses to fix it? The DOJ?
Microsoft dropping an exclusive contract with Microsoft is going to do little to increase competition, for desktops, anyways, because there's nothing out there to compete with their desktop software. KDE and GNOME are poor substitutes for the Windows desktop, which is not saying much at all. What alternatives are there for Office ? StarOffice, KOffice, and OpenOffice are still miles away. And let's not forget the many sites that won't be viewable under Netscape/Mozilla/Konqueror/Opera.
I'm not saying I'm happy with this, and nobody would be happier to see Windows eradicated from the desktop, but that's our present unhappy state, and Norway's move isn't going to do anything to fix a problem that has been 10 years brewing. Heck, Microsoft has had a near hegemony in desktop software for AT LEAST 7 years, and it's only getting stronger.
Or do they go...Open Source ? Who you gonna call when stuff breaks?
Um, how about any of hundreds of enormously competent consulting firms who specialize in open source, have competitive rates, actually answer the phone and can actually fix the problem rather than tell you to wait for a service pack which may or may not do the job.
I will not buy this record, it is scratched!
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. - ast
This is a computerized translation so I can't promise anything ... plus I don't speak Norwegian :)
Commonwealth said up Microsoft - agree Commonwealth has said up agreement along with Microsoft as donated dataselskapet ace at to contribute shareware at computers at statlige offices. Debattcentralen: Neat and IT work and Ad administrasjonsminister Overcome D. Norman H ) considers contract of sale along with Microsoft has been adverse. He believing bigger competition able afford cheaper dataløsninger both for commonwealth and consumer. We fancy that it agreement we have had along with Microsoft in actuality rendered Microsoft a monopoly of a ambit how we're served along with to a few competition , say Norman at NRK. Norman believing denunciation at agreement along with Microsoft not only that shall afford cheaper dataløsninger , but also qualitative better solutions. (NTB)
Sorry? Poor language support? Every third screenshot I see of Linux is in a language I don't even recognise. Some Linux apps have been translated into a huge number of languages. Also, remember that this is open source we're talking here - apart from the fact that many Norweigans talk fluent English, they can always translate the programs themselves. It's normally pretty trivial.
DVD options - hello, this is a government contract? They don't need DVD support, and if they did, well they could have it anyway. Getting DVDs on Linux is basically a 2 step process now: install Xine, install a DeCSS plugin. That's it.
Add to that the known problems it has on the server end and you have a recipe for disaster.
Please elaborate. I can't think of any off the top of my head, in fact I believe Samba performs almost as well as Windows NT if your thinking about Windows integration.
You rang?
The following translation was also posted over at Linux Today a while ago.
But - I thought that Microsoft is not offering
Select 5.0 after August 1, 2002 or some such?
I suppose that what mr. Norman means is whatever
MS offers as the "upgrade" from Select 5.0
No government bodies are prohibited from buying MS software, but as noted above, they are not actively encouraged to do that anymore.
Press release
No.: 43/2002
Date: 12.07.02
Contact person: Senior advisor Kai-Ove Nauen, t. 2224 4964
Increased competition for software in the public sector
To stimulate the use of open source software in public administration,
the Minister of Labor and Public Administration Mr. Victor D. Norman has
decided not to enter into a new Select 5.0-agreement with Microsoft Norway
through the Adminnet cooperation.
Via the Adminnet system, government bodies on all levels from State to municipal
have a Select 5.0-agreement with Microsoft Norway that is valid until November 30, 2002.
This agreement gives public bodies the possibility to buy Microsoft software at lowered
prices.
The use of Microsoft software is very extensive in public administration, and for some
product areas there is very nearly a monopoly situation with market shares approaching
95%.
The use of open source software, e.g. Linux, may stimulate competition and reduce an
unwanted segmentation in parts of the IT and communications market.
To help make open source software a real alternative for public bodies, the Adminnet
cooperation will not enter into a new Select 5.0-agreement with Microsoft Norway,
says Minister Norman.
In the IT/communication strategy for public sector that will be presented this fall,
further actions will be presented that will promote the use of open source software in
public bodies.
MS's marketing dept. is a living walking proof that the best way to get shot is to carry a gun.
... I'm really hoping somebody is going to build something marvelous inspired-by/born-from beOS. Course, I still think it will take 5 years for any of this to happen with any significance.
Like Milli Vanilli and Vanilla Ice, once a sufficient number of people notice which way the tide is going, its gunna be one HELL of a backlash, make no mistake.
I'm curious who will rise from the ashes
"Old man yells at systemd"
Also, one would imagine that for what Norway was paying the Evil Empire, they could hire more than enough engineers to perform whatever modifications need to be performed to bring Linux up to their requirements.
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.
The article is translated at desktoplinux. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6576907451.html
Vell, dey got de lyingMonopoly outta de gobernmint, now if dey cud only get de lye outta de fish.
We use Microsoft software in work. Who did you say we can call when stuff breaks? For free? Cool, what's the number?
Who you gonna call when stuff breaks? Your sysadmin, or maybe your software vendor, if you have a support contract. Other companies know about providing end user support as well, you know.
Localization and language support are going to be an issue here.
I don't know -- most Norwegians speak English better than we do.
Having said that, KDE at least is pretty well internationalized.
Steve
Language support is not going to be an issue. Norwegian uses the same 8-bit character set that English and German do, Latin-1. All software in Debian has been 8-bit clean since Hamm's release in 1998, so they can all handle Latin-1. To the best of my knowledge, there's no Un*x system on the market that can't handle Latin-1.
Thats eexactly what the EU are planning to do...
Hopefully they'll set up a 3rd world and common wealth inititive with there sharing.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
One Degree of Separation!
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.
As I am norwegian and have read several versions of the same article by now, I can inform you that they are just dropping the "exclusiveness". They have a "Select 5.0-deal" with Microsoft that means they can buy software at discount prices. It's this deal they are now dropping to encourage competition.
Link to The Norway Post's story.
I figured it would have been Finland (link) cutting the Microsoft handcuffs first! Home of Linus Torvalds, no?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Pretty standard really.
Microsoft however probably doesn't want to loose their monopoly (even if we're just four million people). Norwegian translations of Windows have been ...questionable... at times, especially for "New Norwegian", an officially recogniced dialect counted as a second language (though I've been out of the windows league for a while, haven't checked recent conditions). Therefore, I think Microsoft will boost support for Norwegian software out of fear of loosing a nation (which would be a bad example for the rest of their world), and businesses/departments will keep using Windows out of fear of retraining their workforce.
I will, off course, continue my subtle penguin missionaries... Maybe some day
That's exactly when the Norwegian government is letting its exclusive contract with MS expire.
If the school admins decide they want to use Linux, great! If they decide they want to use BSD, great! If they decide they want to use Mac or Sun, great! They point is that will no longer have to use MS, and that in itself is the first step in breaking the chains. If any of the other available solutions are deemed better, especially in education, then that is the second step, which will lead directly to the third: people tend to buy the same system as they use at work (or at least something compatible).
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I, personally, can't wait to see B.G. doing that dance when the faucet blows off the tap, a lone hand stands between the geyser of water and the sweet sweet air of freedom.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Aren't you confusing Language and character set here?
No. He asked about localization and language support. Localization is the process of translation, and was answered by other people. Language support is if you can use the language. It's more than character set, but not only does Linux have the character set down, it also has Norwegian keyboards and ample Latin-1 fonts.
I'm waiting for MS to retaliate and have a headline come out saying "Norwegian Government Expires."
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Actually, FWIU there *is* something wrong with .doc. Again, this is all gleanings, but to sally forth into the darkness:
.doc has none of those three attributes. If it did, someone would have created really good .doc import/export filters by now, not just almost-decent ones. There are some stories about that .doc is not even documented inside Microsoft, rather that there is a 'reference implementation' of source code.
.doc format appears to be engineered largely to force users to upgrade.
.doc.
"Good" protocols are things like telnet, smtp, etc. They are simple, straightforward, and discoverable. It seems that
A "good" file format, from a technical perspective, would have offered much better compatibility between revisions. The
I'd say that there are some intrinsic problems with
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Bjork's Icelandic Moron...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Norway is a small country (4 million people), and not very much is translated into Norwegian. For instance, you will rarely find dubbed movies here (just subtitled).
As a result, most norwegians understand english fairly well (even if they dont speak/write it very often).
The characterset used to be a problem (like 7-8 years ago), but isnt any problem today (For the special interested, norwegian have three special characters: æøå).
Most people I know like to use english versions of programs (instead of risking new bugs/misunderstanding resulting from low budged translations).
Internationalization is always important, but it is actually of less importance in Norway, than in most other european countries.
You must have grown up in a really nice and technology inclined area of the world, cause even here in Southern California, where I've lived my entire life, is just not placing computers with Windows in their classrooms and labs.
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? If I had any experience w/ DOS and/or Windows, or PC's for that matter, it was because of outside influences and/or work.
Though this 'Chain' will be correct in select areas, it's not the reason that linux can't get a break, nor breaking this 'chain' will cause Linux to spring forward and become the new fad that everyone must have. It's still missing a lot of things that windows offers, and it's not just going to become everyones OS's of choice just cause Governments want to switch over to it.
Unless Linux wants to push toward cloning the Windows Interface and have it react as windows does (From how a user can just turn the machine on, and 20 seconds later they can sign onto AOL, to just double clicking to install updates to the system itself.), it will never break the chain.
Linux's real problem lies in the people, and unless it can provide an environment that will allow even the most illiterate user to be able to function as they would within a windows environment, all linux will continue to get is elitest's, rebels and us uber-geeks that are willing to learn something new. And contrary to popular belief, we aren't as large in numbers compared to the amount of people in the world who just prefer to read their email than know how that email travelled to them.
======
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
Let's assume that the Norweigan government want to junk Windows, and have 1000 machines that they wish to junk it from. The average price of a Mac (taking the mean of all the different models) is about £1000. I don't know what that is in Kroner (?), but that comes to a cool million quid. For what? New hardware, that they don't need.
A million pounds! That's about 1.5 million US dollars I think. That's a lot of taxpayers cash.
And before somebody rants off about how it'd cost a million dollars to support Linux, I'd like to dispell this myth that somehow nobody needs to support or administer Macs. People say "they are so easy to configure, Linux is hard". But you don't want users reconfiguring network terminals anyway, so that isn't an issue. "Software installation is hard". Ditto. All the stuff that they need, ie writing office documents, browsing the net, checking email etc Linux does just fine, and more importantly, does it without the HUGE cost of rebuying Microsoft Office (I read $500 somewhere, which is also crazy). For organisations that already have computers, Macs are uneconomic, and no amount of guesswork based on TCO will change that. Period.
Bacause you don't want to pay 28-50% income tax. 8)
Are the taxes genuinely higher for a given income level than in the USA? In the US, combining federal, state, and local taxes can easily eat 50% of a some people's income.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Arguably telnet and smtp are terrible protocols. They're so simple they're dangerous. Telnet is open to sniffing and smtp's lack of authentication is the reason why spam rules the net. According to your criteria ssh or secure pop would not be a very good protocols.
Better look again; your post was pro-Linux!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
In other news, Microsoft Lawyers initiated a hostile corporate take-over of the Norwegian government. "I guess we will continue running Windows", was the only comment from the Norwegian Prime Minister. Microsoft declined comment when asked about their "Embrace and Extend" strategies.
That's one of the first things I thought of when reading the article. Why not Macs? The Norwegians seem more interested in competiveness, quality, and price than open standards or free software. This simply leaves them open to mixed environments and the ability to buy and use whatever software they please.
Concievably they could still be 100% MS. Though something tells me MS licensing fees are probably a good reason to ditch MS servers.
Are the taxes genuinely higher for a given income level than in the USA?
Yes. Not only do they have steep income taxes, but a 25% sales (aka VAT) tax as well.
The USA has a very low tax burden for a western industrialized country. The main reason for this is lack of nationalized health care system, which adds considerably to the level of taxes.
People here seems really narrowminded. Just because Norwegian government drops the exclusive MS contract doesn't mean that they are going to wholesale convert to Linux.
It just means putting the best solution for a specific job, like an Oracle db on Sun servers, or Apache as the webserver etc. And yes, maybe even Linux or *BSD on their fileservers. Maybe standardize on Opera as their browser (since it is a Norwegian company)
I seriously doubt the desktop will change much.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Switching to Apple's Mac OS X normally doesn't get you an alternative to MS, though. You'll get MSIE, probably pick up MS Office so you'll get MS Word, Excel, etc. So really, Apply is not an alternative to MS.
Now, that said I am not sure what other office suites currently work in Mac OS/X, perhaps there really are some good alternatives. Also, i'm not criticising Apple here, from what I've seen I quite like their OS.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
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.
... you simply had the good luck to be the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.
... usually in its easy-to-install Mandrake incarnation).
This is not meant as a personal attack, nor is it meant to imply that you personally belong to what appears to have become the Slashdot Division of Apple. It is intended to point out what appears to be a recent trend of Apple astroturfing, consisting of numerous posts which yours resembles to some degree. You are by no means the worst offendor in this regards
This is a free software/open source forum. Why on earth would you expect people who are concerned not only with technical superiority, but also freedom to advocate the substitution of one master (Apple) for another (Microsoft), when their are alternatives like FreeBSD and GNU/Linux that offer both freedom and technical superiority?
With all these "don't talk about Linux, talk about Apple OS X" posts I've seen recently I'm beginning to suspect that the Microsoft Slashdot Division another post alluded to has been joined by the Apple Slashdot Division. Frankly, astroturfing by both sides is insulting to the intelligence of any critical thinking mind, not to mention irritating as hell. And I say that as someone who will recommend Apple over Microsoft to those of my friends who are really technically illiterate (to the semi-literate I will recommend GNU/Linux
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Not really. You combine the disadvantage of Windows (being dependent on a ignorant, incompetent and foreign corporation, primitive GUI (Yes, everything that has only one desktop is primitive. Don't get me started on only one mouse-button. And it's slow, too. And the dock is optimized for demoability, not usability.)) and Linux (having to port many Win32-applications) plus you add in costs for exchanging all hardware which is also a lot more expensive.
If you can come up with real examples what KDE/Linux does wrong, post it, but the arrogant, ignorant statement "they've got a ways to go to reach OS X's level of ease-of-use." just doesn't cut it.
I really get the impression that it doesn't matter what Apple does, just anything will be declared to be user-friendly.
P.S.: Yes, I have a Mac.
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
Interesting you should mention this. Language could actually be a factor in FAVOUR of dropping Windows. Norway actually have TWO written forms, Windows only comes in one of them (as far as I know, someone might correct me on this one). Whereas both GNOME/KDE is well on their way into be translated into both of them.
And if this wasn't enough, we have a lappish minority in the north of Norway, and I bet it'd be quite hard to convince Microsoft into making a version for THAT.
For Linux, situation might be a little different. It's much simpler for the norwegian government to hire someone to do translations of Linux softwate, much of it which uses gettext, and is easily translatable. Not to mention that a project, Skolelinux (Linux for schools, see http://www.skolelinux.no/) has that as one of their stated goals, and are working on exactly that.
So, language might be an argument against Windows and FOR free software.
Hey, I'd love to give OS-X a try. And if it were $200-300 to try it out and write some exploratory apps for it, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat.
But trying it out doesn't cost two or three hundred dollars. It costs two or three thousand. Yeah, I know, the eMac is inexpensive hovering around $800, but it's far too slow, comes with a monitor that's too small, a keyboard that I can't seem to make friends with, and a mouse with one-third the number of buttons it should have. Apple also seems to provide only set bundles: This machine comes with these accessories, period. I'd like to make the cost/performance tradeoff decisions myself and pick my own combination of components.
In short, there doesn't seem to be a way to give OS-X a fair shake without spending a farkload of money.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
You don't win a war with whining and being afraid.
XBox will end the myth of Microsoft being invincible and will end the whatever-vaporware-they-put-out-it-will-be-the-sta ndard talk.
Bill Gates and all other high execs are selling as much shares as possible, Microsoft owes their own employees tens of billions in outstanding stock options and Microsoft will make losses as soon as they will have to pay taxes (either because their stock-option house of cards break down or the government closes this loophole, whatever happens first).
I don't know why everybody is so pessimistic these days.
The big days of Microsft are over, they will be the next Novell.
Interesting how ... when discussing an alternative to MS, the first ... alternative to be discussed is Linux. ... Apple's Mac OS X may be far better suited to the task.
Oh? When did Apple announce MacOS X availability for the x86 architecture? Considering that all those desktops are running Windows, replacing them with Linux is minimal cost, but replacing with MacOS would require replacing all the hardware, too.
I agree, Apple's approach to the UI layered on top of a Unix makes for a very nice desktop. Too bad it's only available on very proprietary hardware. Locking one's self into Apple may not be quite as bad as locking in to Microsoft -- but it's still locking yourself in. Mink-lined handcuffs are still handcuffs.
-- Alastair
- Norway has opted not to prolong an exclusive contract with microsoft. No statement regarding of what that may mean for what they buy in the future.
- Germany has made a deal to buy Linux systems in a major way and on an important location - for the IT structure of their parliament.
Methinks Germany is far ahead of Norway.And now analysis from Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien:
dey got de lyingMonopoly outta de gobernmint, now if dey cud only get de lye outta de fish.
I'm often amazed at the lack of maturity demonstrated by people who make this claim.
Be never had a viable product offering, their initial business plan tied their wagon to Apple's star and when they were cut loose they floundered.
Not surprising, I guess, but Microsoft had nothing to do with the failure.
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...
Reminder: find a new sig
So they're about to negotiate a new huge deal and want a little leverage..
"You want how much money for a full government xp-upgrade?"
"You know, there's no way we can spend that much and, btw., we are strongly considering alternative os's too. Just look at all the media talk about it!"
"Please give us your revised offer."
Your can of beans expires. Because it becomes stale. Because it can't be eaten. Your license expires. Because you stop paying.
Your contract is "terminated". "Norwegian Government Terminates Microsoft Contract".
Sheez.
People are missing a major point.
:-) And these licenses have to be bought each year. And for thousands of computers multiplied by number of services that is rather expensive...
:-)
What is more important is that the techies may now chose server software. Like file servers, database servers, web servers, terminal servers, print servers. Things on the client side will probably not change...
Take for instance MS Terminal Server. The actual software is cheep. Then one has to buy a license for each user connected simultaneously. Then for each ip address that connects. The licensing server will count all ip's that view the logon screen... one does not have to log in...
Digitus2001 - a norwegian
and the basis for KDE (and, indeed, current versions of Opera). Qt is Norwegian.
TrollTech especially is becoming a very important player in the software industry. They are at the vanguard of fighting Microsoft in both the desktop space with Qt/KDE and in the embedded space with Qt/embedded and Qtopia (as used in the Sharp Zaurus). They are already a great advertisement for and asset to Norway, and if they can keep it up could easily become one of the most important software companies in the world.
In this light I'm not suprised at all that the Norwegian government is opening up to alternatives. By supporting the local software industry, Norway can a) reduce its imports of foreign proprietary software, b) help increase its exports of software, and c) reduce the reliance on all forms of proprietary software (both TrollTech and Opera are extremely Linux and free software friendly). This adds up to a boost for the Norwegian economy, secures local jobs and increases tax revenues flowing to the government. All in all a big win for Norway.
Let's hope the Norwegians really do take it a stage further and start choosing some of their own software. It's a big leap to make but ultimately the Norwegian people will benefit.
(qualifying statement time)
On my network I run NT4 (2000 seem to dislike some GIS software) on the workstation and linux (redhat 6.2 interanlly, 7.X externally and Slack 8.1 for testing/speed on lower end boxes) and have been slightly vocal about what I'd like to see, personally.
People who do GIS where I work often lament about the lack of "long haul" stability of NT and pine (pun lightly intened) for the Unix days when a process of an entire state can and would run for days to complete w/o a worry.
That thought in mind, if OSX86 came out (or moved to Alpha/Power4) and could run the bulk of the heavy lifting in GIS you bet I'd be pointing out "this could be worlds better than what we have now".
Norway has it right; it is *not* about being against Microsoft, it is about choosing what is the best for the job. And between the decling of Dell's support and annoying NT4/win2k problems that only reformatting take care of, well I'd switch as a (ahem) "way out" because I believe the better product should win, not because I'm an elitest a**hole.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
With mucho reason in this case!
[snip]
Becooooze, not only would they be moving from one proprietary sh*t to another, but they would have to replace all their fsking hardware!
But what you are not considering is that for the machines they already have got, they already have the fucking licenses for MS products. If they are going to choose competitive products, it will be at a time when they can save some fucking money on it, not just to avoid using the products they've already paid for.
So Macs, in this case makes a lot of sense.
Continue using w2k/xp also makes a lot of sense.
Linux on the desktop still doesn't make much sense from a total cost of ownership point of view (which includes training, support, and remotely intelligent admins).
Replacing office with some cheaper or free software suite makes a lot of sense (as long as you can have reasonable import filters).
Using linux servers with samba instead of NT Server or 2k Server also makes a lot of sense. (Especially if you can get a specialized distribution covering those needs well, i.e. not a generic server, but one geared towards samba domain master/fileserver that is easy to administrate for beginners, i.e. webmin, swat, etc preconfigured).
But you will not see anyone removing w2k from all the machines in an office-building just to replace it without linux, unless it is some really twisted secretaries working there...
That's true, but try to sell a wordprocessor that doesn't do proper spelling and grammar checking in both Bokmål and Nynorsk to norwegian government. Or a spreadsheet program that insists on displaying currency in dollars. That will not go well. On the other hand, whether the file-menu is called "File" or "Fil" probably doesn't matter much.
And there's also the problem of having enough good actors to use for dubbing. There isn't that many obvious candidates to choose from, and people might get a bit annoyed about the same person having the voice of three different persons in the same film (in a low-budget dubbing).
If you change to OSX, you swap one company having you by the throat (Microsoft), to two companies having you by the throat (Apple for the hardware and OS X, and, guess who, Microsoft for Mac Office). What a great deal.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
this is the same minister who bought a million dollars' worth of airline tickets from an airline that hasn't started yet, just to make sure he had an alternative to the (partly government-owned) semi-monopoly called Scandinavian.
It'll be fun to see what happens next.
Here's to a Microsoft free Europe!
Now that MS is no longer given a functional monopoly in Norway, they'll have to shape up in regards to quality and pricing. Or else they'll be losing more contracts. Shops / institutions in Norway with smaller budgets have already started to dump MS albeit very, very quietly.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Of these three, Windows (and MS-Office) supports only one - namely Bokmål. True this is used by 80% of the people or something, but that still leaves 20%. KDE in contrast supports both nynorsk and bokmål, and thereby it supports 98% or more of the people (sami is spoken by quite few)
Especially in schools this is important -- there are laws that say you have in primary school the rigth to get all teaching-material in your language, as this law is today interpreted, this means only books, so Windows is allowed. However, in my opinion it would not be unreasonable to count the programs used on the computers (and the helpfiles) as part of "teaching materials". Afterall, the students are commonly required to use many of these programs, and I don't see what relevance it has that the text is on a screen instead of in a book.
If Norway has a bad reputation, it is because of lies like yours and fascists who try to force their own views on everyone ("I think it's cute, so you can't kill it for food. If you do, I will make sure you pay.").
And Norway is not doing this to support Linux. They are simply looking for cheaper solutions because they find Microsoft to be an expensive alternative, and they would like the possibility to give others a chance to compete. That's it. It's all about money.
Clever signature text goes here.
This post got modded up? By who? CmdrTaco? One mouse button my ass!
1) Mac OS X has turned out to be the best, most reliable and most user-friendly of ALL UNIX distributions.
2) Do you really want me to list all the things KDE/Linux does wrong or rather the ways they have to go to reach OS X level of ease of use ( hah...I can hear your blood boiling from here)?
I could go on about having a CONCISTENT interface being a number one priority. But I'll leave you with just one example: Font-handling.
If your not-really-believable "P.S.; [sic] Yes, I have a Mac." argument got you modded up, I should at least get +1 Insightful on the accounts that:
1) I have a mac
2) I am Norwegian
3) I have first hand experience with Mac OS X since the Public Beta(s) AND I happen to know that it's Norwegian (and in fact any language support) is top notch.
4) I write handy little lists like this
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
This is a claim, not a fact.
2) Do you really want me to list all the things KDE/Linux does wrong or rather the ways they have to go to reach OS X level of ease of use ( hah...I can hear your blood boiling from here)?
Again, no fact, just an ignorant statement.
I could go on
Baseless claims and ignorance.
Yes, I believe you could go on with that.
Public image of Mac-users
I posted a link to several problems of the MacOS UI.
about having a CONCISTENT interface being a number one priority. But I'll leave you with just one example: Font-handling.
KDE is very consistent. Much more than the mix of MacOSX apps with MacOS9 apps and completele inconsistent designs like Quicktime thrown in.
Regarding fonts, I happily use those who came with my distribution, what's wrong with that? And yes, they include ø and æ.
If the Norwegian government needs some fancy font, I think the Linux-distributor of their choice will happily include these fonts in the install.
Transparency, a mouse optimized for beauty and huge pictures instead of icons slow down productivity. Yes, when you first use a Mac, it's a nice experience, but half an hour later, all the eye-candy just gets into the way.
Here.