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EU Studies Linux Migration

Posted by michael on from the reverse-assimilation dept.

LeftOfCentre writes "The Register reports that the European Commision, the executive arm of the 380 million population European Union, has decided to spend 250,000 Euros on studying how government computers in EU states could be migrated to Linux and open source."

14 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. Let's wait by spacefight · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I bet 100 that Microsoft or similar companies will put a lot more than 250'000 into a study _against_ a Linux Migration as we've seen quite a lot in the past.

  2. It's not the computers that need migration... by mvdw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Migrating computers is easy enough - the hard part is migrating users.

    1. Re:It's not the computers that need migration... by EvilAlien · · Score: 5, Insightful
      The great thing about business or government or anywhere that isn't the users' home... "Use this computer. Or you're fired".

      Migrating users isn't that difficult, basic desktop usage of Windows, MacOS or Linux is mostly portable. Anyone who can't learn how to do very basic things on another OS (I'm not talking about system administration here, but typing and printing memos) doesn't deserve their job. Sometimes people just have to learn and adapt to change, it is one of the requirements of being a living thing.

      --
      perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
    2. Re:It's not the computers that need migration... by ArtDent · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Really? You must be using a different Office XP from the one I've been battling with lately. I *thought* that the simplicity of the UI (relative to the size of the feature set, of course) and its consistency across versions (since the Word 6 era, at least) had been Office's greatest recommendation.

      Then I met XP. Why does the interface look completely different...and feel as sluggish as Mozilla M18? Why are things that used to be dialog boxes now in these weird Window-embedded pallette things that cause the view of my document to resize? Speaking of that, what's with the window automaticlaly resizing to do battle with the help window, anyway? Does that actually work for anyone else (I frequently get a mostly blank help window with the left-most 15 pixels or so of what's supposed to be its content peeking in on the right side).

      The old, simple, clean feeling is gone. Now there's all kinds of freaky interface features that obviously "seemed like a good idea at the time."

      I'm not sure how much difficulty all of the changes would cause the mystical "typical user." For the people who accomplish a task by repeating a series of memorized mouse clicks/key strokes, these changes would be trouble.

  3. This is the EU not the US... by MosesJones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The EU has no love are large US Companies, they are after all the competition. There is less lobbying in the EU (though loads of corruption) and at the end of the day do you think that the French, Germans, Italians, Spanish etc etc would prefer to see a US Monopoly or something else ?

    Or put it another way. If MS had been French, the DoJ would have remedied them out of existence by now.

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
    1. Re:This is the EU not the US... by pubjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is less lobbying in the EU (though loads of corruption)

      That's right. There's much more corruption in the EU than the USA. That's because the EU doesn't have lots of sensible mechanisms in place to prevent giant corporations and friends of those in power from influencing policy in the way the USA does.

      (Yes, more sarcasm!)

  4. Re:Undemocratic executive arm by xutopia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    in a world of american companies trying to force the world to use their software america created the FSF.

    France is helping to create a Europe that doesn't require MS's permission to go to the washroom.

    The commission is forcing no one. It gives recommendations that the states of the new Europe take or reject based on wether or not it gives them advantages.

    Grow up.

  5. Re:Taxes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a European I would gladly have the saved money reallocated to further improve the public health care and transportation instead of returned to me.

  6. Why this is Important by Alethes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When governments and large corporations use Free Software, the chances of Palladium and other "Digital Restrictions Management" software being able to work against Free Software are very low, meaning that we as individuals maintain more of our software freedom. Hardware manufacturers cannot afford to lose the whole EU as clientele even if Microsoft can.

  7. A token expenditure by jonbrewer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That they've only budgeted 250,000 euros for a study really shows that they are complacent with a Microsoft dominated IT scheme. That rather insignificant amount of money could easily be blown on six months of a consultant's time and stock research reports from Jupiter, Ovum, and Gartner.

  8. Re:Europe out in front again... by jocks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have to agree with you. When I was a child, we looked to the US as a model of freedom and liberty, you could do SO much more in the US than in the UK and Europe.

    Now, to my mind, I would rather live in Europe because I have more freedom of speech, more liberty and more protection from world dominating corporates.

    The trials of OJ Simpson and Bill Clinton have demonstrated that even the law can be bought in the US, in the UK we have imprisoned two Lords just for lying in court (perjury).

    We have a social policy that is steadily improving, our system is not perfect in many, many ways but it is moving in the right direction.

    I am, however, an optimist and I fully expect the USA to finally grasp the importance of good Environmental Policy (something that will take many decades to happen with current social attitude), good attitude towards liberty (by empowering the people again and taking the whip from the corporates hands) and moving towards the founding principles of the nation...
    "By the people. For the people." For as long as Disney keeps copyright on Mickey Mouse(tm)(R)(c) the people will be impovrished.

    Good luck to you all!

  9. OSS Making inroads in Europe by Diabolical · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually OSS has been subject to several studies from one or the other eu comission. There are some strong promotors for OSS like Germany and several special interest groups which include some distros and smaller OSS companies.

    Further more, the recent cooling down of relations between the US and Germany inflicted fear upon several EU parliament members who suggest that it would be wise to look into OSS software to make sure the EU is not too depending on software of American origin.

    I can understand their sentiment given the alleged fact that information aquired through echelon was abused to give American companies an advantage. So they are afraid that using "American" software could give them the same problems. Aside from the fact that the EU too does not like vendor lock-in there is also a growing resentment of how Microsoft is going about it's bussiness without even the slightest hesitation because of it's legal battles and the ongoing investigation of it's practices by the EU.

    Besides.. they'd rather spend all that money they could save on licensing costs on farming subsidies anyway ;-)

  10. Re:I know they did, .. by HiThere · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No. It appears to be so common that nobody's even embarassed anymore. People who think corruption is uncommon in the US either don't have memories, or don't even read the headlines.

    OTOH, most of the corruption that has appeared (I'm not referring to scandal) appeared to happen before the person achieved whatever their current office is. Which is interesting. It seems to imply that becomming vulnerable to charges of corruption is one of the qualifications for office. I guess that this is so that those who pay you can control your actions. It would be blackmail if it weren't being done against politicians.

    This whole mess is probably because of the cost of election campaigns. How this can be corrected when most of the legislature appears corrupted, and, by implication, most of the candidates have been corrupted before being elected (not proven, but the most probable state), is a difficult problem.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  11. Strategic by syylk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, let's put down the Linux fanboy suit, and look more deeply at this.

    EU is (slowly) getting out of the shadow of the former superpower. Euro, 9/11, New Economy burst, US & Japan economic crisis, all "helped" the Union to find back their unity, identity, pride and strength.

    I won't debate the good or bad of these events, I'm not up to it.

    But, I'd like to point out that in such "self awareness" phenomenon, the last thing you'd want to concede to your competitors is to have one of their major companies practically rule the information and communication infrastructure of your own national system(s).

    Would any american citizen rather have all of their phone lines be run by a German monopolistic private company? Or all of their power plants run by a French monopolistic private company? Or all of their run by monopolistic private company?

    So why so many arms thrown up when we Europeans start looking around for other suppliers of (most of) our government and in the end strategic IT infrastructure?

    I believe if we in the EU had a powerhouse software firm similar in size to M$, we'd be already switched over it. Proprietary or not, it'd not matter (much) from a strategic point of view.

    Cost is a factor, but not as much as putting your own computer-related balls in the hands of a private company of an allied-but-competing country.