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Microsoft Alternative in Extremadura, Spain
grylnsmn writes "The Washington Post today has a front page article talking about how the Extremadura region in Spain is converting all government offices, businesses, and home from Windows to Linux. The article talks of their problems last spring and how the community banded together to solve them. "But the glitches are more an annoyance, [Ana Acevedo, who heads one of the government's document-processing units] said, than a hassle. 'It's mostly very tiny things,' she said." Overall, this is an important testbed for localities all over the world who are looking at making the switch. Overall, a very good and balanced article." Update: 11/03 20:37 GMT by T : Headline misspelled "Extremadura" as "Extramadura" -- fixed now.
It's "Extremadura", not "Extramadura".
'To get word processing, for example, users click on "Borcense," a picture of 16th century writer Francisco Sanchez de las Brozas; for the Internet, click on "Galeon," a crane that lives in the oak meadows and cereal plains of the region'
trying to spread the localized changes thin then..
Like many Linux advocates, he speaks about the software in emotional terms. "Connectivity and literacy" equals "equality and liberty," he said.
Microsoft regards such talk as too dramatic and distracting. It is software, after all, not war, company officials said. It is far more productive in their view to talk about the technical aspects of Windows vs. Linux.
I wonder if Steve Ballmer ever got that memo. Microsoft is a fun loving peaceful company. They only assimilate on accident, because they are trying to build a world of equality, fluffy clouds, and little bunnies.
editors note... Fluffy clouds-tm and little bunnies-tm is copywrited by Microsoft-TM. Do not use, or we will hunt you down and kill you.
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
OK, i'll not put my head on the block and make bold claims like "the revolution is beginning" or somesuch, but the constant small trickle of stories like these of insututions and corporations swithing from WIndows to Linux shows that Linux is a true alternative to Windows.
IT GETS THE JOB *DONE*.
It seems that the EU might be taking a leap ahead of the US in this. With the entire US military in the middle of a swtich to Win2k, it makes one wonder when they will realize that Windows will be obsolete in 6 years...
It would be great to see something like that spread more widely, but hey, it's a great start!
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
Nostradumus foretold this
C4Q94
Two great brothers will be chased out of Spain,
The elder conquered under the Pyrenees mountains:
The sea to redden, Rhône, bloody Lake Geneva from Germany,
Narbonne, Béziers contaminated by Agde
The great brothers are obviously Microsoft and Intel.
After, the future doesn't look too bright. Perhaps we ought to consider?
But a major bug was discovered within days: If users tried to print or view a video or do anything that involved peripherals or multimedia, strange error messages popped up.
It took a team of developers three months to fix the problem, during which anyone who converted to Linux had to download their documents on a disk and run over to a Windows machine to print them.
The Power of Open Source: Security bugs are fixed with in 1 hour, but it takes 3 months before printing starts to work.
LOL! Good one. Unfortunately Microsoft you made it war a long, long time ago, by killing anything that stood in your way. The computer industry has been in their grip for years, we've seen some of the largest abuses of the free market in history, we've seen the law bought, then bought again and now they tell people not to be emotional?
"There's been too much theology and not enough economic analysis in the debate so far," said Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, who oversees the company's global lobbying tea
This is rich coming from the company that described the GPL as "unamerican". I guess they're scared people might realise there's more to computers than the opcodes they run?
"Consider that there's a lot more to the total cost and value of a product than the initial offering somebody might give you," Smith said. For instance, it is often expensive to find support services for free software, whereas such help comes bundled with the purchase of Windows. And companies like Microsoft have a vested interest in updating their products; that's not necessarily so with free software.
You can pay as much as you like Linux tech support. I paid nothing for mine, and #linuxhelp came through every single time. You can buy it if you like, and it'll be of much higher quality than Microsofts - have you ever actually tried to get through to them on the phone when it matters?
"Somebody might give you a free puppy this afternoon," Smith said, "but you're going to have to go buy dog food in the morning."
When you use analogies, you should be careful that they can't be turned around on you. In Microsofts case, they'll sell you a puppy, then kill it when it gets old and force you to buy a new one. And you still have to buy dog food.
The software has become so popular that it has been downloaded more than 55,000 times from www.linex.org by people outside Extremadura.
Good for them. I hope they succeed, and let the community know if they need anything.
This isn't somebody. This is over 100,000 machines with 10,000 switched already. I don't recall ever hearing about such a large OS conversion ever. This is news.
You obviously didn't read the article.
Already, Vazquez de Miguel said, more than 10,000 desktop machines have been switched, with 100,000 more scheduled for conversion in the next year. [...] Organizers called their version "Linex," combining the names of Linux and Extremadura. The software has become so popular that it has been downloaded more than 55,000 times from www.linex.org by people outside Extremadura.
This is a bit different in orders of magnitude from just "somebody installing Linux", isn't it?
Stupidity is mis-underestimated.
Sadly, other regions in Spain have not accepted to use free software instead of Windows.
nirvanis
Said one joyful hippie, "We was all heading to Europe anyways, what with the recent court decision and the fact that the EU's looking at coverting to open source."
"Now at least we have a destination. So what if its actually a little bizzare that the goverment is mandating / forcing / coercing the change. Heck, I'm more than willing to give up choice, cause open source is free and freedoms what its all about, baby. Its not like the pots calling the kettle black or anything."
See if we can get businesses as a whole to start on Linux and consolidate that way. New startups, for instance -- rather than make a painful transition later, start early.
Part of the reason MS is so entrenched is because everyone expects to see it everywhere. The more of Linux they see in other places, and unexpected ones, the better a chance people will have of taking it seriously -- and actually buying it, using it, installing it, adopting it as their own, etc.
Maybe the idea of "Linux is dead on the desktop" is premature. Especially if enough places around the world prove it just ain't so?
Africa, South America, Europe and Asia Are all concidering/moving to alternative systems like linux, soon Microsoft will only have the USA left. I like linux and as a resident of europe, I hope this will succeeed. LINUX IS BETTER than windows, and it gets easier to configure all the time, microsoft will have to adapt or die
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
"Microsoft regards such talk as too dramatic and distracting. It is software, after all, not war, company officials said. It is far more productive in their view to talk about the technical aspects of Windows vs. Linux."
but consider a microsoft philippines job ad
one of the responsibilities of the job microsoft is offering is...
"Demolish competition by knowing everything they do and thwarting their every move in the relevant spaces"
that's a microsoft developer evangelist for you...
Let's see, they've already transformed 10,000 machines which were previously enslaved to the windows drum over to the free'n'easy linux beat :-)
...) from above in return for bloody coin.
:-)
They've got another 100,000 scheduled for next year. That drum's just going to get louder, and louder, and louder. Can you hear it yet ? What you are hearing, ladies and gentlemen, is the hammering-in of the thin end of the wedge, and I for one can't wait for that wedge to grow.
Windows is the him-use-deep-magick-solve-problem approach, an oligarchy of high priests results with the local priests doling out consolences (note: not solutions
Linux is a meritocracy, where librarians are shown their due worth, knowledge is open to all, and the only currency you need spend is time, the only fear you need have is looking stupid when asking beginner questions. Even then, you are mostly treated well because of the "There but for the grace of [insert deity] go I" mentality.
No, I'm not a librarian, but I much prefer the latter over the former
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
The article claims that the little dutchy is attempting to convert all of the home users in the region.
Tell me again why it is the job of the government to tell you what operating system to use?
I live here, grew up here, and know that I'm not the only one who reads every front page story in the Post every day.
Best Slashdot Co
What's newsworthy about this story is that someone has taken a significant step towards doing it.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
they have their own distro. Based in Debian 3.0 + Gnome2:
http://www.linex.org
Ooooh, goody, another libertarian troll!
There have always been alternatives. The issue was whether Microsoft was using its dominant position in the industry to strangle anyone it thought might be a competitor- e.g. using its near-monopoly on preloaded OSes to force OEMs into deals that prohibited loading competitor's software as well. It's not illegal to have a monopoly alone; you have to leverage that monopoly in restraint of trade. Rather than actually innovate their way into new markets, they simply used their existing strength to prevent others from participating.
(A related example: my parents home still has pieces of phone equipment that say "property of AT&T", because before their monopoly was split up you couldn't use non-AT&T equipment, even though in theory anyone could manufacture it.)
The antitrust thing was BS because browser tying was a bullshit example and the government made a crappy case. Microsoft did plenty of worse things that it deserved to get slapped down for. Like telling Apple that if it didn't make IE the default browser on OS 9 and hide Netscape, they'd drop Office for Mac.
And, um, you do realize that the antitrust suit was brought by the US government on behalf of US consumers, and not the Spanish government, right? Or would such facts get in the way of your misguided free-market cheerleading?
Who is "stealing" market share? That editorial blurb seemed wrong to me from the gitgo.
IMHO, if anyone chooses to use an alternative OS or hardware, they have the right to do so. There is no theft involved, just freedom of choice.
db
Cig:
ôô
It's not really an anti-Microsoft bias, it's more of an anti-Microsoft reflex.
Amazing magic tricks
any post that starts with, 'this will likely get moderated down because of the slashdot bias' should get modded down.
it's just throwing mud, why not discuss the article? for the record, while slashdot might have an anti-ms bias (_might_) they probably give ms more press and publicity than any non-ms site I know of. consider the frequency of days where there are 3 posts dealing with microsoft (like today).
I recently went with a friend to buy a new computer and found 2 pre-built systems with identical hardware but different operating systems. One had Windows XP and the other Redhat. There was a $200 price difference between the systems and it was due to the software license cost.
The savings alone would have been enough for me to decide on the Linux box but my friend has no experience on any OS other that Microsoft so he went with the XP. The first time I had to work on a Sun Solaris box, it took a few days for me to figure out how the damn thing worked but I learned. Same for Linux, but with time and use I am pretty comfortable with the OS.
Until people either begin their computer learning or receive training with non-Microsoft operating systems, I don't see any major shift from MS/OS to open source in the US any time soon, even though the cost savings could be in the billions.
By the way,have the trolls noted the "Hemerotica" section on the Linex site? That should be another entry for the Linux Gay Conspiracy post....
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Not too much, as most of the MS software used in Spain is pirated.
But he should start being worried about Europe...
It's not really an anti-Microsoft bias, it's more of an anti-Microsoft reflex.
Reflexes are evolution's way of saving lives. Poke your finger into some hot coals and the back of your hand hits your forehead before you can say "Hot!". It's the same with Windows.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Why are so many posts starting with disclaimers like "This likely will get moderated down because of the slashdot bias, but it must be pointed out...."?
Is the point to cultivate points through moderator guilt (and they're a stone-hearted bunch) or to get one last defiant dig in before the ship sinks (due to bias, naturally)?
The illogic of "this likely will get moderated down" is that if it is, then no one will read the disclaimer. Perhaps someday an internet archeologist will discover its prophetic remains.
Now, I realize that this will get modded into oblivion by nincompoops who fear the contagion of righteous criticism and sedition; yet the Mod Squad might see the error of its ways, showering "insightful" points on this post and its parent, then resigning as penance.
All in fun. Some of my best friends are moderators. Really.
There is nothing more dangerous than irrational hatred, and having an unchanging bias against microsoft is a sure sign of going down that road.
I personally run both linux and win2k, and I love them both. The important part is to *see* with eyes unclouded (to quote mononoke).
Hell, I was called a crazy zealot because I made the claim that for 30% of computer users Linux would be the best solution right now. (I didn't even say for a majority, just 30%.)
And it's not just "somebody" in the article, it's 10000 desktops with 100000 more to come.
We need such articles to counter the constant bashing (by pro-Windows people) and the constant whining (by many pro-Linux people).
What does that have to do with his point? It's not illegal (for the most part) to leverage if you don't have a monopoly, and the existence of a viable competitor is incompatible with someone having a monopoly.
And, um, you do realize that the antitrust suit was brought by the US government on behalf of US consumers, and not the Spanish government, right? Or would such facts get in the way of your misguided free-market cheerleading?
And what does that possibly have to do with his point? Linux only works in Spain, and not in the US?
No, he has a valid point that's been made here since the start of the antitrust case, when people were simultaneously arguing that Red Hat 5.0 was clearly superior to any Microsoft offering, but that Microsoft was a monopoly because it had no competition. I'd say the best argument you could make for the antitrust case was that three years ago, Linux did not, in fact, offer real competition on the desktop. Of course, since this project is Debian-based, it _is_ three year old Linux, so...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Has anyone translated the distro to English or some other language than Spanish?
Has anyone here tried it for that matter?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Here you are:
:-)
Q: Do you think citizens should have the right to decide which software they use?
1. No, I prefer a propietary software already predefined.
2. Yes, Knowledge must belong to everybody.
3. If everybody makes a choice, isn't it going to be a mess?
4. Sure, freedom relies on diversity.
(As you can see, a bit biased...funny anyway
By being so lax on MSFT.
Often it is said that it is only logical, in these times of economic troubles, that the US government does not act too harsh on 'its own' software powerhouse MSFT.
But (apart from the damage it does to other domestic software companies): as can be read in the article, many foreign institutions/governments are very uneasy at the thought of being at the mercy of a single, foreign company (and rightly so). Therefore they abandon (or try to, gradually they shall succeed) MSFT and turn to the only alternative: Linux or other open source solutions.
Not that I oppose this, not at all. But from the perspective of US economic interest, it is clear that this diminishes software export turnover, which is bad. A more effective war against MSFT's illegal behaviour and monopoly would give alternative companies a chance, many of them would also be US companies. They could fill the hole, partly instead of Linux; this would create more choice for everyone, and would make many foreign governments feel more comfortable at the thought of importing and being dependant on foreign software. The net effect for the US trade balance of a harsh attitude against MSFT therefore would surely be positive, instead of negative as is often thought.
I was talking about this with people at the SCALE Linux expo yesterday. Linux will have a tough time gaining market share in the U.S. for assorted reasons. But countries outside the U.S. software and hardware costs make running cutting edge system cost prohibitive. With Linux using Linux they can save enough money on software and reinvest in hardware, but also invest in developers to support their business and contribute back to world community. This will help improve Linux and OSS an draw the attention of more U.S. users. Increased use of Linux by business outside the U.S. will give Linux the track record U.S. enterprises want to see.
I'm sick of morons who don't get it. (Microsoft broke an agreement goddamnit. They agreed not to bundle IE with Windows and they did bundle IE with Windows at the next possiblitly.)
I'm sick of monopoly-whiners constantly complaining. We don't need whiners, we need a positive, optimistic attitude in the Linux community.
Let's face it: The US-government is both incompetent and corrupt.
There is no hope that the US-government will ever reintroduce a free, open and capitalistic market in the OS space (yes, you read that right. The market is not open. The force-bundelings of Windows are more close to communism than Linux can ever become), we will have to do that ourselves.
Let's forget that courtcase and move on.
And it can be done. All the mainstream software is right available. - Just show the software to users. All users I showed Mozilla to loved it (either because of tabbed browsing or because of ad-blocking). It's harder to convert the whole platform, but I've done that for a couple of users, too. After initial glitches and minor problems, it's much better and problem-free than any Windows installation.
You are. Mac OS X is the only way to true computing pleasure.
Wouldn't it be something if the United States ended up being a technological ghetto because it continued to use Microsoft products while the rest of the world moved on to Linux?
In Extremadura, the regional government paid a local company $180,000 to cobble together a set of freely available software. The resulting disk contains a suite of programs that includes an operating system, word processor, spreadsheet and other applications.
My emphasis.
This CANNOT be accurate; no one gets $180,000 to make "a cobble(d) together... disc" of free software.
I almost fell off my chair when I read that!
Mind you, they (the regional government) saves money even paying this much to one company...then there is the support contract...
(4) Profit!
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
No, in other words, the transition to Linux has not been without its share of problems.
No, it's a good and balanced article because it discussed the problems involved in the switch, such as the one mentioned above and the one that took three months to fix. That is hardly a facile pro-Linux/anti-MS bias.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
"The article talks of their problems last spring and how the community banded together to solve them. But the glitches are more an annoyance, [Ana Acevedo, who heads one of the government's document-processing units] said, than a hassle."
/. but this article is not the right one to raise your point upon, IMHO of course.
In other words, Microsoft software is terrible and GNU/Linux software is great.
Yes, that is your conclusion from the above quote. *That* is exactly what an unbiased article should be, it should reflect points from both sides and let the readers decide what they think of the overall situation.
Also from the article,
"Consider that there's a lot more to the total cost and value of a product than the initial offering somebody might give you," Smith said. For instance, it is often expensive to find support services for free software, whereas such help comes bundled with the purchase of Windows.
I take your point that there are blind M$ bashers in
getSexySig();
Hi,
while your post is completely offtopic, and thus moderated as such correctly, I feel the need to help you out..
What you've encountered is what RPM-users (RedHat, Mandrake, SuSe, Conectiva) call "Dependency hell". Package A depends on B, which in turn depends on C and D, which... you get the picture.
Many distributions have come up with a solution to this: Mandrake has got urpmi, RedHat has got up2date, I'm sure SuSe has got one too, and Conectiva has got apt. Yup, that tool from Debian. They ported it to "rpm" distros, and it's working great. I use it daily on my RedHat 8.0 box.
You can find all the info you need at freshrpms.net. Be sure to get synaptic, a graphical tool to install packages. You'll love it.
If you need more help, feel free to mail me at atticusfinch at-symbol spamsu point cx.
How about Extreme Linux, or Durable Linux? Guess they must not speak english over there, or something. ;-)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
... and then they're going to authorize an M$ carpet-bombing of the whole region, to stifle them terrorists..
First, I'm writing this with Debian 3.0 and I think that the overall idea of replacing MS products with open source alternatives is great. But, why was it necessary to develop a new distribution, based on Debian, call it Lin-Ex (for Extremadura), and spend 180.000 $ in it ? Is it that expensive to pack a number of .deb files on a CD ? What will be the cost of maintaining Linex ? Should every body else in the world create their own distributions ? What's the point of that ?
I suspect a politic intention behind Linex.
To me, it would have been much better to use a standard distro in spanish and spend the money in something else such as formation or support.
Aide: Sr. presidente, necesitamos más dinero para nuestras escuelas. Necesitamos comprar computadoras para nuestros niños.
(Mr. President, we need more money for our schools. We need to buy computers for our kids.
Presidente: Bien, podemos aumentar impuestos?
(Should we raise taxes?)
Aide: Ningún Sr.
(No sir.)
Presidente: Tengo una idea. Vamos anunciar que estamos cambiando a Linux. Debemos recibir una donación grande de Microsoft muy pronto. Después que podemos cambiar detrás.
(I have an idea. Let's announce that we're switching to Linux. We should receive a large donation from Microsoft very shortly. After that we can switch back.)
Aide: Idea excelente! Usted es un genio!
Excellent idea! You are a genius!
5. Are those upside-down question marks the cutest little things you've ever seen, or what?
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Ofcouse there's politics behind; they want their own distibution like France(mandrake) and Germany(SuSE). Besides I guess one of the important tasks for LinEx is likely to write a simpler installer and make disks that defaults to spanish locale and supports euro-sign out of the box (unlike Debian )
Its not like its a problem. It wasn't for the US justice department. They had the best monopoly case since Standard oil and they just bent over for Microsoft. While we don't know who is in that gotese.cx picture, I'm sure they work for Ashcroft.
The MS puppy is neutered, and can't breed. The free puppy still has its nuts, and will happily sire a litter of vigorous bastards for you.
"Microsoft regards such talk as too dramatic and distracting. It is software, after all, not war, company officials said. It is far more productive in their view to talk about the technical aspects of Windows vs. Linux."
You want productive and dramatic? Here's the breakdown:
Windows = $150+ (depending on where you get it)
Linux = Free, Nominal fee if you buy a packaged distro
Wow. Rocket Science. Those are the numbers that Joe and Jane Public understand. And once they find out that Linux does alot of what they want to do with computers, Linux is gonna look a whole lot better when they get to Wal-Mart.
Now, let's look at it from a government perspective:
Windows = Closed Source, any software is going to be both proprietary and costly.
Linux = GNU GPL allows for total customization of the OS and applications without having to spend a fortune.
Unless MS is in bed with a government (like it is with ours here in the US), that Government is going to like the idea that, instead of spending millions on licenses and proprietary software, they can spend under a million on a few programmers who can tailor everything to their exact specifications. And the big issue, Security, can be resolved during the process of customization. Any Geek worth his salt can recognize a potential security flaw in the code. With Windows, you're sitting on your laurels waiting for an announcement and patch (MS has been known to wait quite a while to release them), and also those ever sneaky EULA changes.
It's a no-brainer, really. Linux and its OS brothers and sisters (and bastard children) are the most logical choice. Cost effective and customizable, something both Governments and Joe/Jane (in this case, Jose/Juanita) Puiblic can both understand.
Looks like Gates' travel itinerary has grown again. First India, now Spain. If he has to keep giving out "free software" to convince people that his is the right path to take, MS will go broke.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
>Let's face it: The US-government is both incompetent and corrupt.
He he... Our Spanish-government is also both incompetent and corrupt, but you're right, it plays with an advantage: it is not the US-government.
Thank Buddha it's not Linux+Extremadura = Durex.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
This is so NOT US-Centric! Haleluja!
/. being US-Centric, Bravo!
As someone who bitched before about
Call me a bigot if you must, but to me, the exposure that the non-US and non-English speaking community is getting here is EVEN MORE refreshing and anti-monopolistic than the unseating of M$.
To be perfectly American about it, Yee-haw!
According to Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's general counsel,"...And companies like Microsoft have a vested interest in updating their products; that's not necessarily so with free software."
Since when did Microsoft become so interested in updating their software for the good of the software? Give me a break.
DISCLAIMER:
I don't believe what I write, and neither should you.
Places where efforts is underway to replace Microsoft on the desktop with Linux is where the Rubber meets the road.
Help fight continental drift.
Show me some examples.
For info on the packages in linex check here.
There are no packages that would suggest that. You can check the source to see if there are specific changes.
That is the beauty of Open Source you can check the source. Which is again my question can you show me some examples. Of this. I agree it is a possible dark side but the system of Open Source has checks and balances against that. More so then corporate software.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
It's just that third, ugly child of yours that you lock up in the basement that you hate.
Ceci n'est pas un post
After initial glitches and minor problems, it's much better and problem-free than any Windows installation.
So, after some problems, it's problem-free? What kind of sense does that make? If it has problems, it's not problem-free, regardless of when the problems occurred.
-Terralthra...
Free Markets work and they work well, whether you are willing to admit it or not. They are the most efficient allocators of resources. In free markets there are winniers and there are losers. The market is a dual edge sword. This is not just a platitude but an economic fact. The open market has helped Microsoft become the lead-assed giant it is now, and the market will someday crush it unless it adapts to the market. Fortunes in a free market always rise and fall, but markets aren't just dollars and cents. It is the sum total of billions of individual decisions made every day by businesses and households, which can affect markets, just as they sometimes don't affect markets. I love Linux. It will and is having a profound impact on the software market, and Microsoft is aware of that. Their crappy, maladapted, hole-ridden server/business software is slowly forcing them away from the server/business market into the entertainment market, DRM, all the pretty bells and whistles on their software, plus the X-Box. But I also love Windows for the great games, inasmuch as I subscribe to transgaming to run games on Linux; whole clubs are dedicated to Windows PC games and MS is seeing PC games with as many games on the market are trending out from the economic profits have have experienced from their core software offerings: OS and Office Suites. Ask any IBM guy. The big dogs don't make decisions unless they think they can turn a buck on them: their lives and livelyhood depend on that, they depend on markets; and and those decisions are based upon those billions of decisions I mentioned earlier. So before you start trashing a time honored institute maybe you ought to think about how MS got to where it is today.
Dawn of the Dead
Are those upside-down question marks the cutest little things you've ever seen, or what?
:-)
Errr, yes, they're cool, arent they?
Sorry. Misspelling. We use them a lot in spanish -just to mark the starting of a question.
thx for the comment
Ok, they believe that there are 110,000 copies of windows in this province.
How many of these 110,000 copies arelegal copy of windows?
Yeah, I don't belive that there are many people here who have, or are going to spend money on Microsoft products.
I don't know any folks in Spain, so I do not know if they really feel purchasing MS software is contributing to Bill Gates ability to contribute to population control or not. However, if that is true, then I am not surprised at all that folks would be thrilled to have a chance to leave MS products.
Bart Bucks are not legal tender
vi +
This is nothing new, read this entry:
d
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhoo
It makes sense in the medium to long term. If you plan to live longer than a year it makes sense. If you are suicidal, over 80 and/or a cancer patient it probably doesn't make sense.
Are you really so slow or why do I have to explain that to you? It's really not that complicated.
When I read this, I thought about it for a few minutes and I realized that there's a number of interesting issues that make it worthwhile for governments in other countries to really carefully consider migrating to free software:
:-P)
:)
1) Licensing: Software licensing is expensive and restrictive (particularly from everyone's favorite punching bag, Microsoft), and outside governments can likely save $200-$700 per machine on budgeting if they choose open-source alternatives. (Since their user base hasn't yet grown to be dependent on M$ products, they have far fewer usability issues when migrating their infrastructure-- just interoperability ones).
2) Security: Linux/BSD Unix/etc. are open-source and since developers all over the world are reviewing them 24 hours a day (while you sleep, there's someone on the other side of the world looking at the code for the kernel, which is always kinda cool) security issues are found, publicized and fixed much sooner than from closed-source software vendors. Foreign governments in particular should find this attractive, I'd imagine.
3) Maintainability: If a user needs a feature (say, the ability to use the new Euro currency symbol, or the inverted date-parsing of 23/01/2002) then, rather than having to wait for a proprietary company to develop a localized version of your software (several months to perhaps years of lead time if it's a big application that has a long product cycle) you can just go and change the source code as necessary to incorporate whatever you need.
4) Economic independence: I have to believe that one of the reasons so many outside countries are considering switching to free software is in order to avoid having their information infrastructures become dependent upon systems from large American software vendors. After all, suppose economic sanctions or US trade policy towards a hostile nation shut off someone's software licenses. (Particularly for big, expensive applications that authenticate with a central server at the developer's control, this is a valid concern!) It seems like investing in owning your own IT structure (not licensing it) is a good choice to preserve national independence.
5) Political Integrity: In an open-source system (particularly a voting system, which is the easiest example to choose) the user (voter or government) has a clear view of the inner workings and how everything goes. If I conduct an election, I want to make sure there are no bugs in the system, so I will inspect the source code and run a few tests to make sure everything works properly. If the program is closed-source, I cannot do that; I must rely on the manufacturer's assurances that everything works properly. And I don't have any way of auditing an election to make sure the votes were tabulated properly; the machine simply spits out a result, and I am bound to accept it. (This, of course, is one of the things that infuriates me about the new voting equipment in Florida!
I just thought that, really, the confluence of all the above issues makes very compelling case for these governments to consider migrating to open-source software. I'm not surprised by the growing trend....
-d
So what?
Be happy because if they were pro-Windows, you would not be allowed to post your opinon here (were are all those forums on pro-Windows sites? Where are they? I don't see any, because they don't exist.)
slashdot is one of the few sites still run by amateurs. They make typing mistakes, sure. They make editing errors. They have duplicate stories. But it's one of the few major sites left not controlled by big corps. And they let anonymous guys like you post their opinion.
If Micorsoft would have won the battle against the Internet, we would now all run the proprietary MSN service (which is very different to the MSN today.), only big corps could afford to put something on the net and there would be no Linux, no slashdot and you could not write your opinion in a forum, because such forums would also not exist.
"Internet will never be popular" - Bill Gates
... just wondering if anyone has downloaded this "linex" ISO and burned it and installed it yet. How it works, etc, compared to the 'big boys" releases.
..probably also help to read the entire responses here, too, but whut the hey.....
ya, it might help to speak spanish I guess.....
Err, that would be two continents, North America and South America, if you want to be picky.
Durex? Doesn't that help protect against the transmission of viruses? Fsck yeah! I'll take one of those!
Interesting that they chose Debian as their starting point. .... Debian
After Redhat , there are more distros based on
Debian than anything else. According to Distrowatch there are some 13, 14 if you count
pure Debian itself.
It's funny how some of the more conventional
companies Corel, Xandros, Lindows choose non-commercial Debian to base their Distros on.
Knoppix as well.
Now this great effort.
Good things come from
So it's a good article and balanced because it's pro-GNU/Linux and anti-MS.
Yep, because as we all know, balanced means all things are of equal value. It couldn't be that Linux is working better for them than Windows. Pffft, a government switching 100,000 computers to Linux, i don't know HOW they managed to make that sound pro-linux.
Come on. No article is completely balanced but Slashdot seems to put a pro-Linux skew on everything. I like Linux too but I'd rather see it to be unbiased rather than have an immature hatred of everything MS. I mean, I see most stuff that MS did was negative, but Slashdot even managed to put an anti-MS tilt on an article saying that Win2k with SP3 was secure, saying that it took three service packs to do that. Linux patches things all the time too, and there's nothing wrong with patches to fix holes! But come on, please give some unbiased feedback. If it is unbiased I'm sure it will come out pro-Linux, but it doesn't have to be Pro-GNU/Linux Anti-Microsoft on _every single article_.
Yeah, that's exactly the kind of biased article you expect from slashdot. Wait... front page article in the Washington Post you say? The slashdot story was just quoting from it? Oh, well I guess you're full of crap then.
Has anyone addressed the Windows v. *nix cost of software development? Every *nix IDE I have used sucks compared to Visual Studio / VB. (Yeah, yeah, real programmers wouldn't use VB...) While Linux is very cool from an economist's point of view, serving as an example of peer production and all, what does it say when an OS has to be free to get people to accept it?
Is *nix too tied to Java? As a developer, I like C# and the .Net framework far more than J2EE, but does it matter? Is the cost of the OS more important than development cost/efficiency? Clearly OS2 and *nix were better OSes than Windows 3.1, but dev tools for Windows were far better and cheaper. That was the biggest reason for the demand for Windows. IMHO, Windows dev tools are still better, but Linux is almost free now. What good is an OS if the app I want doesn't run on it? I'm still not certain as to how this will be resolved. I could imagine a situation in the future where lots of utility stuff is written for Linux and Windows, but the high value added stuff is written for Windows.
Seems to me the Spanish have apparently run into one manifestion of this situation. I can imagine the conversation now: "OK, we will keep the Windows systems until someone writes XYZ for Linux." But as long as there is an XYZ.x for Windows first, there will always be a need for Windows, and as long as the dev tools for Windows are better than those for Linux, there will always be an XYZ.x.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Whereas with my Windows 2k install, I had no initial problems, AND here I am 2 years later with no spyware, no DLL messes, and no spyware.
Hmm.
-Terralthra...
That depends on how much software you purchase and for what purpose. I had this same conversation at work not to long ago. I suggested Linux as a way out from under Microsoft's licensing. While there were a number of reasons (cost of retraining, "there'll be no one to blame...", "that's non-standard..." etc.), one issue caught me without an answer.
We were discussing how Linux has just about everything we wanted from the Corporate Standard sense. You could lock the systems down tight for the average user, you could give developers a developer-oriented operating system, Open Office offered a good-enough Word/Excel/Powerpoint replacement, even e-mail wasn't an issue.
Our issue was group calendaring and MS Exchange. You see, while Ximian has some great stuff, it doesn't interface with the release of Exchange we're using. The question was asked, "What if we upgraded to Exchange 2000?" The answer was that we hadn't finished depreciating our current licenses for Exchange.
That last bit has also surfaced as a reason to use pay-to-play software in general. You depreciate the license cost over time like you would office furniture or new computers.
I haven't crunched the numbers, so I don't know which way is cheaper. Do you save so much in taxes by depreciating licenses as an asset? Or is it cheaper to avoid the license cost up front? It seems to me that you'll end up paying someone knowledgeable about the system regardless of whether it's open source or not. Can you really save so much on taxes that it's worth paying recurring licese fees and making yourself vulnerable to vendor-lock?
Personally, I now run Linux as the main OS on my home machine. I became more and more disgusted with Microsoft's policies. I also became more and more concerned about having to keep buying Outlook to read my e-mail archives, or being forced to use Microsoft products to gain access to my own writing. I haven't gone MS free (I'm down to a few boots a day), mostly because of my computer gaming habit. I'm working on it though. (BTW: I bought a duel-boot (pun intended) machine from Los Alamos Computers --great machine.)
I agree with your point about retraining, sort of a weening from MS (ughh can't get horrid image out of mind...). However, I think that the shift is happening off the charts. You see, because you can download it for free, computer geeks like me will try it out. Because /. and other "geek-chic" gathering places take a decidedly pro-Linux slant, people wanting to be "savvy" and "in-the-know" will talk about Linux. And because its good and free (very rich word, that) more people will use it. Linux is not a tide that ebbs, it is the small stream that becomes victorious over the rock bed. Sorry for all the philosophical nonsense, but Linux will find its way into your office and mine the same way Windows machines edged out VAX terminals. Linux offers something better.
As Microsoft becomes more and more the a media giant they want to be (Disney-esque, even), more and more people will see their software for what it is... Mickey Mouse. (Don't forget, they've got Donald Duck heading up corporate strategy.)
http://www.activewin.com
I always read it and get a big laugh out of it:
Washington Post article discussion
Actual quotes by Windows advocates:
"If Microsoft was free and Linux costed money then Linux would be called evil and so on."
"Its quite refreshing to know that the USA saved Europe all by itself....history is a wonderful thing ;)"
The question is....
Did they rename another web browser to Galeon like they did with the word processor, or is it really Galeon?
And, um, you do realize that the antitrust suit was brought by the US government on behalf of US consumers
Um, actually, no. The antitrust suit was brought by the US government on behalf of the Democratic Party and the Clinton Administration. They didn't care one bit about US consumers; what they cared about was the Micro$oft was not making "enough" donations to Democratic candidates.
Back in the day, industry pundits commented often that the antitrust case was a bone-headed move by the Government when a far more effective method of reigning in M$' abuses would have been through an FTC (Federal Trade Commission for those readers outside of the US) action. It is sort of like an overzealous prosecutor trying to get an attempted murder conviction when an armed robbery conviction would have been easy to get, and would have done the job just as well.
But no-o-o-o, the Clinton administration just had to "punish" M$ for not making "enough" donations to Democrats, and look at what we have now: a monopoly that delayed the case long enough to buy a presidential election and get off scot-free.
Sigh. Well, now I guess the free market is going to have to take care of it because it's obvious that the US government isn't going to. Not that they ever intended to in the first place, but it would have been nice.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
When people take up Open Source/Linux, they take up something that is basically free. Add to that the infrastructure aspects of the software. It needs some dogfood (services) but it is best to have a local dogfood supplier. This gives you labels in your local language in stead of the current lingua franca AND you can speak to them. For the US to keep a positive trade balance re IT they HAVE to have great programmers. Currently they get them elsewhere as the US education system is said to be lacking. That is the sad thing for the US 'cause IT was great so far and what the next thing will be is unclear
Never buy a dog from a Pikie.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The elder conquered under the Pyrenees mountains:
The sea to redden, Rhône, bloody Lake Geneva from Germany,
Narbonne, Béziers contaminated by Agde
We all came out to Montreux
On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place in town
When some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground
Smoke on the water
A fire in the sky
Smoke on the water
linex.org appears to be using Slash for their website interface :-) Nice co-incidence!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Microsoft and its supporters have vigorously lobbied against any laws or policies that dictate what software a government can or cannot buy. The software company's advocates argue that such policies stifle innovation.
Funny. The exact same could be said about Microsoft's policies of lobbying the US government to create laws preventing consumers from using their own property in the way that they want.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
He learnt it in this academy.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I think there may be another angle which hasn't been mentioned which causes problems for Linux. It's not just Microsoft that doesn't want it to succeed. All the companies that are pushing for Digital Rights Management and prosecutions under the DMCA are going to be against Linux. Why? Because it will open up the code, so that it is ALWAYS modifiable not to support DRM. This means that companies will complain that they can't profit without DRM (yeah right, like that's stopped them for the last 20 years) and will want a closed-source, non-modifiable OS. There will be many big corps/companies pushing against Linux, IMHO.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
What I find interesting is that a few governements have realized the risks associated with having too much of their technological infrastructure owned by one company, but most US governments still don't have a clue. This change seems mostly to be driven from overseas, it makes sense since microsoft is a US company. Will the death of microsoft's dominance on the desktop come from a thousand small cuts around the world?
Is there something like rational hatred >
My reaction when reading the sentence "In Extremadura, the regional government paid a local company $180,00 to cobble together a set of freely available software." was this: The phrase "cobble together" implies a sloppy, makeshift solution (Perhaps in contrast to Microsoft's Office Suite?).
That, in conjunction with the mention of the dollar amount to do so, leads me to believe that there is a subtle spin against custom Linux-based application/software "bundles" or "suites" in the article, for whatever reason, and I think that there are two ways to interpret this, both undermining Linux in general (I warned you that this was mildly paraniod ):
1) Upon reading that paragraph it seemed, solely based upon the phrasing, to denigrate this effort in general, since it required a "cobbled together solution" costing a substantial amount of money.
Yeah, yeah, it is not that much money when you consider the number of people that would benefit, but how many people do you think read it that didn't consider that and merely thought "Wow that's a lot of money, I wonder why they had to spend so much to tie those programs together?"
2) Or, on the flip side - the opposite reaction from IT people that know how much money Microsoft has spent on developing and integrating their Office suite: "Wow, that isn't anywhere near as much money as Microsoft has spent on Office - it *can't* be as good."
Just my opinion.
10K US$?
180K is peanuts if you need to put quickly a distribution and test it. That amount would pay the salaries of a small team of people for one year.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I know that. It is a joked based on a careful mangling of a cliche. And, BTW
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a
customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab:
Support: "You're not our only customer, you know."
Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."
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