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South African Gov't Declared An Open Source Zone
fungai writes "The Business Day reports that the South African government has decided to adopt open source software and develop support programs with local research institutes and universities. The CIO of the State IT Agency says: 'The logic for open-source is so compelling that after a year of debates we decided to stop talking and declare government an open-source zone.'"
However, Microsoft's response was the kicker.
"It's a very popular technology today, but ultimately it's not a sustainable business model. What happens when the developers who find it exciting today move on to something which will pay the bills?"
I almost fell off my chair laughing. It's interesting seeing them confuse state operations and business...Maybe they've been suckling (sp?) on the US government a bit too hard?
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
Well, that's an easy one: the high school and college kids who were watching the developers will take their places. Duh.
Microsoft is still trying to figure out web services and .NET. The first version of .NET has a lot of improvements over IIS 3 and 4, but it still isn't enterprise class. For small and medium business with minimal needs, it's fine. For serious enterprise apps, it's still has a long way to go.
If microsoft can't get windows and .NET up to enterprise class in 5 years, they can forget about it happening. I know first hand many large financial corps are moving towards clustered/grid approach to next generation platform, so there's only a small window for microsoft to break in. If they delay be 2 years or more, linux will become the defacto clustering platform for PC hardware.
It appears that, in general, South Africa has leapt way ahead of the US in a large number of policy areas, not just Open Source. They've got fundamental protections in their constitutions which are significantly stronger than those in the US (for example, you can't discriminate based on percieved sexuality, domestic partnerships are law, with same sex marriages in the works, etc.)
90% of the Western world is ahead of the US on social issues like this. South Africa may have been the longest hold out in the segregation battle, but the US isn't far behind. What other Western country is ruled by a powerful religious lobby?
-a
(1) Open-source isn't a "sustainable business model?" So, according to Microsoft, forcing annual upgrades and software subscription on businesses IS a sustainable business model? In the now-infamous Peru letter, didn't Microsoft state that sales make up only a small portion of the overall software cost -- support, integration, and customization make up a far larger percent. That sounds like a sustainable business model to me. Being a US school district that received an audit threat letter from their marketing department, we sure aren't impressed with Microsoft's business model anymore. That's why we switched to StarOffice on 1000 PCs last fall (grand total cost, $25.00)
(2) What happens when "the developers
(3) What happens when "the developers
The Microsoft FUD machine is really revving up
The average African does not make the same amount of money as the average American.
So when you say stuff about people in Africa somehow getting rich off of windows programs, you would be right if this were happening in 1995-99, but its 2003, theres no longer a shortage of programmers, the supply of programmers are endless and the supply of software is limited, at least in africa where the people cannot afford the software.
Their best solution is to develop their own software using their own labor, and then they can build the technology they need to export to the USA and thats how they can REALLY make money.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Why? Government universities have a long track record of giving their software back to the community. Government agencies inside the US were actively improving Linux before they were stopped due to lobbying. The government of Germany is funding work that is going into KDE which will be available to everyone.
I don't see any evidence at all that governments aren't willing to widely share code. Their perspective is likely any of the other major players: if they don't share the code then they have no chance of getting the code in the main tree and they have repatch every new release which is an impossible amount of work.
As a South African business & games software retailer, I can tell you Microsoft is one of the few companies in the country who refuse to adjust their software prices based on the country they are dealing with. For example the Age of Mythology retails on average here at R 545 (exchange rate R8.80 = $1.00) Whereas a company such as Electronic Arts average PC Games retails for R 299 or even lower in SA. Taking Microsoft pricing policy forward to their business software and licenses, one can see they are horribly overpricing themselves in a country who can ill afford their high prices.