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FT on Europe's Open Source Option

Posted by michael on from the good-to-have-options dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "The Financial Times offers a very interesting read about Linux, its possibilities for business, and its threat to Microsoft. Also a second article about "Europe's open-source option"."

3 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. So do I - for different reasons by CharlieO · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I love them - yes they are funny, but they are of major use to our community.

    Most of us on squishdot rage flamewars about code stability, scaleability, freedom of choice - but none of this matters to the execs - they don't read what we write.

    But if someone like the FT mentions Linux and how good it is - this gets read in the board room, on the train, on the trading floor.

    And then maybe, just maybe, someone will ask the head IT person just what its all about. Then we get a chance to explain it. Get a copy of these articles, save the link somewhere - and then next time you have to do a whitepaper or value proposal in your company where you know open source is the better choice you have some references that people will sit up and notice.

    Treat these articles as sales leads to big buisness - marketing is what open source is not good at beacuse we don't press the right buttons - the FT does.

    Still - good for a chukle wasn't it.

  2. Europe and Microsoft et al... by MosesJones · · Score: 5, Interesting


    The basic concern here is also reliance on technology that can be controlled by another goverment, the advantage of Open Source is not just financial but is also one of Intellectual Property. Most of Europe is politically much further to the left than the US and is pro-sharing. This is a major principle of the EU, as opposed to the US centric treaty that enables logging and exploitation on the other side of the pond.

    So there is less of a clash of culture when considering open source, Europe understands why co-operation is good, that is how much of the European defence industry works already.

    Now there is also the arrogant bit....

    We think European Students can build better OSes than US corporations - Linus

    We think that Europeans can build better enterprise systems - SAP

    We think that the best things to come out of IBM were developed in Europe - MQSeries

    So basically underpinning this is a belief that we don't have the cash to do better, but do have the talent. Most EU reports on Open Source software talk about leveraging this talent pool, and not having the marketing and release costs of a full scale company.

    Its the difference between consent based and co-operative management and the approach taken over the pond.

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  3. Windows Getting Less Secure? by Mackus+Daddius · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Microsoft last week said it would let government customers examine the source code of its Windows operating system, a move intended to overcome perceptions of the systems's security weaknesses.

    Now, I am not a Fortune 500 CTO (IANAF5CTO?), but I would be pretty worried if I had a global deployment of Windows systems and Microsoft just started handing out the source code to foreign governments (or my own for that matter). If people consistently find exploits without access to the internal code, imagine what a motivated foreign intelligence service can do with access to it.

    Is Microsoft, in reacting to the emerging "open source in government" movement, inadvertently making Windows less desirable to everyone else?

    ::md