Embarrassing Governments Into Adopting Open Source

caitsith01 writes "An effort is currently underway to embarrass the Australian Federal Government into adopting open source software. As this story explains, the Australian Democrats have put questions on notice in Parliament that will require all government ministers to disclose how much money their departments spend on Microsoft products each year. The idea is to force open source issues to the fore by showing just how much money Microsoft receives from the government. It could be a smart approach - the average taxpayer knows little or nothing about OSS, but will rapidly form and express vocal opinions about the government wasting money. The article also mentions that a bill may be introduced to Federal Parliament to mandate the consideration of open source solutions (you may remember this story about an Australian state trying to introduce similar legislation). Some quotes from the article: "What the country doesn't need is to be tied into a profit-maximising licensing system, and the way to combat that is to get government to break out of the paradigm." On the other hand, the (right wing) Liberal Party criticises suggestions that use of open source should be compulsory as "hi-tech affirmative action.""

Comments

Not quite ready

[egg troll]

Admittedly the cost of buying software is a valid concern. Yet its not the only one. There are also costs such as training and lost productivity. While Linux and the BSDs are excellent server OSes, I hope the Australian government would think long and hard before adopting them for workstation use.

As much as I love Open Source (I'm typing this via Moz on FreeBSD!), I don't think I could recommend it to Sally Secretary quite yet. Its still got a bit more polishing to do. In Gnome, for example, I occasionally get a dialog box that says " occurred. For more information, click on the help button." Naturally there is no help button.

Hopefully, though, a widespread adoption of it as a server OS will encourage those working on its workstation aspects to really get a move on so we can rid the world of MS products.

Re:Not quite ready

[jkrise]

I hope the Australian government would think long and hard before adopting them for workstation use.

The longer and harder you think, the more time gets wasted. You lose nothing when givng Linux a try.

I don't think I could recommend it to Sally Secretary quite yet.

How did your Sally Secretary learn to use Windows and Office? Osmosis? I doubt it. Trining isn't a factor for normal users.

In Gnome, for example, I occasionally get a dialog box that says " occurred. For more information, click on the help button." Naturally there is no help button.

In MS Office, Sally frequently gets "It appears you are typing a letter" message. Does she know how to turn it off? Is there a toll free MS support number she can contact?

What about " Program performed illegal operation. Instruction could not be Read" messgaes? Those pop-ups? Those BSODs? Does BSOD come with a Help button?

Please.. think before you troll.

-

Re:Not quite ready

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you've reported that bug :)

Or fixed it!

Gnome and the rest of the open source apps are *really* nice now. Both my parents use linux now(and like it better). Neither of them are very heavy computer users but it seems to have worked better for them.

No spyware, system crashes, viruses, less spam, less advertising. Overall I think that improves productivity.

Of course I tailored each of their systems to them. Gave them assistance for a few days. But I did that for windows anyway(and spent longer at it).

Apps like email, web browsing, office stuff are *very* similar to windows programs.

Custom applications designed poorly(dependant on a single platform) are the main things holding people back. Many custom programs can be filled with open source programs.

Wine, win4lin, and vmware can be used in the transition to linux.

Have fun!

Re:Not quite ready

[BJH]

You mean, they can check-out the file via CVS, make their enhancement, and then submit their changes to Linus ?

You know we're talking about secretaries, don't you ?

*sigh*... That's what a supplier is for.

For example, if Ms. Plunkett the secretary at AcmeCorp realises that the wordprocessor she's using doesn't handle mailmerge, she can call up her organisation's support section. If the support section thinks it's a feature that will be widely needed, they can talk to their supplier (say, IBM) and ask for this feature to be included in the next upgrade. IBM can see if that feature has been implemented in a later version and upgrade AcmeCorp to that version or backport it to AcmeCorp's current version, or they can add it themselves and supply AcmeCorp with that version, or they can farm it out to a third party, or they can finance the original developers to add that feature, or they can tell AcmeCorp that it's not worth their time to add such a feature, in which case AcmeCorp can do the same thing IBM did - add the feature themselves, backport it, pay a third party to implement it, or pay the original developers to include it.

It's so much easier when everybody has equal access to the source, isn't it?

Re:Not quite ready

[MOMOCROME]

In the interest of actually advancing the cause of F/OS/S adoption, I'm going to take a stab at playing devil's advocate to your response to egg troll. I am concerned here that this is all the further the scene's participants consider the issues, and it is a death sentence unless we can establish more logical and reasonable arguments, rather than this standard 'OOH BSODS ARE TEH SUKC" arguments:

The longer and harder you think, the more time gets wasted. You lose nothing when givng Linux a try.

oh? you loose hundreds of hours in training, across the org.

How did your Sally Secretary learn to use Windows and Office? Osmosis? I doubt it. Trining[sic] isn't a factor for normal users.

actually, she learned it thanks to a consistent graphical metaphor and standards that work across apps. let's not forget the much simpler fat file tree and 3 digit extension and the lack of 10 different directories to control 8 different aspects of an installed app. You may scoff, after all, this unix-y stuff is familiar to you. The windows environment is far simpler to grasp and always the same. that is to stay, the environment is stable, even if some of the apps aren't. *nixes are wildly varient. just take the switch from netscape's "Alt-C" for copy to Moz's "Ctrl-C" for copy, and you'll have your proof of what I'm saying.

In Gnome, for example, I occasionally get a dialog box that says " occurred. For more information, click on the help button." Naturally there is no help button.

In MS Office, Sally frequently gets "It appears you are typing a letter" message. Does she know how to turn it off? Is there a toll free MS support number she can contact?

wtf? she can ignore the clip. r-click on it and choose hide assistant. couldn't be simpler.

What about " Program performed illegal operation. Instruction could not be Read" messgaes[sic]? Those pop-ups? Those BSODs? Does BSOD come with a Help button?

fwiw, BSODs haven't been a problem for years. and when they were, 99% of the time it was the result of 3rd party developers stomping all over the memory space of a kernel that was working to support 20+ years of legacy apps and hardware. And professionals all over the world understand this.

Please.. think before you troll.

Maybe you should stop and think before you advocate with thoughtless zealotry. You are hardly going to accomplish anything with foolish knee-jerking, nor are you contributing to the serious discussion of these matters by echoing the party-line. How are we ever going to shake the MSFT yoke with shallow stick shaking like this?

Re:Not quite ready

[Anonymous Coward]

In MS Office, Sally frequently gets "It appears you are typing a letter" message. Does she know how to turn it off?

It appears you are posting to Slashdot. Would you like to:

• Post a serious comment
• Troll
• Karma whore
• CmdrTaco

I can't help getting the feeling...

[arvindn]

...that the desire for independence from the US is going to be an increasingly important factor in driving Linux/OSS adoption throughout the world. I mean, "government wasting money on Microsoft products" wouldn't have such a ring to it in the US now, would it?

Usually you don't find government adopting new tech earlier than private enterprise, but with Linux it seems to be working the other way (or at least both ways). And I'd say that a major reason for that is anti US sentiment.

Huge MS license spend...

[Goonie]

The Democrats aren't talking about making open source solutions mandatory.

The point of this exercise is to look at how much the Australian government spends on Microsoft licenses (at a guess, multiple tens of millions of dollars annually), and ask whether it would be a better use of those funds to enhance open source software so that it meets government requirements. Tens of millions of dollars annually employs a lot of people...

What about the trade gap?

[oliverthered]

Whats the cost to Australia of all that money going to the USA when some of the money could go to employee people in Australia to make OSS practical for all aplications?

USA gets less money
Australian unemployement goes down.

Whats wrong with OSS for sally?

Liberal Party = Arch Conservatives

[Evil Pete]

The Liberal Party in Australia has morphed over the decades into something like your Republican Party only more right wing.

The Labour Party is usually considered by the Libs as a bunch a commies ... and yet they also have right wing tendencies (sometimes very).

The Democrats are made of left wing refugees from the Liberal Party and right wing refugees from the Labour Party. Sort of. Though I cried when they got rid of their leader Natasha Stott-Despoja ... a hot chick.

Re:where's the payback ?

[fatboyslack]

This is not really a true reflection of the Australian political system (Westminister system). The place where the Democrats have real power is in the Federal Senate, where they have enough power to start investigations, instigate inquiries etc. Although after the GST fiasco, "Keep the Bastards Honest" took a bit of a shellacking. They are a nice little check in the Westminister system, especially with how Labor (the party in opposition, like the Democrats in the US and Conservatives in UK) are laying down like beaten dogs at the moment. Also, in conjuncton with the Labor party, they can veto government policies.

(Amusingly, your nick' is Sad Loser and your .sig says you go for the magpies)

Re:Need for training at early stages

[Mjec]

As a politically involved geek and Australian I feel obliged to post.

I'm lucky in that I have a Comp Sci degree from a university that has a strong focus on Unix and its derivatives, but I know a lot of people who are trained purely in MS and Oracle stuff.

Too true. I know for a fact that UTas (University of Tasmania) offers a standard of CompSci and sylabus similar to most other Australian universities - and its all MS based, plus a little Java for programming. I think there's a short section on *nix but it's all microsoft.

Most people working in the field now however are not the young technically-minded people, who know everything, but are people with TAFE certificates in one specialised area of computer administration. I once had a sysadmin who, running an NT4 network, didn't know what the 'net' command did. But he moved on. Up to the department of education centralised servers!

Unfortunatly most of the people working in the governments as admins know about their little bit - they know how to ghost, how to audit, and how to set up accounts. They arn't your average geek. This is of course just my experience.

IMHO, if the government employed people who actually knew what they were doing and were interested then by now we would have switched to OSS.

M(NS)HO.