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Nordic Countries to Promote Open Source
Nordic Avenger writes "The Nordic countries have launched a website to promote open source software to consumers and small businesses. People can submit open source software links as well as exchange information in the forums section. As the website states: 'Nordicos.org is a project of the Nordic Ministerial Council, and addresses the need for a comprehensive overview of open source software available for consumers'. Now, anybody eager to make good suggestions about software that normal people could find useful and live happily ever after in the open source world?"
"Normal" people don't give a sh*t about sites like that. What they need is cd's a la AOL filled with OpenOffice.Org, Mozilla Firebird&Thunderbird, a win32 port of Xine (Now THAT would be cool), ect... That and more exposure from mainstream media. I'm sorry but this is the only way OSS will really take off.
As an American who studied for a year in Sweden, I can say first-hand that the Nordic have always been at or near the cutting edge where software and technological issues are involved.
Sweden in particular is one of the most wired nations on the planet, and has been actively involved in open-source... anyone ever heard of MySQL?
Skal till Norden!
- Barry
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Not a single BSD?
Why?
You're right, and I'd like to add something to it. I installed WindozeXP last week, and I noticed that fully patched with SP1 and Norton antivirus, the thing had a whoppin' 3.5 Gb. I tought: 3.5Gb and I just got media player and wordpad... When I install Linux on my box I usually do full install, for ~2.5Gb and I get an insane amount of software, anything I could think of 3 time each: 3 web browsers, 3 spreadsheets, tons of games, around 10 graphical environments... Where does all that space goes in windows??
>An Office Suite (replaced by Open-office)
:D
wordpad, calc and outlook express =P
i dont have an office suite installed and i dont need it. im not an accountant, i dont use spreadsheets and wordpad or even write are more than i'll ever need in terms of text formatting.
>A Programming Environment (Replaced by QT Designer)
notepad
>Zipfiles
builtin to windows xp
>PDF files
isnt the acrobat reader plugin instamagically downloaded when you first browse to a pdf?
>MP3's
WMplayer
>Instant Messaging
MSN messenger
>IRC
telnet =P
>Decent FTP Client
ftp.exe IS a decent ftp client. i thought we linux freaks enjoyed working with the console?
>and A News reader.
Outlook express?
I know what you mean but you went about it the wrong way. With mandrake, i slap on the cd, press a couple buttons and it Just Works.
With windows, I need to either rummage through my thousands of CDs in a vain attempt to locate my drivers, or download them from a working puter.
Why on earth arent most drivers included with windows anyway? All builtin windows drivers are always really old and crappy. Unless you have a severely outdated computer, windows will be a 16 color, soundless, webless hell upon first boot. Except for XP which finally seems to get that no one sane uses 16 colors anymore, or even 640x480.
I was using 1024x768 at 256 colors 10 years ago on my 486 under windows 3.1!
With Linux, you instantly get sound and pretty true colour graphics, unless you have some really weird incompatible hardware.
Why on earth arent most drivers included with windows anyway? All builtin windows drivers are always really old and crappy. Unless you have a severely outdated computer, windows will be a 16 color, soundless, webless hell upon first boot. Except for XP which finally seems to get that no one sane uses 16 colors anymore, or even 640x480.
When a major MS release debuts, it is like that. When 98 first came out, chances were there would be a driver for every device in a then current PC. After about 6 months, it starts getting time to trawl through vendor websites for drivers. Pretty much the same thing happened when 2000 then XP came out.
Remember, most people just go with OEM installs on their new PCs which will have all the drivers. Its the likes of us that set up systems with full install CDs and the latest drivers from the vendors. MS doesn't really have to cater self-installers on their full install media. Anyone using it probably has enough clue to go find drivers.
Linux distros on the other hand attempt to provide you with everything you need. However, the trick there is to use a current distro CD. The same thing happens with distro CDs that happens with new major MS releases. They just occur more frequently.
So when I first read this headline, I thought it was another government country X decides to convert such and such systems to OSS.
This seems to be more and more common. And why not? It's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying M$ liscenses (as long as you aren't stupid enought to pay SCO).
Anyway, I started thinking, why doesn't the US do this? We have a $4.5 * 10^11 deficit; M$ liscense payments can't help that. Well, there are many reasons the US gub'ment doesn't go Open Source, but foremost is a powerful lobby. I have an in with a democratic presidential candidate (I won't say who).
I plan on writing up something as to what's wrong with IP law, especially the DMCA. I'd also like to include a rough proposal for U.S. government adoption of OSS.
Does anyone know of any numbers as to much the government would save by doing this? I couldn't begin to estimate how many Windows boxes the federal government runs or what the pay for the liscenses (surely not full price?). Any help would be appreciated.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
"Be unpatriotic. Increase unemployment! Avoid all-American software and use OSS!"