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More Linux Activity in German Government
"9 more cities in Rheinland-Pfalz, including the capital Mainz, are seriously considering to replace most, if not all of their Microsoft software with Linux after their current contracts expire in early 2004, noting that there are many other cities in a similar situation, and with similar plans.
Meanwhile, the police in Niedersachsen (german) is busy rolling out RedHat Linux on 11,620 desktops and 120 servers, running both standard Linux software and a custom information system called "Nivadis" based on WebLogic and Oracle running on Itanium servers, citing savings of about EUR 20 Mio compared with a Windows-based solution.
In a less desktop-related project, the state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern started a project with SuSE, IBM and others porting a mission-critical system called ProFiskal from Reliant Unix to Linux on zSeries, again citing cost as the primary reason, but also noting the benefits of using open standards for both software developers and users."
It would be funny if the rest of world used Linux while the United States uses Windows. It would be just like the current state of measurement in this world, where the United States uses imperial and the rest of the world uses metric.
While historically (as short as that may be), people
ventured to America for myriad reasons; political,
religious, economic, prosperity etc. Many of those
things aren't really tangible except in the minds of
the people. The first time in America's history,
people migrate to Russia, Europe and China for
technological freedom among other associative
properties like jobs. I'm certainly keeping my
options open, getting a CE degree what good is
it in America when all the jobs are going overseas?
Maybe there is some use to the two years of foriegn language required in US academic institutions.
If you're on an NT-descended Windows, look in the event viewer. The cause of the problem may be there. Also check the task manager: if you see mozilla there, kill it and restart the app. Winamp 2.91 freezes on me like that sometimes. I have to kill the program through the task manager, and then it mysteriously starts without a hitch.
Microsoft has adopted an extremely powerful public relations method, but it is a self-destructive one: Microsoft has declared that its software dies, regardless of how many users it has.
Linux, in contrast, offers software that lives forever, if an organization wants to support it. This makes a big difference to large organizations. There are many, many situations where a 350 MHz Pentium I computer running some data entry system is just fine, especially when it has been completely debugged and is giving no trouble.
When Microsoft enforces software death, those organizations must disturb something that is working well. As you can imagine, they are extremely reluctant to do so. The issue is often not money. The issue is often management capability. There is plenty of work to do without disturbing something that is working well.
From the IT World article:
"The cost of licensing Microsoft products and the lack of support for some of them, such as the NT operating system, which is still used widely in many city administrations, are among the chief reasons for the nine German cities to mull a switch from the U.S. software giant to providers of open-source products, he said." [My emphasis, of course.]
Not only do Microsoft's products regularly die, but Microsoft has a schedule of assisted suicide: Windows Desktop Product Life Cycle Support and Availability Policies for Businesses. Bill Gates has become the Dr. Jack Kevorkian of software. Mr. Gates has, for example, decreed the death of Windows 98, which is used by at least 50,000,000 people throughout the world.
So true, so true. Where I work, it's possible to buy M$ Office for $41.40 a seat. Now tell me they aren't overcharging everyone else.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Is it Office XP? If it is, I'll buy you 40 copies of it. The computers for students on my university department have been waiting for the funds for Microsoft XP for a while... At that price, I'll buy it myself!
But, more seriously, that was something that intrigued me about Munich! If they lowered the price alot, wouldn't the rest of the world see what they were doing to the rest of us? Now we now that at Microsoft, burning cds isn't that expensive anymore...
Lindows is of none importance in Germany. SuSe is affiliated with IBM and very strong the local market. Linux means Linux with KDE. Unfortunaltely you cannot sell Gnome to corporate users in Europe. RedHat is less important. SuSe or Debian.
In Germany Sco.de was stopped by munich district court. They may not spill anti-competitive statements against Linux. And they already had to pay a penalty. Sco.de also doesn't sell these doubtful licenses.
... Microsoft has recently added BMW boss Helmut Panke to its board of directors [1] - a move to get more insight into the German political system?
And a German Member of Parliament, Ekin Deligoz, recently said (on TV) that she thought it was frightening "if you think about how much money Microsoft invests into their parliament work". [2]
Both links in German language only, unfortunately:
[1] Heise
[2] 3sat
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
I really hope this movement will change the opinions of most teachers here.
In our schools here in Germany, they teach you the
'work' with Windows as it is the industry standard and got no alternatives.
At least at our school we got one teacher who really is pro-linux. He uses Debian, doesnt like Microsoft, is happy about the current movement and teaches the histroy of Linux, installation of Debian and configuration/installation of various services.
And beleive me, thats thousand times more interesting than clicking through a Windows application installer...
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
management purchases are for. They already have Office + Exchange locking in lots of folks. Just as alternatives to those begin looking realistic, might as well tie them to accounting...
Blogging because I can...
Agree, however what MS is really good at is making money. With Linux they can't simply do their "if you can't beat `em then buy `em" strategy. But if everyone's running Linux how will MS make money? They'll start writing Linux apps, port MS Office to Linux (I'd buy that one myself), even release an MS Linux distro. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but I don't see what other choice they'll have in the long run. Remember who the biggest software producer for Apple is: Microsoft.
Yeah, Exchange is $271, I'm too lazy at the moment to look up SQL, but it's insanely cheap as well - insane only compared to the monopoly-inflated retail prices. Honestly, $271 seems resonable to me for a full-featured mail and calendar package... any apparent bargain in that price is offset by the horribly high TCO, higher hardware requirements, and intangible "hassle factor" that goes with any windows app that you intend to make front-facing.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
This is probably only the tip of the iceburg. Apparently if you haven't yet seen Micro$oft's EULA's that they now include in all their updates, you have missed the boat off this island.
They now are installing software to "check your license validity" with all the updates, and you have to agree to this in order to install and use the updates.
I happened to paruse the EULA's with Directx 9 and Media Player 9, and both of them contain these requirements that you click through and allow them to spy on you, and what you have in your computer. On one machine, I allowed it and had Sygate installed to catch stuff, and sure enough, some stuff was trying to get out to the internet as soon as stuff was finished loading. I didn't have time or a way of looking at the packets, and what DLL's were doing it but suffice to say my suspicions were raised when the machine starts up and takes an unusual amount of time to boot, and my HD light was on for a really long time.
Talk about the "New World Order" or what???!!!!!!!! Bastards.
I'm very closely scrutinizing my Laptop since it has Windows XP Pro on it, and already discovered NOT to trust the Microsoft firewall that comes with XP!!! Apparently they might be caught with the pants down if you have Sygate, or ZD's firewalls, and if people are actually willing to try them also.
I have to try the new browsers soon as I'm going back to experimenting with Linux and BeOS (rogue versions and my legit Pro 5 ed).
Cheers;
Jeff
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Build your own computers, and that problem is gone. As for Office formats, that's a load of FUD; you can read those with open-source software.
Linux adoption in Canada is sadly lacking. The Federal Government may be looking at it, but industry and Provincial Governments are staying really close to Microsoft. Numerous reports and 'findings of fact' have concluded that it is bad bad bad. Usually the consultants are made up of people working for Microsoft, Gartner, or Microsoft and Gartner. The 'serious' people you mention...were they perhaps worried about job security and their lack of Linux skills rather than actual adoption?
The first city to change over and develop any specialist software for the German local government environment will have an opportunity to defray some of its costs by selling the application to other government bodies. After all their own apps don't have to be GPLed.
Bitter and proud of it.