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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."
If these initial deployments are successful, and the organizations see real benefits from their switch to Linux then it could be the start of a wave of Linux deployments across Europe, at least in public organizations such as these.
.... So we can only hope it goes well!
However, if there are problems with some of them it could hold up the acceptance of Linux (etc.) for some while
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.
The more they cut prices in order to stave off linux, the more evident it is how overpriced their list prices are. Instead of trying to compete on price, they should be trying to compete on features such as easy management, and security...
Unfortunately for Microsoft, security isn't exactly their strength, and neither is easy management now that Linux has matured so much.
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.
And thanks to Munich FFII Germany has the strongest anti-swpat movement...
In Munich they demontrated together with a social democrat politician Lochner-Fischer (Member of Bavarian House of representatives) that capaigned for Linux! See this picture with her election campaign banners.
Also European MEP Wolfgang Kreissl-Dorfler hold a speech at FFII demo munich.
German Wiki page about Munich demo
Note: As a Northern German I don't like Bavarian culture, but Munich is special, less ultra-conservative than the rest of Bavaria. As an European I am proud of the leading role of Europe in the current silent Open Source revolution.
Which part of billions of dollars in Linux revenue don't you understand?
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
... since here (Germany) exists (at least from my point of view) the tradition to invest large amounts of money in 'government software projects' that turn out to be scrap in the end. If it works fine, this for sure will boost the acceptance of LINUX since the public sector (still) is an important customer to deal with. CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Surely Capitalism should be contrasted to Communism as opposed to Socialism? One can have a capitalist and socialist system. eg the Labour party in the UK is socialist (ok, you can stop laughing now) yet the system is still capitalist.
A better comparison would be between conservatism (sticking to the old ways) and socialism (supposedly fairer and more inclusive of society).
...citing savings of about EUR 20 Mio compared with a Windows-based solution.
Is that 20 M Euros or 20 Mibi-Euros? Either 20.000.000 EUR or 20.971.520 EUR. It's important to know these things.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
More like Coercive (Microsoft) vs. Cooperative (Linux).
All them little Marxists at IBM seem to be in agreement. ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This is indeed only the beginning. People all over the globe are becoming sick of paying big bucks for buggy OSes. (Particularly the kind of OS that forces reboots for program crashes.)
Microsoft better get their act together if they intend on staying competitive. Linux is slowly eroding their market share.
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
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.
Alternatively, in English:
;-)
Rheinland-Pfalz => Rhineland Palatinate
Niedersachsen => Lower Saxony
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern => Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania
Next you'll be spelling Hanover with two ns
even if Microsoft tried hard to make their offerings more attractive since, including a special license contract that could save the public sector 'a lot of money' according to interior minister Otto Schily, it looks as if Munich was only the beginning."
IMHO I think this is somewhat of a political move coming out of Germany, combined with the fact that MS has had MAJOR problems within the past few months with worms and all...
Now when I say political I mean maybe Germany doesn't want to spend their money on US products based on the tension between the US and Germany that started with the war somehow. It would also be benificial to Germany if say they were to choose SuSE for a distro of choice, maybe that would become a Euro standard distro of sorts. Something similar to what US companies think of when Linux comes to mind... Redhat. Sure geeks think of other distros, but have you ever mentioned Slackware, or Stampede to a CEO? Chances are he's heard of Redhat but not Slack, Debian, etc.
Let's not forget that nice little letter that went out earlier this month to the Dept. of Homeland Sec., which vendors asked the US gov to reconsider their use of MS products. Hell if US companies are turning their backs on MS, then why would foreigners want to use it.
MoFscker
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.
Don't forget that many people are effectively forced into buying Windows.
I work at a small-to-medium sized company (about 1500 people, 250 of which use computers) that uses both Windows and Linux. We like open software, but when decisions have to be made about vertical applications specific to our organization, or when we consider practical facts of life like suppliers sending documents in office formats or computer suppliers not wanting to sell systems without Windows license, we are certainly driven towards Windows all the time.
Driven so strongly that you could call it forcing.
We use Mozilla, we use StarOffice, we use Apache, we use OpenLDAP and a Linux IMAP server, we use an open-source calendaring system (webCalendar), but for how long?
What if the next application insists on Outlook and Office for integration (this threat really exists, as the supplier of that application is a Microsoft shop)?
Maybe when you are a hobbyist at home, no-one is forcing you to buy Windows. Maybe if you are a large corporation or government agency that can develop its own software or can force open-software compatability when buying things, you are not forced.
But a big section in the middle really IS forced to buy Windows. And Microsoft, realizing that, is increasing their activity precisely on that sector.
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.
That my friend, is the effect of coercion - if not directly on you as the user, then certainly as a consequence of coercive pressure on the manufacturer/OEM/vendor.
But, your handle marks you 9/10ths troll already.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
While SuSE is certainly the most important distro in germany (and, for example, was behind the Munich deal), I think it's quite interesting that the police desktops and servers will run Red Hat. You normally can see new SuSE releases prominently advertised in every bigger bookstore here; for a lot of people SuSE is Linux, they think they are running Linux 8.2 Professional. Finding an up-to-date Red Hat box can require some searching, sometimes you'll see Mandrake, but everything else is completly geek-only.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
What our friend Elektroschock fails to mention is, that Bavaria is the most successful state in Germany, with low unemployment, low state debt and good education - especially compared to northern states.
So please spare us the rhetorics about bavarian conservatism and catholicism.
Bavaria feature also a high percentage of IT industry: Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Suse, Ingram Micro etc. have all their german HQs in Bavaria.
And Bavarians are as corrupt as anyone else.
If you have a problem with people loving their Laptops and Lederhosen, like Scotts like their Kilts and Whiskeys, then you should reeducate yourself with cross cultural understanding.
Bavaria is simple a state/tribe with a high cultural identity plus some some business sense. Plus most foreigners identify Oktoberfest, Lederhosen, the Alps, Jodeln, Beer (Law of purity) and Humpa music with Germany, although these are local bavarian traits.
orangeguru - neither a big fan of Bavaria nor King Stoiber
... 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 think one oft-unspoken reason overseas governments contemplate wholesale adoption of open source solutions is that doing so creates a lot of high-end local IT jobs (e.g., software development and support). This offers the prospect of creating more in-country "silicon valleys" and the possibility of local "dot.boom" economies.
Open source may have the advantage of better access to legacy civil documents and lower TCO, but the real motivation of politicians is getting re-elected, and job creation is always a good way to do that.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
Canada, having one of the most active e-governments in the world, is also being actively woo-ed by linux. At the chateau laurier in ottawa I attended the linux conference by IBM and while they did seem to ramble abit, they were being taken very seriously by the people in attendance. I guess the high amount of online government computers for vital functions probably plays a big part in most peoples minds about what sort of security and stability they want when it comes to their servers.
My TiBook is certainly without M$ Window$!! And don't come tell me PowerBooks are not one of the "major Laptop"!?!?!!!
The point of both the Slashdot story and my grand-parent comment is that Microsoft is killing future profits completely by being aggressive. Supposedly the aggressive behavior is an attempt to get more profit, but in reality it is a strong bid to get zero profits, and fast.
Once the German government switches entirely to Linux, Microsoft will not make another penny from that source. The draconian, one-sided licensing changes would not in themselves be enough to push customers away from Microsoft. It is software death that is perhaps the aggression that is most disliked by customers. The Microsoft license cost is small compared to buying 20,000 new computers because Windows XP won't run on hardware that works well with Windows 98. That's the sort of problem huge organizations face.
Of course, fundamentally, licensing and software death are not as important as the fact that Microsoft's international government customers are under the control of a foreign company controlled in part by a foreign government that runs the biggest spy organizations that have ever existed. Who was using the Microsoft security vulnerabilities before they became publicly known?
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...
Capitalism vs. Socialistism
Even though you meant it as an insult and this line has been FUDed to death it still bears looking at.
MS got nailed for being a monopolists. That is that one company is in control. Worse yet, it is because they throw there weight around and make other companies do what they want. And if they do not do it, then MS would put them out of business (death penalty).
That is not capitalism.
Linux and BSD is offered for free. But only at its' code. The real money (and costs) in any OS is not the code, but in the support. That is offered for free by enthusiasts, but also for money by companies. In fact, it is in service that companies such as Redhat and SUSE are making profits. Others are trying to but still digging out of the dotcom line of thought (Mandrake). And others tought that they could do an MS approach (sell the binary and offer no real support) to Linux (Caldera being the most infamous), but in a competitive environment, it is impossible due to the fact that Linux is offered freely.
BTW, Linux keeps winning awards for support. Since it is offered for free via enthusiast, the capitalists companies have to work harder to make sure that they offer more for lower costs. But hey, that is what true capitalism does.
Linux is the most pure capitalism play, where only bottled water is more pure (pune intended).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Market is taking off anytime soon over here. I just had a 2 hour talk on the phone with one of the large players on the german internet bookmarket. One thing that everyone with knowlege of the material predicted shows clearly:
The people are fed up with proprietary software inable to takle proprietary problems and won't take MS & co. any much longer. The market is clearly shifting to a much more service oriented one with OSS taking a lead in that area and Germany, as many thought would happend, is one of the first to adapt to that. I'm kinda glad I saw that coming 2 years ago.
It's just like John 'Maddog' Hall said at the Keynote at Linuxtag this year: Software needs to be free, the solutions built with it need be proprietary.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It's simple economics. Why send money out of the country when you don't have to? That is truly a testament to the power of Microsoft's monopoly.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
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.
And everybody not having enough money to lobby will be named "serf" while the other depending how much money thay have will be named "count", "duke", "baron" and "king". There is a reason some country are in democraty/republic. One of such was to have each citizen equal to each other independantly to possession/birth/religion. Your "too bad" for me is really a synonym of what has became far too bad in our society. And this is something innecceptable.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
A simple economic motion and the entire domino theory is proven, only the trouble starts in Western Europe this time instead of repeating itself in Eastern Europe.
One wise little action and the entire connotation of the word 'Munich' changed. I'm sure Chamberlain's descendants are breathing a collective sigh of relief.
If we continue marching backward through time what else do we see happening in Munich?
Germany was hundreds of principalities with no sense of nationalism until the fire of the French revolution followed by Napolean drove them to it. Perhaps we should all be seeing Darl McBride in a triangular hat feather and his hand tucked into his pants?
One has to look at Micrsoft's behavior in the same sort of manner as the German barons of the East Elbe during the beginning of the 19th century. Tax farmers, they are, treating the peasants as chattel. And the end of this whole mess is started by one rebel in the Baltic. Isn't the German/English meaning just delicious - those East Elbe tax farmers were known as "Junkers".
The parallels are there - history DOES repeat itself, although in this case instead of a GNU like recursion we're seeing a strange sort of historical palindrome metaphor.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
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.
Getting dba.openoffice.org to work with for example mysql is pretty simple (you either need the odbc or jdbc driver from mysql.com), from then on it's a lot like working in ms access.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
check out Scientific Applications for Linux It is sure to have something you are looking for (plus more)
Supermarkets have to take back any unwanted packaging, and many consmuners unpack their goods when they pay for them.
Shops have to close early on Saturday afternoons and cannot open on Sundays.
I cannot think of appropriate words to describe the difference in driving techniques on freeways.
America may yet be surprised by "old" Europe.
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.