Israeli Gov't Begins Testing Mandrake Linux

DJStealth writes "According to this article on Arutz 7/Israel National News, the Israeli Gov't is beginning to move away from Microsoft and is testing localized versions of Mandrake Linux in the Treasury dept. as the contract with MS expires this month. This all despite a recent defense ministry contact with MS."

Comments

Is this a growing trend in business?

[tx_kanuck]

FTA: "Microsoft heaped scorn on the Commerce Department's decision to abandon Office for the software alternative."

From other places "We'll sue our customers so that they have no money to buy our products"
"We'll charge everyone a licence fee for OSS that we don't own"

Evidently the economy has become an exercise in how much abuse consumers will take. I wonder how long it will take before consumers sit up and go "WTF Mate?"

Re:Is this a growing trend in business?

[Crypto Gnome]

Unfortunately, in showing your surprise, you're also showing just how naive you have been to date.

These are all aspects of "what the market will bear" which has been standard business practice since something like the 80s (or is that 70s?)

There is zero concept of "fair market value" in the business world today, only "how hard can we screw our customers before they're no longer customers of ours?".

Ask any economist, this is "the standard business model" today.

Re:Is this a growing trend in business?

[KoolDude]

Ask any economist, this is "the standard business model" today.

Nope. We're talking about Microsoft here. They *never* stick to the standards. :)

Re:Is this a growing trend in business?

[jsebrech]

I wonder how long it will take before consumers sit up and go "WTF Mate?"

I wonder how long it will take before people will realise how insulting the word "consumer" is as a label for a customer. Businesses used to deal with customers, and treat them well, now they deal with consumers, and so all they feel they need to do is produce stuff for consumption (and are insulted when people refuse to consume it, as exemplified by the RIAA). This dehumanization of business is what makes the corporate world suck so much nowadays.

Re:Is this a growing trend in business?

[drsmithy]

Ask any economist, this is "the standard business model" today.

Uh, any economist should tell you that "what the market will bear" is one of the fundamentals of capitalism - it's hardly something that's just popped up in the last few decades.

Re:Is this a growing trend in business?

[be-fan]

Interesting you should mention Thailand. I was actually born in Bangkok (my parents were living there at the time), and have been back many times since. You're absolutely right about the cost of living. At first, I was embarrassed about giving the bellboy a $0.50 tip, until I realized how cheap everything there was. The quality of life there certainly isn't as high as it is here, for the professional class (which anybody contracted to an American company would be a part of) in Bangkok its not that much different from parts of urban Europe. European standards of living might seem very low to Americans (most households only have a single TV!) but its an entirely livable lifestyle.

Now, as for how the United States can compete with the price of living in other countries, the simple fact is that it doesn't need to. If the cost of living in Thailand is much lower than the US, than jobs that can be exported are exported. So the US does lose hi-tech jobs. On the other hand, that creates a demand for other types of jobs in the US. For example, you'll need new people to handle the communications between the company and teams located in other countries. Its a basic economic principle that the number of jobs lost because of such events is less than the number of jobs gained. Also, remember that Thailand and a number of other asian countries have very quickly growing economies. As an economy grows, the cost of living rises. Eventually, the economy will hit a state where it is no longer profitable to export jobs to the country, because the cost of living is so high. This happened, for example, with Hong Kong, where the per-capita GDP has approached 80% of that of the United States.

Consider a real-world example (that I ripped from an economics text :) The United States has an international agreement to protect textile jobs in the United States. So far, it has saved about 79,000 textile jobs. However, adhering to that agreement costs the country about $16 billion dollars a year in lost revenue in other industries. That means for each job saved, it is costing the US economy $202,000 a year. Also consider NAFTA. When NAFTA was created, there were numerous complaints that it would destroy the US economy, because jobs would be sucked over to Mexico. While many jobs were indeed sucked over to Mexico, many new jobs were created here for Americans.

Re:Good move.

[AntiOrganic]

I really don't understand the need to mention Bush here.

Office 97 functionality

[MoonFog]

From the article:
Microsoft heaped scorn on the Commerce Department's decision to abandon Office for the software alternative. The procurement decision relegated users to second best, said local Microsoft officials, comparing Open Office 1.1 functionality to Word 97

First of all, like has been mentioned numerous times on /., the functionality in Office 97 is sufficient for most users. Very few people use, let alone need, the extra functionality added in the later versions of office.

Second, this just makes Microsoft sound childish. "Our latest product is better, they're just a rip off from our old products"

Re:Office 97 functionality

[mccalli]

First of all, like has been mentioned numerous times on /., the functionality in Office 97 is sufficient for most users.

Indeed. Here I sit in an Office of one of the worlds largest banks and what is my client box? NT 4, Lotus Notes, Exceed and Office 97.

Though I'm no fan of Notes, the above is perfectly sufficent for me to do all the work required. You could switch it all to Linux underneath me and I'd barely notice.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Office 97 functionality

[david@ecsd.com]

That's because--let's face it--the mine of the office productivity application has been emptied of its gold. It's gotten to the point where it's pretty damned difficult to screw up something like word processors and spreadsheets. The things have been around since nearly the beginning of the office PC and the wrinkles have been ironed out. What the hell more can a company add? Talking paperclips? Christ, if I were to put down a features table of the major office apps--MS Office, Star/Open Office, Wordperfect's bundle, and Lotus Smartsuite(does IBM even still sell it?)--you'd be hard pressed to find features in one that you can't find in another. Microsoft is milking the franchise; you know it, I know it, Microsoft knows it, and now their customers are starting to catch on to the fact that there are plenty of "just as good" applications out there for cheap, liscensed in such a way that you don't have to be a contract lawyer with 30 years experience to understand the terms. (How difficult is it to understand, "Oh, uhhh, yeah, it's free"?)

Love,
Dave

Re:Office 97 functionality

[term8or]

Frankly, as a software engineer VI, word 6, Mozilla and a compiler (GNU?) would give me everything I really need.

As a writer / novelist I find that Word 2000 etc is so helpful that it gets in my way. My productivity is WAY higher using word 6. I've got everything set up just fine; why move all my macros?

Re:Office 97 functionality

[term8or]

I'm not sure how a post about whether Office tools have actually improved enough for it to be worth upgrading should produce a post that argues that you "have" to use visual programming tools to produce good programs. Hint: I have been known to use visual programming tools.

I have also worked on large-scale projects with little more than a debugger, compiler, and Visio (for basic design drawing). In order to say, "rich visual debugging and design tools are a MUST" you need to furnish us with some evidence, sir. You need to show at a minimum that programmer productivity has significantly improved as a result of introducing such a tool. This would be hard to do. Current evidence suggests that the value from a dollar spent on software has remained nearly static.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/arch ives/001084.html

The productivity trends from the time that these tools started to be introduced showed a reduction in productivity

http://ftp.starbase.com/pdf/productivitytrends.pdf

And, as a general observation, advances in computing have not yet provided a substantial productivity increase. As Robert Solow says, "you can see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics." One of the main hold-ups in benefits from computing seems to be software production. Simply put, current advances in tools have not produced a real advantage where it matters: software is still hard to construct, and no amount of tools will guarantee that the software you produce will actually work in a way that benefits the clients. You need good people to do that. Tools can help, but people can produce good programs without the tools, and tools won't produce good programs without the people.

Re:Office 97 functionality

[MoonFog]

What the hell more can a company add? Talking paperclips?

SHHH! They might hear you! ;)

Re:Office 97 functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

My new job in a large corporation came with a brand new Dell desktop running Office 97. It's our corporate standard and nobody misses any of the features of the newer versions of Office.
The only issues anyone has with Office 97 is that it has occasional incompatibilities with later version MS Word files and all of the later version MS Access files.
Fortunately, Open Office can open all of these files and convert them to "standard" MS format. /Mark

Re:Office 97 functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

My productivity is WAY higher using word 6. I've got everything set up just fine; why move all my macros?

Not to mention the fact that, in order to move your macros, they would effectively have to be rewritten! I used to solve quite a few problems for my customers with macros in Microsoft's Office products. One customer, after going through two rounds of this, balked at the third round and started doing the procedures by hand again. How's that for a productivity tool?

Re:Office 97 functionality

[Sire Enaique]

I remember reading a novelist praising EMACS because it is the closest thing to a text-mode Wordperfect one can get today.

Re:Office 97 functionality

[ccp]

Yes, Word 6 is the best version of MS Word IMHO.

I believe that, in fact, Word peaked at 2.0.
That version was lean and mean, and did everything an Office word processor should do.
Each version afterwards just added cruft.

Writing novels shouldn't be done in Word. It's a very different problem space.

Cheers,

Poor quality gag.

[Channard]

I really don't understand the need to mention Bush here.

Oh, come on - you can never have too much bush. Especially at Christmas. I mean holly of course - what did you think I meant?

Re:Poor quality gag.

[mattjb0010]

I mean holly of course - what did you think I meant?

I thought you meant Holly, not holly. ;)

Re:I don't support Zionists.

[reub2000]

Then it isn't free if you put that type of restriction on it. One of the disadvantages of oss.

Re:I don't support Zionists.

[Channard]

What is the difference between a Zionist and a White Supremacist? Both believe that God has given them dominion over their land and right to kill anyone who resides on it that they don't like.

Really? You must have seen the director's cut of The Matrix films. I thought the Zionists were more into have huge great rave scenes and then running about in powerloaders.

OSL - licence ?

[HansF]

That's what you get with that new business model of OSL-license. The lease expires and your customer has to make a decision wether to renew the lease or to go to the competition.
It's not like in the days a staff decided that since the budget was tight, they'll do another year with their NT4 servers.
Now, it's pay or bug off.

OSS Good

[fmlug.org]

Its interesting where I go to school lots of people are only intersted in useing Microsoft products. Because they believe thats all that used so its the only thing worth using. Some people even get very upset that they have to use a term on a unix box to learn how to program and think that the Linux lab is a complete waste of time and space. I happen to tell then that Microsoft probably only has the majority share of users in the US. There are other countries where users dont have money to spend on an OS. I for on think that all governments should use Open Source software because gov's are for the people Y should they not use an os written by the people they protect. I see this as a good thing and hopefully someday the US will wake up and see the light. Now this post makes me seem like I am saying windows sucks and Linux/BSD rocks, well maybe it is. I believe in using the app the does the best job. Ok if you read this and like it good if not sorry about the rant. :)

In other news...

[davidstrauss]

Palestinian officials respond by rejecting Mandrake in favor of *BSD.

Re:In other news...

[ccp]

Palestinian officials respond by rejecting Mandrake in favor of *BSD.

Well, when they discover VI vs. EMACS then they'll have a REAL war.

Cheers,

Sounds a lot like the recent Powerpoint article

[Kjella]

The procurement decision relegated users to second best, said local Microsoft officials, comparing Open Office 1.1 functionality to Word 97

First of all, like has been mentioned numerous times on /., the functionality in Office 97 is sufficient for most users. Very few people use, let alone need, the extra functionality added in the later versions of office.

Indeed. It sounds much like the Powerpoint article, where the main argument is "blame the tool". In this case "blame the office suite". Of course you need the rudimentary features required to make it look like you want, but it's still the content that matters.

I really don't see why so much focus is on the tool. Your average run-of-the-mill business letter will look pretty damn near identical if written in OpenOffice, KWord, Word 97 or Word XP. The tool can't do any better than the man wielding it. In case of a word processor, I'd say that nothing the word processor will do makes a significant impact, even with Clippy ;). All the work goes into forming the letter, not formatting the letter.

Kjella

P.S. All karma generated by this post dedicated to Opera 7.20. I never could have done it with any other browser. Yeah. Right.
-

Re:What if MS goes for code review?

[KoolDude]

Linux should market itself hard

That's why we have the Advanced Linux Marketing System included in 2.6. It elevates the Linux Marketing to an all new level without compromising TCO, IP, ROI, .NET, XML and all other buzz words.

Re:Good move.

[Savage-Rabbit]

This is a wise move for Israel that I hope will be duplicated all over the world,

Which would really piss off the US intelligence community..... Which in turn is probably one of the Israeli's motives. I bet the CIA gets a small collective panic attack every time they lose track of what the Israelis are upto.

AAAHHHHHHHHH......There is nothing like a good conspiracy theory to start the day!!!!

Re:Good move.

[CreatorOfSmallTruths]

The fact that Israel is in Asia doesn't mean a
thing...

Israel has all major companies R&D centers: IBM, Intel, M$.

Israelies are contributing to linux distributions, open source projects etc. (why else would a birocratic office like the treasury be interested in linux?? someone there thought it was a good idea to pitch the offer)

Israelies invented ICQ, PHP, the UAV, A couple of smart bombs and some other "low tech" toys you might have heared of (currently they have a missile vs. missile resembling the patriot, a lazer-targeting system designed to target low orbit missiles)

Don't refer to Israel as third world country. Please.

Re:What if MS goes for code review?

[Anonymous Coward]

Code reviews by themselves are insufficient. If you want to trust your software you have to not only review the code but also compile it yourself.

I doubt any governments are dumb enough to swallow a pre-compiled binary even after seeing the supposed source for that binary, and I doubt Microsoft is going to let their customers compile their own binaries of MS products any time soon either.

Thus, verifiable/trustworthy software will continue to be a key advantages of free software for some time to come.

What? A Month?

[sirReal.83.]

They're only giving themselves a month to decide? It usually takes me a week to iron out the config on my own box after a fresh install. Squid this, adzapper that, make a GPG key, why won't iptables block Zope's port...

Zealots

[tehanu]

Personally I would use the term Zealots rather than Zionists.

The Zealots were a bunch of militant religious nuts who dragged the majority moderate Jews to war with Rome, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem, the burning of the Temple and the final destruction of what remained of Israel, leaving the Jews without a homeland for the next 2000 years. They refused to abide any foreign rule because Israel could only be ruled according to the strict word of God and believed that any violent means were acceptable, to achieve their aims. The Jews bitterly regretted the Zealots during their wandering years, but obviously they haven't learnt not to allow their interactions with their neighbours to be ruled by violent militant religious nuts who believe they are on a holy quest from God to maintain the sancitity and purity of the Jewish state.

Zionism used to be quite secular and was actually despised by Jewish fundamentalists. Then it got hijacked by militant fundamentalists who want to recreate the Israel of Solomon and David. Never mind that particular Israel hasn't existed for over 2000 years and other people settled in the region over the last couple of millenia. While the majority of Israelites just want to live their lives and don't give a damn about Greater Israel, the rantings of the settlers involve lines like "God gave us this land so it belongs to us. The Palestinians should acknowledge us as the rulers or they should just get out." The fact that most people don't seem to realise that *both* sides are driven by religious nuts who are perfectly willing to use force against innocent civilians to achieve their aims and don't care a whit about the suffering of their own people just shows that the Jewish Zealots have a better PR machine.

The funny thing is now the Jews are coming to realise that if they keep the Palestinian lands, they will soon no longer be a Jewish state because the Arab birthrate is much higher. So the options are to either reliquish the land and remain small, but democratic and Jewish. They could keep the land, and remain Jewish by not allowing the Arabs to vote in a sort of apartheid system therefore no longer be a democracy (what do you call a country where the majority are not allowed to vote because of their race?). They could keep the land, and remain Jewish by driving all of the Arabs out ie. ethnic cleansing (Israel could be the first democracy to do ethnic cleansing...). Or they could keep the land, remain a democracy and the Jewish nature of the state will be wiped out in a decade when Arabs form the majority of the population,and vote in an Arab PM. Personally I'd choose (1) but somehow I have a feeling the zealots are going to drive Israel to (2) or (3). If (4) happens I'd consider it karma.

Re:What if MS goes for code review?

[gurumeditationerror]

But, the real reason I think is they believe Linux/Open Software has less chance of any "back door". They don't want every desk in their department to get electronically bugged. Now, imagine the scenario when MS offers for some sort of international code review/certification saying that it is as "safe" as open source (I don't mean "secure" and "bug free" but intentional sabotage..). It would be interesting to see if they still adopt Linux.

Yeah, I've thought that myself before. But for microsoft to get a government to trust the code review they'd have to give said government all the code that has been reviewed plus the means to compile it and distribute it themselves.
Other wise it is pointless. "Here are our black boxs and here is the code it runs, honest. No, you can't open them - We've showed you what's in them, really!"

Power to tha Duck

[capn_buzzcut]

I think it's great not only that they're looking at Linux, but also that they're considering Mandrake.

To go along with their recent financial success, a win here would be absolutely huge for them.

Re:Power to tha Duck

[sniggly]

I agree, I like mandrake and wish them all the best.

Redhat spawned fedora, fedora is "unsupported" and what remains are high priced RHELs. Fedora has a very strong community around it but its stated purpose is to be a labrat for RHEL.
Suse never had ISOs for download which is their right as a company but a linux distribution usually is more than the company doing the distributing. Now that suse is a Novell company we'll have to see how true to the OSS Suse remains.
Sun is a new linux distributor and we'll just have to see how true to the community they will be. After all they could have called it the Sun Gnome Desktop (which it is) instead of the Sun Java desktop (which it isn't as much)...

Mandrake is the one remaining big linux distribution (still the biggest in terms of desktop install base) that is tightly interwoven with its supporting community.

1 month?

[blanks]

Doesn't matter, 1 month isn't enough time to switch over a small office over to Linux, let alone an entire governments structure and closed source software.

They may decide to switch over, but it will be over a few years, and will continue using their existing OS.

When Diplomacy Fails

[ReadParse]

WASHINGTON, DC - Only minutes after Secretary of State Colin Powell this morning announced that computing talks with Israel had broken down, Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin held a press conference to declare that Israel intended to go ahead with this week's planned Mandrake Linux testing.

Minister Rivlin downplayed the computing tensions that might result along the Lebanese border. "Israel's computing sovereignty will not be challenged. If we want to move to BeOS, HP-UX, Solaris, PC-DOS... we cannot yield to world opinion when it comes to protecting our right to compute as God promised us we would be able to do."

Israel's testing of Mandrake Linux comes on the tails of a 7-month period of testing of FreeBSD by most of that countries Arab neighbors. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had instructed Minister Rivlin in recent weeks to begin preparations for Linux testing, despite President Bush's calls for restraint.

A Microsoft spokesman expressed sadness in a telephone conference call with the press this morning. "This is about more than a contract between the government of Israel and Microsoft," he said with a cracking voice. "It's about the stability of computing standards in the Middle East. I can't stop thinking about those kids." It is unclear at press time what in the world he was talking about.

Re:Yes, but why?

[orlord]

http://www.billparish.com/presslist.html

Life in the day of an Israeli

[TheLoneCabbage]

Sorry for the off topic, but I'm sick of this nonsense. If I can put some sense into one pea brain then I hve to . Mod me as you will.

As we know all Israeli's are evil. After living here for a year, I thought I'd translate a days activities to you:

Avi a dark skined man walks out of his mansion, onto a street filled with mansions, and climbs into his car. A 50 ton armourd bulldozer. Suddenly his cell phone rings.

Avi: Shalom! (hi/peace/goodbye)

Yitzak: Hey Avi, how's it going?

Avi: Well it was a rough day yesterday. I was too busy studying the King James Bible in english to get any real work done.

Yitzak: You know Sharons going to get really upset with you if you don't get your quota in.

Avi: How am I supposed to kill 10,000 arab children a day and still have time to spend with my wife and kids?

Yitzak: Well I was just calling you to let you know I'm building a new settlement.

Avi: Don't you already have 5 already?

Yitzak: Yeah, but I already drove the arabs out of those areas, so I thought I'd build another one. I could have chosen any of the thousands of hecktars of land that are empty, but it's just no fun without destroying a fellow human beings life.

Avi: Oh that reminds me, did you get the buliten in the mail about the last Elders Meeting?

Yitzak: Yeah, wow, were doing great! Bush even came this time! Even bowed down for Sharon. It was a real crowd pleaser. I'm telling you it's been gravey train ever since the Holocost. Best thing that ever happend to us.

Avi: Ok I gotta go, and meet quota. Catch up latter at the cafe?

Yitzak: Sure thing budy! The "Childrens Blood" is on me!

Avi: Shalom!

Yitzak: Shalom!

Wake up call.

Fact:

* Israeli's don't drive bulldozers to work.

* Israeli's are no fonder of seeing children die needlessly than anyone else.

* Jews don't drink human blood, and if you believe this it's also a fact your a moron.

* 50% of Israelis are from Iraqi, Syrian, Moraccan, Yeminite, Egyptian, Iranian, Jordainian, Afgani, Saudi, Lebanesse, and/or local descent. They tell no plesent stories from their home lands.

* No arab village has ever been raized to make way for a jewish one, except in cases where the land was owned by "Israelies" pre-48, or in cases of tacticle need. In which case it's eminant domain, and the arab land owners are compensated.

* 25% of Israelies are not jewish

* 80% of Jewish Israelies, don't practice any religion. And half of those profess radical secularism. Despite the fact that they actualy speak hebrew, most have never read any section of the Torah (old testament), and have at best a vauge idea of what it is.

* Most Israelies would rather just get on with thier lives. They neither hate nore care what happens to the "Palistinians" any more.

* Arabs can and do, walk in Zionist shopping malls, grocerie stores, parks, and public schools. Jews who walkin Arab neiboorhoods are likley to be shot/stabed/beaten etc...

If you've never been here, you have no right to comment and certainly no right to condemn. If you do live here, you still have no right to condemn, and certainly no right to spread lies and half truths.

There, now I feel better.

Microsoft's mistake

[Sire Enaique]

The Israeli decision probably stems from Microsoft's faux pas last year when they announced that Office XP for MAc would not be localized in Hebrew.

See _Microsoft's Mac Hebrew snub prompts Israeli AntiTrust complaint_ from the register:
www.theregister.com/content/archive/296 92.html

Even if they apparently subsequently reversed their decision the damage was done.

An important factor here is Israel has a buoyant IT industry and Microsoft's initial decision highlighted the danger of relying too heavily on one single software supplier.