Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Part of Mainstream IT in Canada
Sxip writes "A recent survey of advanced technology companies indicates that Open Source software is becoming an explicit component in enterprise Information Technology (IT) strategy and architecture. Some nine out of ten respondents include Open Source in their planning."
....Rely on it. The online edition I work for has just as many Linux boxen as Windows boxen. And only 1/2 of them are serving pages. The only ones using Windows is us journalists and the suits. And we journalists could have done it with Linux as well. Although I prefer to do it (the writing, pervert! ;) with MacOS X
The mirror of http://www.cata.ca/Media_and_Events/Press_Release
Personally, I use it extensively in my business. I take all sorts of Open Source software and resell it either as a standalone product or as a service. Open Source software is, for mature projects, well designed, easy to use, and there's a community standing behind it to help out should I ever need customizations. My profits have never been higher. Before, I used to have to develop everything myself or hire other programmers to create software for my company. Now, with the exception of usual overhead and support costs, it's all profit.
I would encourage other companies to do this as well, but right now this has given me a huge competitive advantage. I can undercut all my competitors and they just can't keep up due to overhead with their development staff. While I can still make a profit selling a product for $10, they need to charge at least $100 to recoup their expenses.
Thank you, Open Source!
Yeah, they work for Corel, Alias, Hummingbird, MKS, Cognos, Zero Knowledge, Blackberry, Nothern Telecom ...
Active State, Electronic Arts, Mainframe, etc...
Perhaps you ought to read more.
Quoting from the Department of Energy site mentioned in the other reply:
"In the first three quarters of 2003, the United States imported more oil (including crude oil and petroleum products) from Canada than from any other country. During the same time period, the United States also imported about 2.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of Canadian natural gas, representing 87% of total U.S. natural gas imports."
What's this about taking action? I guess if invading Iraq is your idea of taking action, then it's much more civilized to talk instead.
You mean like producing timber faster and more efficiently? Instead of competing, the US imposes import tariffs on Canadian product.
You mean like producing wheat faster and more efficiently? Instead of competing, the US imposes import tariffs on Canadian product.
You mean like not polluting the environment while at the same time producing a surplus of electricity and clean water, which the US steals every year?
You should think about looking at the world without your Walt Disney colored glasses sometime.
Actually this is not entirely true. There is an organization in Ottawa called "Gosling" that is working to get open source software more consideration within the government. Some of the members are government employees at fairly high levels.
Canadian government procurement law is quite fair to open source, its just that day-to-day practice has been more oriented towards closed-source vendors. People have to be educated--its not necessarily easy to compare tenders between open and closed vendors--how much is it worth to not be locked in to particular software?
One thing that is very interesting is that the government is moving towards open document formats (ie XML). Openoffice can write them natively, and Word can be told to do it. One thing that I thought was cool is that they are setting up Word so that it will not actually be possible to save a document in a proprietary format.
So yeah, we're not there yet. But progress is being made.