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France Considers Open Source
joestar writes "Reuters today announced that the French Government is considering Open Source Software adoption as an excellent alternative to reduce their IT costs. A cost reduction of several hundred millions dollars is planned by replacing proprietary licenses by Open-Source solutions. 'Microsoft must return to being one supplier to the state among others', declared a government Minister. France's culture, agriculture and finance ministries had already signed deals with Mandrakesoft for first Linux deployment tests. After Munich's new move in Germany, it seems that Open Source Software is currently a major movement in old Europe."
Now that is what the GPL is about. Saving money&time in development, making money in sales & support (of course I probably wouldn't want France supporting my KMissle Launch Control System), and giving back to the world an improvement on what they borrowed.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
What MS need to assure is that MicroSoft finally will become a company that provides what the customers want. Today MS is among that line of companies pushing the customer to buy and not asking the customer what the customer want (I've heard from insiders how this works). A policy which will never work in the long run.
/AIM
In the free software development the customer is also the designer, for the skilled ones, but why could not the customer also be the designer for the less skilled ones?
The reason that the free software development has been so successful is that the providers are also the customers and can continue develop the products. I'm not sure that MS has understood this simple fact yet.
MicroSoft should adopt to this idea, and in the long run they can become a very successful supplier of wanted software, designed by the customer for the customer.
That's partly why the term "copyleft" is so dangerous and should be stamped out. It's absolutely vital that people realize that F/OSS is copyrighted and under the control of an individual, or group or a corporation. The strength of F/OSS comes from the underlying copyright and the fact that it enables us to control the code.
John.
Microsoft development tools can cost some big money, and it costs money to stay on top of things. Countries that invest once in open source tools can use those open tools to develop their own in house software - for example, Le KMissile Destructo Fumer 5000. All of this can run on open platforms, some the KMissile system can have more resources put into the APPLICATION and USE of the tools, instead of getting new hammers and nails all the time.
Open source gives free tools to everybody. World class, kick ass tools. Do you know how much something as good as FFTW would cost to buy? More than my car! This lets you focus on using those tools to create value in the market - sucks to be in the tool making business, but overall it represents a boon. This is why so many people in the industry have problems; the value is not IN the IT, but what the IT enables you to DO.
..don't panic
All those products they mentioned are not cedible because they don't have license costs (which btw some of them have) or are not copyrighted (which they most definitely are), but because of the extensive testing and through code checking these products receive by the very fact that they are open source.
I guess it's time we stop giving the anology of open as in beer or open as in speech. We should start using "open as in source". which I think most aptly describe these products than the beer (mmm beer..ok ok back to issue) or speech.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Open source by and large does not listen to actual end users.
This is obvious in the
low quality documentation, if any,
configuration process,
usability
ongoing support
Business users are not going to continuously fight the 'geek needed to install and operate' mentality of open source software.
All these countries are considering open source not so much because they may use it, but because they know they'll get some leverage against Microsoft. As soon as Linux was offered in Thailand, Windows cut prices on XP and office to $35. The best way to drive someone's price down is make them think they have to compete against a serious threat.
I'm probably at the karma cap. Mod up a funny troll instead, it lightens the mood
I, for one, am happy to see this happen because,
1) If France & Germany's governments become more patriotic & supportive toward Mandrake & SuSE respectively then perhaps they will be less inclined to pass silly laws to make open source difficult such as broad software patents etc. And, if it's already too late then maybe they will push the EU to dilute the silly laws over time so they don't affect open source.
2) If Mandrake are taken seriously by more businesses then they will have to increase their end of life from 2 years to at least 5 years or even 10 years (to compete with MS) for their enterprise releases. The short EOL is the one reason I can't use Mandrake on a mail server I am setting up, otherwise it would have been perfect.
3) We don't have a really major distro here in the UK so I can feel patriotic about France in the meantime.
Why are all these governments endorsing and planning to use OSS on one hand, and then passing retarded laws that could cause serious problems for OSS on the other? Hello Mr. Foot this is Mr. Hand and his gun to shoot you.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
Why is it considered news when some entity considers Linux? It's not news. It would be news if the decided to go with Linux, not if there considering it. Are they considering Microsoft as well? Yes. Then why isn't the story titled "France Considers Open Souce and Microsoft"?
Right now, I'm considering taking a shit, but it wouldn't be an actual event unless I took a shit.
I'm sure this will be marked as a troll or flamebait, but it's a valid point. I'm tired of reading articles about what some country or some city is considering. I don't care and I'm pretty sure that most people who read this site don't care either. Now when said country or city actually makes a fucking decision then that would be news and by all mean report it.
SeanTobin wrote:
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"This will also help us sell our solutions to other governments," he said, adding that he believed the German, Israeli and Malasian governments also envisaged shifting to open-source software.
BINGO! We have a winner! Evil country A develops software for a fraction of the cost it would normally take in the closed-source land, sells it to Good Countries B through T and V through Z, and makes more money than they would have been able to otherwise.
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I think it is bad translation. "To sell" ("vendre" in french) could also mean "to convience" or "to promote", it does not mean necessary that money is involved.
If the article is about Open Source, why does it have a GNU on it? Why not use the OSI logo?
Or, if the article is about GNU, why not say Free Software?
Unless, of course, there is some advantage to creating confusion between the two that I am simply unaware of.
-Peter
I think it really shows how stupid some governments and corporate managers are when they actually have to form committee to decide whether or not to use open source. Instead of trying to decide whether to use open source why not try to figure out what problems you have, if and how a computing solution can solve those problems, what software is available to solve the problems, and then finally, and only if there are multiple solutions, decide which one offers the most benefit for the TCO. What'll end up happening is that France (and others) will move to an open source only solution and they'll end up spending more money trying to integrate an OSS solution than if those cheap asses just would have bought the commercial equivalent (eg Microsoft Office).
I'm thinking the decision to move to OSS by France could be a geopolitical strategic move as well. A trade war between the US and the EU is almost certain to come, and it'd be in Europe's best interest to NOT be locked into software vendors from America. We are already seeing signs of the trade war, be it farm subsidies, technology standards (CDMA VS G3) (Galileo VS GPS), and genetically modified foods. In addition, we all know that the American-French relationship has seen better days.
Just because Chirac complimented Bush about American hamburgers (3rd paragraph) at the G8 summit doesn't mean all is well between the two.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
Open-source software like Linux, BSD, etc is currently great for developers and for systems administrators - it's easy to automate a lot of the backend open-source programs. However, when you do a cost-benefits analyis of open-source software as a whole, you have to take into account user training and support costs.
While widescale windows site licenses may be expensive, the productivity lost in having to retrain all your users in the intimate details of office software surely makes up for the nominal cost-savings of going with "free" software. This is how Microsoft is making its pitch vs open-source solutions, and it's not FUD - it's a damned good argument.
This isn't an attack on the open-source development process - I actually hold it in high regard. However, converting to open source because it's free on the surface speaks is quite short-sighted.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
I think it's much more interesting to spend money on training and end up having people with more skills, more able to get better jobs than spend it all in M$ crap and keep people in an ignorant state. Not that you can't learn from using M$ products, but isn't it best if we can get more people "unafraid" of open-source software?
Cozinha para as massas (e para geeks)
Microsoft likes to say "Linux is free like a puppy". I say, yes and Microsoft is like the purebred (add the 'b' word here if you wish) that costs a lot upfront and has congenital defects from generations of inbreeding. Sure, she is pretty, but shie is high strung you will spend way too mutch time and money fighting infections. Give me a mutt anyday; the mutt is not only cheap to aquirer, but more robust and better tempered. Saving money up front is only the start of your savings, the real savings is found in the maintenance costs.
Think global, act loco
Perhaps I'm just being naive, but anyone else notice a pattern here? Suse, a German OSS distro, is being considered as a candidate in Germany. Mandrakesoft, a French OSS distro, is being considered in France. The American government is using an American-based proprietary OS.
Anyone else see a pattern? Perhaps it's not open-source ideals that's driving this move, but good old-fashioned protectionism, at least in part.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I'm not sure how healthy the French economy is these days. France (and Germany) have been exceeding the EU's limit of deficit spending which is 3% of GDP. France is at risk of getting sanctions from the EU. In addition, it doesn't look like Europe's education system is fairing too well either, and it's generally agreed that education is required for a healthy economy. This Time article talks about overcrowded classrooms, underfunding, etc, etc.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I wish I had some mod points, because these tired old French jokes need to be modded down. What the hell is wrong with you people?
pffft. fuck the americans and their freedom fries. political satire has always had its place.
We've worked hard at making ourselves abhorrent to the rest of the world the last four years, so efforts like these get a boost from political ill will. The fact they're getting a more stable and secure OS platform with a lower overall TCO is merely a bonus. I don't think the political climate alone would justify the transition costs, but that coupled with MSFT's own corporate malfeasance is enough to get them over the hump.
I could be wrong but I'm guessing there's more than technical considerations playing into this.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
My experience has always been that MS servers are a huge pain in the butt and expensive to keep licensed and running.
Linux and BSD servers much less so; they're not quite as stable and exploit-free as Novell servers or mainframes, but much better than Windows and much more flexible than any of them.
Oh. Does the American police often use napalm bombardment from helicopters, then ? And do they often use army uniforms ?
Is losing still such a sore point to you, that you have to revise history to try to confuse the issue ? Kinda reminds me of the Soviet Union...
No matter, whether it was a police operation or a war, you lost anyway.
The joke would be funnier if it wasn't told every time someone mentions France.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It is hard to compare directly education between different countries, but it seems like Europe and the rest of the world has catched up a lot when it comes to science after US has dominated in science since WW II (for understandable reasones). And you do realise that even for top universities in Europe the students don't have to pay much or anything in tuition fees, so that even middle class families can send a bright kid to a top university (something like Bush being sent to Yale because he was so bright).
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
There is not "old Europe" or "new Europe" just because zoo's head monkey says there is!
Because the open source movement pursues popularity and taking credit for the works of others is a convenient way to attain that goal without having to do the hard work of actually writing the licenses and defining the concepts that helped define and build our now 20-year-old community. Consider the GNU General Public License which was written well before the Open Source Initiative began and speaks of a different philosophy than that which the open source movement speaks to. The OSI defined the terms of license acceptance such that they could add the GPL to their approved license list. The Free Software Foundation wrote the license and started the free software community about 2 decades ago.
Mark Webbink, counsel for Red Hat, wrote an essay on licenses used in the open source movement. Webbink, like Red Hat, is a proponent of "open source". In this essay Webbink goes to some effort to reinvent the concept of copyleft without once calling it by that name. He obviously finds value in breaking up licenses into groups along those that are copylefted and those that are not, but nowhere is any credit given to the people that invented this concept and assigned that name to it about 20 years before his essay came out.
Eric Raymond responded to AdTI's error-riddled argument about the Linux kernal. Raymond cited a number of "open-source projects" to bolster his argument, unfortunately one of them was Emacs co-written by founder of the free software movement -- Richard Stallman -- years before the OSI existed. I've written here about this before, so I won't repeat the details. It's safe to assume that RMS does not do any of his work for the benefit of the open source movement.
He, and others (myself included), are grateful that open source proponents do so much work helping to bring users to software freedom by increasing the use of free software licenses (chiefly the GNU GPL). But there's no honor in taking credit for someone else's work. And there's no sense in conflating placing a license on a list of approved licenses with writing a license and creating a community. Building on the work of others is not the same as appropriating it. Given the number of times I've seen "free software" mistranslated or inaccurately conveyed as "open source", particularly when describing the endeavors of those outside the US, I would not be surprised if the Reuters article was completely wrong in its summary (as well as its statement about what "open source" is, which has been partially debunked elsewhere in this thread). Software freedom is something worth pursuing, helping business more efficiently find and use unpaid labor is not something many are eager to help with doing.
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