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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;
France Challenges Microsoft in Software Re-Fit Fri Jun 18, 2004 10:47 AM ET By Emmanuel Jarry and Jean-Baptiste Vey PARIS (Reuters) - France's cash-strapped government is giving alternative software firms the chance to win state business from Microsoft in a pioneering drive to challenge the U.S. software giant in the public sector. Civil service minister Renaud Dutreil told Reuters France wanted to use "open-source" software providers to resupply part of the almost one million state computers under a government cost-cutting drive designed to trim a bulging public deficit. "We are not starting a war against Microsoft, or against American companies in the software sector," Dutreil said in an interview. But he added that Microsoft "must return to being one supplier to the state among others." "The competition is open," he said. "My estimate is that we can cut the state software bill at least in half." At stake, in the case of office suite software alone, is around 300 million euros ($362.5 million) worth of software to be introduced to state computers over three years. Savings on operating systems could be of a similar order, officials said. France's conservative government is trying to cut costs as it seeks to rein in a public sector deficit which is set to bust the European Union limit of three percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004 for the third year running. Open-source software -- uncopyrighted software which has no license cost -- like Linux, OpenOffice, Mozilla, Apache, MySQL and Evolution -- was "very credible," Dutreil said. Microsoft, which is appealing a European Union fine for breaching antitrust law, said it would seek to show the French government it could offer software at a competitive price. "In fact, open-source software is not free. It is very expensive because it shifts the cost to maintenance, services, integration and training," Microsoft France chief Christophe Aulnette said. Open-source software suppliers welcomed the news. "This decision will allow us to increase our presence in France," said Jacques Le Marois, president of the French open-source software company MandrakeSoft. "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. France's culture, agriculture and finance ministries had already signed deals with MandrakeSoft, the company said. ($1=.8275 Euro)
Now that the french have got their mitts on it... I propose we rename it to "Freedom Source"! ... What? Too Stallman-esque?
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
You just quoted in the article:
:-p and that could do them in (like it would be a loss???)
"In fact, open-source software is not free. It is very expensive because it shifts the cost to maintenance, services, integration and training," Microsoft France chief Christophe Aulnette said.
The scary part is, I highly agree with that statement. Price alone is not a factor for people going to open source, perhaps I should enlighten you people.
1) The upgrade trap, perhaps if people could upgrade on their schedule instead of yours.
2) The whole OPEN SOURCE part, or if I need a feature added or changed, I'll find a developer to do just that...
Yes, to the Slashdot community, I know you all know the best reasons for going open source, however I'm worried that MS doesn't
...in bed
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
... freedom source!
"Derp de derp."
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".
Je jette le gant - Prepare to taste cold steel Monsieur Gates!
I woulda titled this article "France Surrenders to Open Source Software!"
But that's just me.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
...concerning MS in Europe? I'm just interested to see how deeply entrenched they are there financially. It may be just the stuff I'm reading, but open source seems to have a stronger foothold there than in the States.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
You roll out the old "big government" argument without considering the fact that France is not going the way of the Soviet Union, but is in fact a very healthy economy.
John.
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:
-----------------
"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.
--------------------
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.
I've not been a France fanboy for quite some time, but I'll have to grudgingly give them their due here, they're making a step in the right direction by not giving MS automatic license fees.
With a few more current government clients joining this wave, MS might actually become a company again instead of the software dictator it is now. It will have to compete for business. This could only help software. (I still laugh at Sun and MS's statement that software will be what people pay for, and hardware will be free. Duh. Hardware is what you can hold in your hand and has real costs. Software will be free, the service/maintenance of that software is where the money is)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
The article fails to mention that France would also "consider" Microsoft if the company counteroffered with a 75% discount. I think this is merely a bargaining ploy on the part of the French government. It's a smart thing to do, though, and anything that sucks cash out of Microsoft's warchest has to be a good thing.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
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
For any of those out there who were at Europython in Sweden a couple of weeks ago can testify, Nuxeo have a large presence in the French public sector. Nuxeo's product, CPS, fulfils a similar role to Plone as a CMS. Like Plone, it's based on Zope.
In fact, I hear that it's got to the point where if you're planning a CMS project in Public-Sector-France-Land and you *don't* have a Zope-based product on your shortlist, questions are asked why... Corroborations, anyone?
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" ----------
from wsj.com June 18, 2004; Page A10
The growing split between the U.S. and Europe has been much in the news, mostly on foreign policy. But less well understood is the gap in economic growth and standards of living. Now comes a European report that puts the American advantage in surprisingly stark relief.
The study, "The EU vs. USA," was done by a pair of economists -- Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag -- for the Swedish think tank Timbro. It found that if Europe were part of the U.S., only tiny Luxembourg could rival the richest of the 50 American states in gross domestic product per capita. Most European countries would rank below the U.S. average, as the nearby chart shows.
The authors admit that man doesn't live by GDP alone, and that this measure misses output in the "black" economy, which is significant in Europe's high-tax states. GDP also overlooks "the value of leisure or a good environment" or the way prosperity is spread across a society.
[Germany and Arkansas]
But a rising tide still lifts all boats, and U.S. GDP per capita was a whopping 32% higher than the EU average in 2000, and the gap hasn't closed since. It is so wide that if the U.S. economy had frozen in place at 2000 levels while Europe grew, the Continent would still require years to catch up. Ireland, which has lower tax burdens and fewer regulations than the rest of the EU, would be the first but only by 2005. Switzerland, not a member of the EU, and Britain would get there by 2010. But Germany and Spain would need until 2015, while Italy, Sweden and Portugal would have to wait until 2022.
Higher GDP per capita allows the average American to spend about $9,700 more on consumption every year than the average European. So Yanks have by far more cars, TVs, computers and other modern goods. "Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will never come anywhere near," the Swedish study says.
But what about equality? Well, the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has dropped to 12% from 22% since 1959. In 1999, 25% of American households were considered "low income," meaning they had an annual income of less than $25,000. If Sweden -- the very model of a modern welfare state -- were judged by the same standard, about 40% of its households would be considered low income.
In other words poverty is relative, and in the U.S. a large 45.9% of the "poor" own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, which remains a luxury in most of Western Europe. The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.
So what is Europe's problem? "The expansion of the public sector into overripe welfare states in large parts of Europe is and remains the best guess as to why our continent cannot measure up to our neighbor in the west," the authors write. In 1999, average EU tax revenues were more than 40% of GDP, and in some countries above 50%, compared with less than 30% for most of the U.S.
We don't report this with any nationalist glee. The world needs a prosperous, growing Europe, and its relative economic decline is one reason for growing EU-American tension. A poorer Europe lacks the wealth to invest in defense, a fact that in turn affects the willingness of Europeans to join America in confronting global security threats. But at least all of this is a warning to U.S. politicians who want this country to go down the same welfare-state road to decline.
I think it's much more interesting to spend money on training and end up having people with more skills, more able to get better jobs than spend it all in M$ 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)
Keep in mind that for both World Wars, the 'Allies' were losing until shortly after the U.S. showed up ;)
Food for thought
Error 407 - No creative sig found
In quasi-Socialist America, corporations benefit greatly from a close relationship with the government. The more the government spends, the more money they make. Therefore OSS could actually do a lot of good in upsetting that relationship.
Microsoft made $521M in sales from the US Army a procurement cycle ago. Imagine if by switching to Linux for most of that, the US Army could cut down the market by $450M. If the government's contract values go down significantly because of Linux then the major companies will have less interest in selling to the government.
In the long run this will reduce the reasons for why we are taxed so heavily by our Congressional overlords who at present cannot account already for approximately at least 1/22 ($100B) of the federal budget. To put that in perspective, that is approximately 1/80 of the wealth generated by Americans that is wasted by government bureacracy. That is not even counting the waste at the state level and the good old boy/girl networks commonly known as your average municipal "public service."
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I suspect that a great many European Slashdot readers are happy about the French plan not only because it could be a victory for Open Source, but also because it sends the message that America and American companies have come to expect blind acquiescence from the rest of the world.
Action, meet Reaction.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Well our economy (especialy employment) is not that good, otherwise our governement wouldn't try to save a few $ with OSS :P
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.
Then again, with his BO, he'd probably fit right in...
Take shower. Soak in a bath for an hour. Scrub yourself with a towel until you glow red.
Now go to Japan and watch people wrinkle their noses as you walk past them.
BO is a relative, not an absolute. You stink. Get used to it, it's just that if you stink the same as your neighbors you don't notice it.
KFG
Qu'est-que c'est 'command line'?
Apres moi, le r00t!
Je pense, donc je hax0r.
Bonjour, mademoiselle. Parlez-vous php?
Le b0x. Les b0xen?
BSOD? MERDE!
first Germany
second france
(apparently) hopefully the UK's NHS
where next?
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
> Are these the same "slimy no-good French" who
> helped you win your revolutionary war against the
> british? Without who's help you would have never
> won?
Yes, I agree 100%.
If the French wouldn't have helped you, you certainely would still be speaking english at this time !
Fortunately, they came to help you.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
While I would agree that without the French, the revolutionary war would have been a very different situation, I would also not fail to note that it was in the best interests of France at the time to oppose or thwart the stable continuation of Britain's colonization efforts -- keep in mind that when America was a British colony the French had limited to -no- trading partners or rights (in the British colonies).
This is a fundamental tenet of the economical theory of mercantilism. First you colonize and populate an area, then you trade with it (It's the original 1..2..3 Profit).
Clearly the parent coward is misinformed as to the historical context of France's involvement in the Revolutionary War.
I would further contest the statement regarding: "My team couldn't do it without me, despite our 6-0 lead after 9 2/3's innings" Considering especially that France's government was in exile when the US became involved and continental France was govered by the Vichy regime, I would definitly not cast the aspersion that the US came in at the end to mop up the situation but instead to turn the tide (admittedly, WWI was a different situation).
As long as no one patents the idea of switching to open source....
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
France considering going open source, on the mostly American slashdot? This is gonna be fun. Bash, or laud? Insult, or praise?
This is gonna be like a platoon of Imperial Stormtroopers going up against a squad of Starfleet Red-shirted ensigns.
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> France is just pissed off that they are no longer
> the center of the world's culture
Well, by listening to your president talking, I'm pretty confident that the USA are not either.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
From what I've heard (which I could be wrong) Airbus receives some pretty major governmental subsidies that their US competitors like Boeing don't receive--or at least not at the same scale.
Microsoft Bus should better have a stop in France before other countries! Free software allows people to train by themselves, because you have got the source code, ok, if you can't read it,or you are too lazy, nope, you will use those software like any proprietary ones, but, freesoftware exists thanks to a community, and so, by nature people are willing to help the ones who need it. They are not reluctant people held in a call center in a country where work ing time is cheaper.
> Considering especially that France's government
> was in exile when the US became involved and
> continental France was govered by the Vichy regime
The Vichy regime WAS the Official government of France.
Not that I like to admit it, however.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Ok it loooks like
SUSE -Germany
Mandarke -France
RedHat -USA
Are we going to have classification of countries by operating systems that they use majorly????
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way
+1 Interesting.
I'd give you informative, but I have no idea if your numbers are correct.
Don't bother, we're on /. here. The place where you're ranked a +5 funny for this kind of joke. This whole discussion is full of that shit. I even complained in another post, and the incriminated post only went from +5 to +4.
*clap clap*
Thanks /., thank you for showing us once more that you don't give a horse shit to your European (and french) readers.
--
conner_bw, I don't think the demographic loss of WW1 has so much to do with the WW2 defeat than the general dislike of frenchmen for war after centuries of nearly uninterrupted war.
I think it's getting just a little off topic to start ragging on (or on behalf of) the French.
Granted there's some debates about some of those issues, and I agree with previous statements that the relationship between the US and France isn't exactly at an all time high, but that's no reason to start making broad generalisations, one way or the other.
That aside, I think that it's a good idea that they are at least considering different software alternatives, and not just because of open source.
When the first antitrust problems came up, it was then said that Microsoft software was on 95% of home computers, and I would say that the current figure is still extremely high. Microsoft is, and always has been, an almost total monopoly, and I don't think that it is by any means the best way to be. It is never a good idea to be utterly at the mercy of a monopoly, whether it's for support, or patches, or upgrades.
Open source is simply the best way to achieve this. The "Release early, release often, and listen to your customers" mantra of the open source movement *generally* ensures that software is patched quickly, and updated often. If you want to make changes to that code in the interim period, you are more than free to do so, either yourself, or by hiring people to do that for you.
And for the people claiming that the price is not in the license fees, it's in educating people... Well that's certainly true to a degree, but there's also another important point. Someone who is moving from a standard office job using Microsoft Word, to an open source alternative like Abiword or OpenOffice, is *not* going to require a lot of training to use alternative packages. You open the word processor, you type your document in an application which is intentionally set out *very* similarly to Word, and you click File -> Save, and you save your document. If you are running these programs on windows, it's practically identical to normal, you just save it in your "My Documents" directory, and you're finished. It's not rocket science. Even on a full switch to Linux, if they are provided with a customised KDE/Gnome desktop, the process is also much the same. You click the "Start" button, you go to applications, your office tools, and you click on the application you want to run. This is not going to involve going on a week long course to learn, even for the least technically minded people on staff. Yes, some people will need training, especially in the more technical roles, and it will take some getting used to, but I think that on occasion, the "training" arguement is pulled out a little too readily.
I think it's ultimately a good idea that it's being considered, even if not adopted, because even if they don't choose it, it can simply be thought of as it not being right for their own personal needs. Linux has started from a single person, distributing it for free, and has grown into an operating system which can be considered alongside Microsoft, and that is an astonishing achievement.
Don't you mean Euro?
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?
What would be fun to watch is if some country decided to switch to an Open Source OS, and then did a separate bid for office software.
Microsoft would be in a position where it could compete for the position of supplying office software, but only if it ported their office software to the Open Source platform.
I wonder what they would do.
It would fun just to watch what they do in that predicament.
Remember, if you're not with us, you're against us.
Just as a curious fact or two comes up, the reason US soldiers during WW-I were called "Dough Boys" was because the French General in charge thought they were uneducated worthless as soldiers and only good for messages and cooking. (Making Dough)
After his army was destroyed and Paris was threatened, the general had a thought, "Why not let the Americans die with us." Well he sent under US Command 5,000 into the forrest against 500,000 advancing Germans. He figured they would make a modest speed bump.
In two and one half hours the German Generals were writing in their logs that the only issue remaining was the terms of the surrender... not of the Americans but of Germany! Those poorly armed Americans were described by the Germans as "Shock Troops!" The Americans drove the Germans back 12 miles in the next week! This was hell on earth for the Germans. Slaughtering Frenchmen and Brits was a daily thing to them. Americans slaughtered the Germans!
Just reporting what happened nothing else.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
some say the strenght of capitalism is that it is a system that sorts through all the strategies to find the better one. Seems like a little bit of healthy socialism beats a load of capitalism strategies.
You're trying to refute the people who make fun of France for being compltely unsuccessful at war by pointing out that they managed to get a lot of their population killed or wounded in war? That's not very convincing.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Boeing receives plenty of government subsidies. The only thing is that they are hidden under obscene military aircraft pricing.
Well, it was supposed to be a joke.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Slashdot has for some reason ignored some big articles on Governmental Open Source. This is what I mean: Brazil has a government department bent on migrating all of the government's software into Open-Source software. This department already has 2,000 employees DEDICATED for migration operations. It's estimated that over 300,000 computers will migrate to Linux. As it stands it still is the largest government-backed program for Open Source. This is nothing new. This dept. was created back in December of 2003 and was covered by Wired. In any case, the most amusing consequence of this was Microsoft's response calling this program "ideologically motivated" in a veiled allusion to President Lula's left-leaning socialist tendencies. But of course, an instant loss of 6% in revenue for Microsoft makes them a bit, uhm, "twitchy". A few links if anyone's interested: Wired Article The Register Folha de São Paulo (in portuguese)
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
It seems you can't even spell the name of your own country, but like insulting people. This is : united stateS of america.
You know, there are several of them, at least this was the case last time I heard of this country.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Is that what is called a "Trade war" ?
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Well of course it isn't funny dipshit, you didn't spell it right.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Let's face it: all this "Any tactician with an ounce of intelligence..." nonsense is just to hide the fact that France wasn't prepared for the war.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
I seem to remember hearing that much of the online income tax infrastructure in France is now already supported by Linux boxes, with an Oracle database.
The general overhaul of the tax IS towards Linux and open source was a huge shift, in a governmental agency traditionally bent towards mainframe and proprietary vendors.
It was mainly done under the impulsion of one "open-source ayatollah" at the French tax department..
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Well, i've heard that some French "intellectuals" did it all the time, so why the hell not?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
There was a story on that here. I guess most people thought that Brazil was just going for the MS discount. Now that we take governmental use of OSS seriously...
what's to do when your two biggest free world business competitors make a habit of sticking in puppet government dictators all over? Appeasement? Why should they deign to notice there's much difference? Saddam was an american CIA creation, so was Osama bin Laudin. Hitler got heavily bankrolled by british and US big money interests. The house of saud making it to despotism and control over the arabian peninsula was due to the british finally settling on one particlar warlord to support after supporting a bunch of them for awhile. The shah in iran was put in by the americans, after the spooks helped off his predecessor who wasn't as friendly towards having his nation get ripped off, and he was so dismal to his own people while we supported him and SAVAK that it was a cake walk for the nutjob mullahs like khomeini to take over. On and on, what are the french to do,nowadays the oil is WHERE IT'S AT, they have to deal with those nations, dictators or not. Little to no choice. They already run the worlds largest amount of nukes for their national electric grid, they tried there to be independent, but when it comes to basic transportation and manufacturing, you got oil, then there's your oil, or you can always use *oil*. They ain't got any, and they need some, so they got to play with the dictators that other nations stuck in. In ww2 they fought a lot, just got beat by vastly superior technology and tactics. It's hard to stop getting sucker punched. They got out of the colony business a long time ago and learned their lesson, so they don't do that much any more. What else now are they supposed to do? They've played along with the US in well over 90% of our foreign policy, they disagree 10% so that's enough to completely condemn them and cuss them out.
No wonder the world in general, not just france but all over, is starting to seriously dislike the US, because that's our offical policy now, back us 100% no matter what we say or do no matter how cuckoo it is, or get cussed out and turned into an enemy or get declared a rogue state or something.
I know Stalin is not exactly an example of a bright mind. This is something you don't need to tell me. He did have an ounce or two of intelligence -- otherwise he wouldn't have gotten as far as he did --, but i doubt that he was the mastermind that some people would like him to have been.
As to French intellectuals and Stalinism: Stalinism had quite a lot of influence on the French Communist Party, especially before the war. Louis Althusser is perhaps the most influential post-war Stalinist (i think he was considered one even in 1968). Other intellectuals (quite a few of them, actually) were influenced by Maoism, which they had a pretty skewed picture of.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
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Microsoft canceled plans for it's latest product: Microsoft Surrender Suite. Freshmeat.net was soon overwhelmed with new releases of kSurrender, gtk-surrender, and gSurrender. Mirrors should be available for all French citizens to download the latest releases.
-Cnik
It's not really very funny though.
...and that's the end of our show. Donk!
Can't argue with you on the advantages of learning open source, but agencies/companies do need to exercise some caution in switching completely to open source software. In general, use of open source software can have many benefits but groups must be careful about too much internal software development. This may sound like an odd approach, but developing internal applications can be very expensive, particularly when you look at maintenance and upgrade cost. Using Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) applications provides some benefits including product maturity, lower cost (spread over high volume of units), a predictable support cost, and regular software upgrades.
I'm not saying not to use open source software, but rather that proper evaluation must be done. Organizations choosing to use open source must understand that they could be taking additional risk (as I mentioned above) in exchange for the flexibility. Certainly some open source products are more mature and these are better candidates for adoption but I'd encourage careful evaluation of the less mature projects out there.
As you said, organizations shouldn't be afraid of open source. They must evaluate it similar to the commercial products to see if it meets their needs.
The vietnamese army seems to RULE! What was it again.. Has mandrakesoft declared the third world war or was it The Bush administration? How is Stallman and fox news involved? Why havent anybody mentioned the yellow threat from china and india?
Go France, Go! WooWooWoo!
I hope this works, and that they do it right. And that they don't forget where the software came from. I really don't care if they are doing this just to spite $((the)us), just as long as they remember where their software came from. My local government needs all the help it can get. Hopefully they'll share the wealth.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
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Bzzt. The Russians only got involved after hitler broke the non-aggression pact he signed with them. He broke it by invading Russia (the USSR).
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I installed KDevelop and it doesn't work. I installed Visual Studio.NET and it does.
The intellisense on VS.NET is infinitely better than that in KDdevelop.
This is my sig.
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 ---
And airbus doesn't get these "military subsidies" because the EU doesn't make miliary aircraft?? Yeah right. I'd also like to point out that Boeing has to bid for it's military contracts, against Lockheed-Martin, etc, so this "military subsidy of civilian industry" can't work the way you say it does.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
France was a friend in the Revolutionary War and a friend in advising against the failed invasion of Iraq, and has been a close ally in the years between those two wars. Think about that next time you eat your freedom fries.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
OK, I live in england, I'm celtic by ancestry, you might refer to me as "a Britisher"
My parents generation fought ww2, on my mums side 5 kids, all of them signed up, their father, my grandad was torpedoes three fucking times and lived to tell the tale... he was a bosun on the murmansk run on oil tankers, he used to chew tobacco (can't smoke on tankers) and that's what eventually killed him, colostomy and bowel cancer.
Of his five children the eldest was a telegrapher, RN, was ordered to stay behind at the fall of singapore and report on the nips, was mia for 9 months and eventually made his own way overland to india, next eldest was another RN telegrapher (the radio shack was a prime target btw) my mum was a wren who was a plotter in devonport, plotted the d-day practices in which thousands of americans died through the sheer incompetence of their commanders, going to cut a long shit load of history short here, not much point going on about a thousand years of clanging swords with someone or other which is basically what english history is, let me tell you how WE see american military in first hand observations from ww2 (my father etc) through korea (before you lot went into nam properly) to the present day.
in 1943 when the british army couldn't even get a pair of boots and 20 rounds of ammunition to every soldier, the american military machine could get chocolates to every soldier, and all the boots they could wear and ammo they could carry, "over sexed, over paid, and over here" was a 1943 sentiment about americans here in the southwest training for d day, but EVERYONE was in absolute awe of american logistics.
Similarly, from 1943 through korea etc to present day, nobody ever thought american soldiers lacked courage.
While american logistics were awesome, most people rated american military hardware as sub-standard, when germany had tiger tanks you were running around in shermans, worst thing about a sherman was the motor, 2 stroke detroit diesel was NOISY bastard, made it real easy to shoot at... similarly because supply of bullets was never a problem american weapons and soldiering were much more automatic fire than semi automatic, times where supply chain breaks everyone shit themselves if americans on the flank, waiting for them to expend all ammo and then fall back.....
no, BY FAR commonest sentiment about american military machine was the soldiers were not as highly trained or versatile as ours (this is still true, simply because US military budget is so fucking huge we HAVE to be better at everything, on a per platoon basis) and american brass were by and large grandstanding assholes, just like we used to shoot in the back when going over the top in WWI....
americans go on patrol in iraq in armoured vehicles all toting fully automatic weapons and more importantly crew-few medium calibre automatic weapons, anything tougher than a columbine schoolkid pops up and you hunker down and call in an airstrike.... such tactics are inevitable when you have a HUGE military machine with awesome logistics and vast numbers of under trained cannon fodder troops.
british go on patrol in iraq in open backed landrover (4wd, a british "technical" really, often minus the 50 cal) response is very short ammunition conserving short bursts of 3 or 4 rounds at most, of not single shot mode, if it turns bad retreat and regroup, or die there, we just don't have that kind of air support or even heavy armour.... such tactics are inevitable when you have a small military machine with shite logistics (remember, we had to canniballise our biggest liner just to get troops to falklands, and she was built that way just in case too...) so every soldier must be a minimum of proficient at many tasks and bloody good at one or two.
same thing is true of bar fights, in american bar fights there is much pre fight posturing and strutting, like bears in some mating ritual, much opportunity for both to mutually cool it off without losing face according to some strange set of rules...
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
If you RTFA (english), this is a quote from the president of Mandrakesoft hoping to sell his product (Mandrake Linux?) in other countries.
The parent should be marked funny.
It depends whose education you're talking about. For instance, the European system is such that George W. Bush could never have graduated from a top school (the criterion is merit, not money).
Now, whether this is 'good' or 'bad'...
This is...
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France will even retreat from Microsoft!
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.
Digital Citizen
It's called lip service How to look FOSS-friendly without actually having to support it.
Or what we down here in the great south land of the penguins (australia) call "Clayton's FOSS", after a famous advert for a non-alcoholic beverage. It's the FOSS you have when you're not having a FOSS :)
Our federal government is very much into Clayton's FOSS, and most of the state governments, except ironically the ACT, are the same.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Hmmm. Poorly armed troops sent into the forest eh? Described by the Germans as 'Shock Troops', eh?
Would that forest by any chance be Belleau Wood?
The poorly armed description would fit, as those troops were always armed with the cast-offs of the other services (until after WWII), and they tended to compensate for that with their superior training and discipline.
If you are going to try to belittle the French, please do so without belittling the value of your very own US Marine Corps, a force that could be described as 'Shock Troops' even when they were still the red-headed stepchild of the US armed forces.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Now all we need are dice and a board.
I see your British ability to conserve ammo, and raise you an airstrike.
Just kidding, the DoD hasn't gotten back to me yet.
I always thought that open source was anti-US and this proves it. Do you think the French would be going to Open Office if Microsoft was a French company. Not on your Nelly. They'd be espousing the benefits of the proprietary way in fine Gallic prose. But Microsoft is American so the slime balls - oops sorry, French - are all for it. It never fails to amaze me how politically naive American software developers are. The apolitical geek, oblivious to the fact that the whole world is 'borrowing' US IP, hacks on bad mouthing Microsoft and aiding and abetting the loss of their own jobs. Maybe now with US geeks being made unemployed by Chong and Gupta (and Ivan) you guys will wake up and see how you've undermined your own careers by giving away the secrets of the software kingdom(and I write this from Canada, not the US.) I wonder how US geeks will fare as burger flippers?
Or they could have teamed up with Code Weavers.
I love C++
Unlike Europe, you're surrounded by oceans.
Mexico and Canada. Anyone could come in by that way.
FYI if there is ever another "Great War" and it is fought on American soil, your guns won't save you from nuclear and chemical attack.
Nukes are just a bad idea... we have a ton of them and would just fire them back.
You know the cure to exposure to, say, anthrax is? Fresh air. Chemical attacks hurt in enclosed areas, not out in the open.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Does the American police often use napalm bombardment from helicopters, then ? And do they often use army uniforms ?
Yes, and they recruit and draft for it, and have full carpet bombs and everything. The definition of war, by US standards, is when Congress declares it.
No matter, whether it was a police operation or a war, you lost anyway.
We lost a 'police action' trying to keep democracy in a nation. We didn't lose our homeland to an invading force.
The joke would be funnier if it wasn't told every time someone mentions France.
Sorta like when linux and bugs and viruses are mentioned when a Microsoft story is mentioned? You don't seem to mind that...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Newspeak, eh ?-)
You do realize that yours is an utterly ridicilous argument, don't you ? The definition of war in common language is a conflict between large armed forces, which certainly fit Vietnam.
I'd imagine, that had the USSR launched a nuclear attack during the cold war, you'd have called that a war, even before your congress got around to formally deciding that.
You got involved in a foreign war, performed various atrocities and war crimes, lost to an inferior force, abandoned your allies and escaped. Are you really arguing that this was less shamefull than fighting against a superior invasion army to save one's homeland and losing ?
What does spreading information about current computer security threats have to do with retelling the same tired joke for 60 years ?
The thing is, most Microsoft jokes are actually quite accurate - Microsoft products are, generally speaking, buggy and very vulnerable to viruses, whereas Linux is neither. Microsofts business ethics also seem to be somewhat lacking, as evidenced by the conviction of abuse of monopoly by your own justice system.
On the other hand, twisting 60 year old history time and again just because you can't think of any new jokes is annoying. Especially since it gets invariably modded to +5 Funny.
Or is this some kind of misguided patriotic anger at France, because it was smart enough to stay out of Iraq ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Ultimately, your whole argument is, "well, the tool really doesn't actually work, but its free".
You don't say: "geez, the power drill I just bought doesn't work, I guess I'll build it myself." You go and get one that does work.
It's appalling that you cannot just install a product for Linux. I go to install KDevelop on my Red Hat 9 box, and the next thing you know, it's sending me all over creation trying to find a bunch of web sites that may or may not have a package that I need. Then I find out, well, it works ok on Mandrake. So I go and download that, and it still has issues as I unwittingly installed it as root and not myself and it messed up even more.
Oh, and I won't even discuss the documention. Is the unix api part of kdevelop? Sorta. Does F1 work correctly? Sorta. Sometimes. Nope. What about the C++ guides. Sorta.
Oh, and finally, what's up with me having to spend 2k to get a commercial version of the widget library. If I gotta fork over some dough, then, I may as well do it for M$ and get help that works.
It's all about "File|Run|Setup".
I wish IBM still made OS/2.
This is my sig.
agree completely. Companies (and government) should think of open source solutions the same way they think about off-the-shelf: as a possibility. Not just use it because it is open source. Risks, advantages and everything else should be considered in both cases. :)
Cozinha para as massas (e para geeks)
Here's a link to that photo plus some historical context, government documentation, and a breif history of the US history of support of Saddam Hussein through the 1980s.
Read, L