Slashdot Mirror
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;
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'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)
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 agree with you OSS solution are not the silver bullet.
But, they did not say they will move to an open source only solution (or even partial solution). They just said they will now consider open source.
Microsoft solutions will still be considered.
The real stupid thing was to only consider close source (mainly Microsoft) before...
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
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.
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!
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 !
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> 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 !
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
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.
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
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.
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 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 ---
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
France will even retreat from Microsoft!
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
Wow. If I was a developer and I was unable to install Kdevelop I would be ashamed to admit it. You apprently are proud enough of your failure to broadcast it to the world.
evil is as evil does