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Brazil: Free Software's Biggest and Best Friend
soneca writes "From the last two years, Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has turned the country into a tropical outpost of the free software movement. The government is switching from costly operating systems made by Microsoft and others to free operating systems."
US needs to follow that path.
Who will guard the guards?
This story was posted yesterday too, wasn't it?
-- That grumpy BSD guy - http://bsdly.blogspot.com/
Frankly, strong copyright and enforceable contracts are Free Software's biggest friends. Without those two, Free Software would just be BSD software without any sort of legal control over the copying and distributing of derived works.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/29/135925 3
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/29/135925 3
Hmmmm, could it be that it's a dupe?
CNet Edition
Its great to see governments spend their taxpayers money wisely. Also it helps their trade balance positively, it makes sense in so many levels to not use Microsoft software for every other country than America, so im surprised only Norway, Germany and Brazil are seriously rolling it out. And for the projects i heard about in Norway and Germany its just a few counties. But, 5, 10 and 15 years from now i would be very surprised if Microsoft had a dominance of even more than 70% of the shipped OSes.
Google news (includes reg-free nytimes link).
I hope nothing under the GPL is being used, as Brazil has a pretty sketchy record of recognising intellectual property rights.
I'll probably get modded down for saying this, but I would rather open sauce stays out of Brazil until they clear up these little problems. I realise the slashdot groupthink says it's ok to disrespect intellectual property as long as it's not the GPL being broken -- but how much of the code they intend to use is under the GPL, and how long will it be before it ends up in unauthorised programs?
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
The fact that Brazil does not have any major IT industry that will benefit from Brazil only using propriatary software.
Though i do admit to not knowing the ins and outs of Brazils software business, i know that governments in contries that do have those IT-Giants are under all sorts of pressure to accomodate for their companies.
Something that would be far more interesting was if a Microsoft nation would adopt similar policies.
What will be really interesting is to see which benefits they do reap from opensource, and whether others will follow suit.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Sigh. *NOT* in prison. Remember: don't post when intoxicated....
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
Sergio Amadeu, president of Brazil's National Institute of Information Technology says "We're not going to spend taxpayers' money on a program so that Microsoft can further consolidate its monopoly. It's the government's responsibility to ensure that there is competition, and that means giving alternative software platforms a chance to prosper."
C'mon Sergio, fess up. You *are* the one who really sends out all those "d0n't maake M1cr0soft R1ch" emails from Brazil based IPs, right?
Sorry, I meta-moderated, so I couldn't post. I would have, if I'd only known....
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
The US is still the world's largest spammer. Perhaps we should imprison American spammers rather than Brazilian ones if we want to reduce spam.
Brazil only produces 6.17% of all the spam in the world, compared to US's 42.53%.
I wonder if that applies in a lesser way to FOS-equipped software, because the incentive to "hack" (as in "use computers creatively") makes for mor intelligent use patterns?
... let's have a discussion on how hot round booties in Brazilian thongs are. Better than porn I argue! Seriously, if you mod this down as offtopic or whatever, you are seriously messed up. These amazing butts warrant a good discussion. What do my fellow slashdotters think of these things? I can hardly wait for summer! Shawing!!!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
FTA: But the preference for open-source software has been controversial, with critics inside and outside the government saying Mr. da Silva's administration is letting leftist ideology trump the laws of supply and demand.
I really fucking hate this. This is the typical newspeak propaganda used by companies terrified of losing their stranglehold on consumers by loudly bleating "Communist" into the air in order to get support from the more paranoid fringes of society, such as politicians who get kick backs from such companies.
What Supply and Demand is this guy talking about? Does he mean to infer that all those people should remain uneducated because they can't afford to buy some bullshit company's overpriced product? Tell that to the people yourself, you cunt. Also tell them that buying Microsoft's Windows will make them even poorer than they currently are, since the only way Microsoft is ever going to sell Windows at a low price is to sell some ultra crippled piece of shit such as the Starter Edition which no one wants.
(P.S. Mods, +5 informative, thanks)
Actually, a death sentence wouldn't be so bad for spammers. It *would* guarantee that they stop (except that all the machines that they p0wn would continue ad nauseum...).
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
All women have nice asses. Smart government.
I like this country!
They're in Los Angeles
~~Every few years or so I'm accidentally fashionable!
If their IT people are anything like US federal employees, there are only two possible outcomes, unfortunately:
1. They fuck everything up beyond any recognintion
2. They fuck everything up and then go back to Microsoft, ready to pay anything MS wants them to pay.
There's no way in heck a large migration like this will succeed without top notch IT people ready to tackle the most dramatic of the scenarios. And governments (of any country) aren't well known for employing top notch IT personnel.
Something more to think about: Microsoft Office XP Standard costs $479.95.
$479.95 isn't that much in USA. I bet most of the people here make *at least* this over a week - probably much more. However, right here, getting that much money *a month* is considered more than average. The minimum wage is like 1/10th of that.
This is not to say 'the country is a poor country, boo-hoo sell us cheap software' (although it *is* a poor country). The thing is, values here are different; a software like that is *too expensive*. You can buy food here for a tiny fraction of how you'd pay for in on USA. Wages here are also a lot cheaper than they are in the States - even for the same job with the same qualifications. It's just that not only the country is poor, but living cost is also low; the values and the scales are different. You can get to a really good grill restaurant and get totally wasted with so much good food - and spending less than us$ 10. The same thing would cost around us$ 150 on USA - with the same restaurant chain! (Fogo de Chão - there's one around Detroit I think).
When selling software, people don't think "ho well, I'll use one third/half/quarter of my salary to pay for this software..".. they usually think "ho well, I'll use 1/2/3 months worth of salary to pay for this software.. well nevermind, I'll just buy a copy next corner for $3".
There are lots of wrong stuff going on the government of this country. And one of them is the coice for Microsoft Software. My dad used to work for the state a while ago.. Basically the entire office ran on pirated win95 with microsoft office, and of course, they had no 'central' support or IT management so I used to go there fix their computers. Switching to some linux based solution with open office (or whatever) would pose an obstacle at first but would be just as it was before on the long run. With less virus and trojans, that is (I remember I spent an entire weekend getting the entire office rid of macro template virii - man that was fucked up).
I, for one, commend them on this choice. On the long run, this will prove to be the best choice, contrary to the FUD the local Microsoft is spreading.
Of course, money saved from going to Microsoft's pockets will end up going to some politician's bank account, so who am I fooling. Nothing of this matters.
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe, (Dupe of URL!)
Dupe, Dupe, (Dupe of URL!)
Dupe, Dupe, (Dupe of URL!)
Everybody Together!
Pretty pitiful punishment -- if, in fact they ever receive it. TANJ!
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
... I'll ask since I'm an anonymous coward anyways.
Got samples to prove your claim? 8-)
"stipthinking free is better... it might be.. but not when the government forces poeple"
So if they force people to PAY thats better? like getting raped by the IMF and World Banks, and UN?
So its better that a govt spend $12m on software, rather than $2m on programmers/coders/managers and get it done cheaper?
financialsense.com - your perfect economic world is going to go down in flames
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Are they saving money? Is it working better? And does it work better at Carnivale?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I can understand your frustration when you get flooded with spam, but I suggest you see an execution first before suggesting death sentence as a punishment. There is simply no reason to use the death sentence for anything.
Life imprisonment is a far worse punishment. As an added benefit, it also allows prisoners to redeem themselves and make themselves a useful part of society.
Also, if death sentences worked as a deterrent, violent crime would be far lower than it is.
The US administration and/or Microsoft will make sure that his political opponents get plenty of advice and money.
how was the parent 'insightful'?
I'm just wondering if raping the Amazon is covered under the GPL.
Yeah, 50K employees may be unemployed, but once you remove the illegal monopoly and allow the real market place to prevail, then you will see real job creation.
Quite honestly, free markets work great once they are allowed to be free. But when you have an illegal monopoly, or a gov. that pushes it everywhere, or a gov. that helps support it at all costs, then the market process is a disaster. MS is not the first market to have gone awry. But it is probably the 1'st market where they had gov. help, but no real controls.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wonder if Brazil is interested in letting other international businesses come along and start up under their wing. With the way Australia is starting to become (or already HAS become) another state of the US, I'm looking for a safer place - especially since I think it'll be a few more years yet before Tasmania becomes part of the Dutch monarchy :-)
Or it will be like in the case of the United Fruit Company/Chiquita in 1953 where the CIA organized the coup against the President of Guatemala for not supporting the slavery of his people by said US company. ...US bombers were also involved in bombing the Guatemalan capital city...
If we really wanted to stop spammers, we would never have passed the can-spam law. It actually legalized it udner a framework; The interesting thing is that it allows an ISP to spam its customers and it allowed the ISP to sell the right to spam to others such as say MSN selling to Denver Scott Richter.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I want to see a dupe, where the link points to the slashdot story!
I know he can tell you why Brazil is so great for FOSS Projects and developers
-- When did Ignorance Become a Point of View?
It's not a dupe. Brazil became an even bigger and bester friend to free software since yesterday.
Hot hot brazillian pron stars use Linux!
Netcraft
(NSFW) Mike in Brazil (NSFW)
"stipthinking free is better..."
Republican, eh?
Brazilian AIDS drugs a sure path to economic sickness.
The United States correctly argued that Brazil must no longer manufacture proprietary AIDS drugs in violation of U.S. drug company patents, even if this will mean removing 100,000 Brazilians from treatment rosters. The U.S., calling patent enforcement a form of "tough love," insisted that the number of lives lost to AIDS in the short term will be dwarfed by the number saved in the long term through a more efficient medical products market.
Extract from gatt.org - so it must be true. Same for Americans who can't afford it - get over it and lean to die without whinging!
The economic value of the GPL is to give protection to free software that is a mirror of that afforded to proprietry software, but if that respect is less, the corresponding protection afforded to free software can afford to be less in terms of preserving the more efficient mode of production.
Free software rights holders might feel differently, of course, but then the same is true for proprietry software rights holders.
Wikileaks, no DNS
It is perfectly obvious that
A) These people are global terrorists.
B) They are based in the USA.
I thought you people had swat teams.
Failing that, I can see a suicide bombing mission that would win the hearts and minds of Western Civilisation!
http://news.com.com/Brazil+Free+softwares+biggest+ and+best+friend/2100-7344_3-5644737.html
Because everything a Socialist does is evil. EVIL!!!!
Why change horse mid-apocalypse?
I heard on NPR yesterday morning that they are also the biggest software thief in the world today.
Don't which one, or both, are true, but you can be pretty sure that if Brazil is the most active software pirate out there the closed source companies will do what they can to set OpenSource==Piracy and imply Evil
The US can do no wrong! And the Americans are all blameless.
I wonder, do they teach you cuntrags stuff like this in school? No? Maybe it's time you did a little checkup on the despotical foreign policies of your country.
Whatever the government decides, most industry analysts agree that the program will probably help combat software piracy, which is widespread in Brazil.
I'm brazilian, and almost all computers sold to people's home use come with a pirated Windows and Office.
For example, to compete with piracy, Dell recently started to sell a Windows-less computer. This computer costs about R$400 less than the same Windows model.
But Braziliam government is not authoritarin OR socialist, to tell the truth one of the greatest complains agains Lulas government is that he turns against the comunist point of view of the begining of his political carrer.
I am no means a Microsoft support and I do like Linux and I try to support it when possible. But having a policy of all OSS Software is just as bad as having a policy of Every program needs to be Commercial. While Linux and other OSS application are getting better every year there are some things are just not as good as Commercial Applications, a lot of people would agree the GIMP is not quite up to Photoshop standards, or Linux Printing Services are by no means as easy to setup then Windows (Especially for smaller networks), OpenOffice and all the other OSS Office Clones still don't have a working grammar checker. I haven't yet found an OSS RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool for Linux that is as easy to use a Visual Fox Pro, or even VB. I support the method when they are looking for software to fit there needs they examine the most affordable first and see if it does what they want then go to a higher price. If they nothing does what they really want then go back down to the OSS version.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Brazil is a tropical country, which means it's always summer there. You can wear thongs and go to the beach anytime you want.
microsoft is really going down the drain like a turd.
Dear Brazil,
You are welcome to use the following idea in any way.
Concerning the PC Conectado project:
- Announce an international contest consisting of two parts. The first part of the contest is the design of the hardware platform for the units distributed in the program. The second part is the design of the software environment. The contest would span 2 years and consist of three phases. The first 6 months would be devoted to user input and analysis. An online forum would be created to allow an open discussion concerning architecture, features, and design. Some sort of compilation and moderation system would be used to create the set of specifications desired in the winning entry. Throughout this phase prospective entrants would have access to the forum, allowing them to learn, educate, and persuade. After 5.5 months the controlling entity would evaluate the information and produce the specification requirements. The specifications would stipulate that the machines and software must be capable of wired or wireless connections that allow for the machine to operate as a node in a distributed network. I can imagine several network types ranging from shared resources to clusters. The network could build slowly. Local hubs could be located in schools, serving as both control points and resource centers for technical education. Different areas of the net could function at different levels of connectivity based on the type and speed of the backbone. Areas with existing infrastructure could use established connections while being migrated to high speed wireless capability. New sections of the net could be all wireless, configured in various ways for usability and flexibility.
- The contest would be open to all with the following stipulations. Any company doing more than X amount of business would pay an Y percentage of that amount as an admission fee. This money would be used to administer the project, facilitate communication, and fund a grant program aimed at providing individuals with the resources to contribute to the project. Anyone could work on any aspect of the project or all aspects of the project. The best design in each area, using the degrees of compatability required in the specs, would be incorporated into the final design. Phase two would be completed when the winning design for hardware and the software environment is released by the controlling entity.
- Phase three of the contest, the final six months, is the bid development phase. The entrants would bid on contracts to provide goods or services. Conditions could be included requiring free or low cost implementation of network and online facilities such as school hubs and web hosting solutions. Finally the winners would be announced, the contracts signed, and the network begun.
- Infrastructure built, IT industry jump started, possessor of the largest distributed network ever imagined, and guiding role model for the expansion of such projects into the rest of the world, Brazil sails forth into a happy future.
billy - hey, it could happen
The beauty of open source is that anyone from poor to rich can afford OSS. All other plateform M$, Mac sucks in this context you have to play billy or the others for each line of code you use. I'm wondering which linux distro president of brazil is using? May be my favorite .....slackware :D
http://askaralikhan.blogspot.com/
Slashdot is just implementing RAID 1
(NB: RAID = Repeat Article In about a Day)
AT&ROFLMAO
...I'm moving to Brazil
You'll decrease productivity by a LOT, and you'll have a lot of training costs.
Looking at your typical Canadian Public Servant (at least in Ottawa, the ones outside tend to work more) there isn't that much productivity you will lose. I made the joke that when the union says that they will work to rule which meant that they will work 7.5 hours a day that more work would actually get done.
Another thing, during the last big labour dispute I overheard a public servant complaining that they were trying to get a higher raise annually since private sector average was 3% and theirs was 1.5%.
Chances are that stat was for the small amount of companies who actually gave raises compared to the multitude who had no raises at if they didn't let anyone go.
Way to go Soneca! A dupe, but still a post! BTW, how did you get moderated?
Campeao!!!!!
All Linux needs is for the infection rate to be lower than the identification/repair rate.
If the viruses cannot spread faster than they are identified and dealt with, then they will "die" and Linux will be "immune" as a whole.
But that doesn't include trojans. Trojans will be with us forever. They use social engineering, not flaws in the OS. Most of the email "viruses" that you see on Windows are actually trojans.
But trojans can be dealt with much more efficiently on Linux than on Windows. See the next section.That's mostly solved already. Look at Ubuntu. Anyone can install anything. But the system will ask you for the root password.
The extra steps that people would have to go through (assuming no Outlook-type email app becomes popular that runs installs from email attachments) will cut down on the number of email trojans that get installed on Linux.
The more work the trojan writers have to expend
+
The more work the end user has to expend to get it installed
==
Fewer trojans installed on Linux.
Spyware crap that the user installs himself is a different category (Bonzai Buddy).
But something which would ordinarily be moderately funny (or a really crappy joke) would be piss funny. For me anyway, YMMV.
The first is not a "right" at all: it involves the ability to take something from someone. A right of greed. The second is more of a real right: it involves the freedom of individuals to pursue their goals through their own work.
Why? Cost or ideology? Because if your answer is ideology, no one not already reading this post is going to care.
Why is OSS equated with Leftist ideology?
...it is remarkably similar to some of the core ideas like this one: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". With OSS, there is no requirement to contribute anything (usually money). You can have as many copies as you want.
In itself, it is a wonderful idea. But imagine OSS was a "real", physical product. There'd be replication costs, and even if there was enough for everyone, people would hoard it so as to make it scarce. That has happened many times with food and famine throughout the world, also in capitalist areas.
In addition, you'd have real bit rot. A physical product decays. Who would maintain it? What if noone wants to? Either you decend into using force (as communist countries/dictatorships have), or using money (as capitalist/facist countries have).
OSS software has no natural bounds on quantity, no upkeep. It has all the good sides of society collaborating to achieve something without any of the downsides. OSS is the way the dreamers, the idealists wanted marxism/communism to work.
So if people draw the parallels between OSS and leftist ideology, it is not so strange as they're quite clear. As an ideology for goverment it is terrible, as an ideology for software development it is brilliant. That's the difference.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The link posted appears to be to some sort of sign up page, and not a news story. I for one would greatly appreciate if /. would stop posting links to sign up pages.
/. entries that include such (useless) links, and allow readers to set a preference to have all such entries suppresed.
If it absolutely must do so, then establish a flag that will be set for those
Nope. The desktops can be configured to appear almost identical to the Windows desktop.
The switch to Linux would be easier than the switch from Win2K to WinXP's layout.
Yep. They'd have to be re-trained. But salaries wouldn't need to go up. It takes less time to manage Linux systems than it does to manage Windows systems.
The Windows-only apps are the only real block to migrations. But, if you have a migration plan, you can deal with these apps over time, before you actually move off of Windows. Simply start porting your apps to an Open Source database and scripting language now and don't do any new development in ASP/ASP.Net.
Open Source is a strategy, not a drop in replacement.
Linux easily beats Windows here. Linux's scripting ability (from shell scripts on up) is beyond anything you've seen in Windows (unless you're running perl on Windows).
The only thing Linux doesn't have is the group policies capability of AD. But if you're deploying Linux, you don't really need those. Everything is locked down already.
There are a few Open Source projects, but nothing that is a drop in replacement for Exchange. That still needs work.
You can't even get 100% compatibility when using MSOffice. My HR department has tons of trouble with resumes that come in, in .doc format, that just don't print correctly. There are too many variations between printers and fonts and so forth and those all get included in the documents.
BUT from a GOVERNMENTAL standpoint, they SHOULD be demanding plain text files. Having your data in a proprietary format (which may not be supported in future releases) means that you can lose those documents and the data contained within them. That is unacceptable.
I have to be really really baked to act like that. :-)
Brail Breasts.
May
Ok, so how many COUNTRIES is it going to take before the North American consumer wakes up and realizes that the rest of the planet is far better off and a lot more in control of their own economies then we'll ever be.
The next few years are going to be very difficult for the true innovators and free thinkers as the robber barrons of the 80's and 90's work to ensure the survival of their monopolies with harsh legislation and billion dollar lobbying efforts.
Long leave CAPITALISM! (:
Nothing but politics.
$500 for a linux PC? You can buy a decent PC with Windows installed in USA. ($300 last time I checked mail order catalog) You can't get it for the same price in Brazil? Where's the saving? And guess who are the guys get the money?
As far as I know, Lula started trying to block all imports since years ago, heard many import agencies in Brazil complain about that all the time. Not just MS.
And then, YOU OWN IT! You can install it on whatever machine you want and never pay another license fee.Exactly. EXCEPT, the person making that suggest will be under fire from opponents who have an easy target about "government waste" and how they can do the "same" job for "less" by going with Microsoft.
The problem is getting more people to believe that proprietary data formats mean more expenses in the future. Either staying on their upgrade cycle or converting even more data from their proprietary formats in the future.
The US government also got heavily involved in
local politics in Central America when the French
failed in their attempt to build a canal. The
Columbian government wasn't interested in a canal,
or the "benefits" such a canal would "derive" to
Columbia, so the US government backed a rebel
faction. A new government and country was then
recognised, a long term contract signed, and the
canal contruction began. Thus was the birth of
the country of Panama.
Former President Carter agreed to give up the
Canal Zone, which raised his (and USA) credibility
in Latin America. It took a couple more Republican
regimes in the USA (Reagan's intervention in
Panama to arrest Noriega, and Dubya's coup attempt
in Venezuela against Chavez) to finally re-establish
the USA as the 800 pound gorilla in the Western
Hemisphere again. Not really too big a surprise that
Panama now embraces the Communist Chinese, who have
established naval facilities at both ends of the
Panama Canal, or that Brasil would want to force
out that other bastion of USA imperialism, MSFT,
the other 800 pound gorilla.
Free software does not mean free code or free license structures.
This was done by the first Bush at the behest of the actual elected Panamanian president. Reagan was not involved. Noriega had lost to the real Panamanian president, but refused to vacate his position of power. The U.S. had a strong interest here: it wanted to hand the Panama Canal over to a legitimate democratic government, not Noriega who was an illegetimate dictator propped up by foreign imperialists (Castro loved him).
' and Dubya's coup attempt in Venezuela against Chavez) '
This was part of a grassroots popular uprising against the fascist dictator in Venezeula. It was not created by "Dubya", even though he did the obvious thing and thought that overthrowing a fascist dictator was a good idea.
' bastion of USA imperialism '
There has been no US imperialism since before World War II.
A remarkable new aspect is that increasingly OSS contacts are being established and kept on regional and municipal levels, see
...reason why tended the hand for "serving as model, but also to be shared in common partners and cooperators, because what goes in benefit of one it goes in benefit of all".
The state of Terengganu, Malaysia to copy Extremadura model
http://www.asiaosc.org/article_289.html
After his meeting with the visitor from Malaysia, the Prime Minister of Extremadura, Spain, Mr Rodriguez Ibarra, said:
Tthe autonomous region of Extremadura has shifted its entire educational system to its own Debian-based distribution, LinEx. In most of its OSS/FLOSS efforts, Extremadura has been already in close collaboration with the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, for years.
So these politicians are no longer waiting for the national governments to start networking in favour of OSS, they do it by themselves and they do it now. Thus, they finally have adopted some of the fundamental ideas in OSS and have made them part of their work style as well as part of the content of their work. Very promising.
More on OSS in Asia:
http://www.asiaosc.org/index.php
and, by Frederick Noronha who is based in Goa, India:
http://www.maailma.kaapeli.fi/asia.html
Linux in Africa:
http://www.maailma.kaapeli.fi/africa.html
Regards,
Walter.
"The really irritating thing is why communism would be bad. "To each according to need, from each according to abilities" - how can that ever be a bad thing."
I don't know. Perhaps because it doesn't work too well in practice and because there is still the gun in the background to force the issue?
Besides, with Free software it is more like:
"From each according to his will, to each according to his desires."
I used to phrase that better, at least in my memory, but I can't remember how... (Moral, don't trust my memory too far...)
That is an entirely different proposition now isn't it?
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
So when a discriminating Brazilian goes shopping for an operating system, what does she do? She opens her bittorrent client. There are always two choices, Microsoft or OpenSource. Both share the same market tier, i.e., free. She tried OpenSource back in the 90's and it gave her nothing but problems. It asked her to mount her floppy and then, once her cousin Julio told her how to mount her floppy, she couldn't get her modem to work. So she downloads Windows XP and burns it to a CD.
I'll tell you something about Lulu. His proclaimation has nothing to do with software or Microsoft. He's shoring up his base by attacking a US product. It's good strategy for a LA politician to attack America.
-All gov't employees (users) have to learn to use a new desktop. For some people that aren't really computer literate, it already took years to be functionnal and learn to do the basic stuff. Take that away from them? You'll decrease productivity by a LOT, and you'll have a lot of training costs.
... the whole 9 yards). AFAIK, there is no real replacement (I very well may be wrong). Add to that the tons of ms office (proprietary) format documents... Using an office suite that may open most of your word & excel files isn't good enough here, you pretty much need 100% support. Again, that point alone is also a big factor making the gov't stick to windows...
As opossed to training employees for new incarnations of Windows? Do you truly believe that if training is provided (big if in the state sector, specially in Latinamerica) it will matter if it is to teach Longhorn (whenever...) or a properly customized version of Linux?
Linux can be tailored to resemble your current desktop, with a little imagination you could go as far as to start WIndows applications by clicking icons in your Linux desktop if necessary.
So no, training frankly is not a problem, productivity would not decrease or at worst it would decrease as much as it would once a new version of Windows is introduced. So nothing lost here.
-All the in house applications. Just about every desktop (or employee) makes use of in-house software, and a lot of our corporate apps runs only in windows. Port all our in-house built apps? Replace all them big corporate apps? That's far too time/money consuming to even be considered. Best case scenario, users would have to login to remote servers (citrix or such) or something along those lines. 99%+ of our intranet is ASP/ASP.Net pages too (using SQL server too)... This alone is a good reason to stick to windows
You gave the answer after which, ashamed of your astroturfing self, looked for an excuse to justify your IT master.
VNC.
Next.
-Management. I'm no linux guru, so there might be (very good) alternatives to do this with linux, but I'm not 100% sure. Everything across country is monitored by a central NOC 24/7 easily. We have Active Directory, SMS, VBScript/WMI and a whole lot of other mangement/scripting/automation/(...) options. Again, not too sure of what linux has to offer here... Sure thing is, you just can't take away all our tools, you'd definately have to have equivalents.
There are some equivalents out there which are FLOSS, otherwise the most important providers for this kind of software (BMC Patrol, Tivoli) support Linux.
So sorry, but no cigar.
-Exchange-like calendaring and everything else (shared mailboxes, boardroom booking,
This is all so intriguing. You as a client, as a user of software, are raising your request by referencing a particular vendor's implementation of an application. It looks like you went to MS, took a list of their product's specs, and included it in your request proposal.
Which is perfectly fine if you want to do that with your company (not sure if you would get away with such way of getting providers).
In a goverment dependency that approach would land your ass in jail (or it should).
But lets assume you need MS stuff. You have Citrix or VNC. Access them for your calendaring needs until a good replacement exists. Heck, pay MS to write that replacement for Linux. Even better, expropriate the code for goverment use in the name of national security (I am only half jocking here).
As for the formats, what is your objective: to safeguard your dependency's information or to subsidize MS?
File formats is the lamest excuse. New documents should be created with the new tools, for old documents you can have legacy machines (with Citrix or VNC, as suggested by yourself) where you can access them (and a team of state paid workers, could for once do something useful in converting the old documents to open formats).
As for sharing the documents, you are the goverment, right? You say how other entities share documents with you, not the other way around.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... you don't steal it.
You infringe on the copyright of the copyright holder.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Cost and ideology.
And the fitness of US's IT industry. Monopolies deter competition and for extension, innovation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
with sudo.
...and enter a password for route.
the first account created can use the sudo command and give their own password. if you need to do some work as root you have to use sudo for every command, it's a bit tedious, but it does ensure that you don't accidentally stay logged in as root and do something dangerous.
if you want to enable the root account use this....
sudo passwd root
however i do like the idea of using telepathy to run your computer, i've been thinking about ways to do this myself.
Stuff that matters, every half-hour on the hour.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
i have a potentially successful non profit idea if anyone out there wants to move to brazil for a few years and set it up: fact 1: brazil is dirt poor with millions of people living in 'favelas' without a cent to their name fact 2: the country is embracing open source in gov't and industry fact 3: there are already some nonprofit educational groups that teach kids from the poor areas in the cities to read/write etc. fact 4: there are thousands of old PC's that nobody wants floating around usa/canada/europe (and that are basically useless to people living in a high-bandwidth media heavy 1st world country) CONCEPT: create an organization that recruits tech-savy coders/database people open source gurus from the community in brazil's cities to teach the super-poor kids about computers/linux/coding/databases etc.. empower these kids who have nothing to become the future techno-leaders of the country by supplying them with free PCs on modems... some relevant links: Citizen Schools is already doing something like this (not focusing on computers though) in the USA: http://citizenschools.org/AboutCS/index.cfm Brazilian organization helping people in the slums: http://www.parati.inf.br/uk/obras.htm Company that pairs computer donations to nonprofits: www.cristina.org let me know if you're interested. I'm busy working right now, but i'd love to help people out to get this done! --Abe abecaplan at yahoo dot com
This is obvoiusly a troll.
English is a young language,thousands of years younger than the Chinese, it did not exist back then when Plato was alive. Unlike Chinese, English does not even have its own writing system, like many other European languages it uses Latin letters. Besides, historians do not know if Christ was a real person or is only a legend. There is not doubt that Plato was a real person, his existence is much better documented than that of Christ. Of course Plato wrote in Greek, not English. Greek is a better language than English, it is much older and has its own writing system. In addition, the Greek letters were the basis for other writing systems (Glagolitic, Old Slavonic, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, etc). As far as I know English has never been used for developing writing systems for other languages.
I don't think Lula (president of brazil) is supporting FOSS so much. That is more propaganda.
Anyway, I'm brazilian and I develop OSS and I have no support from governament.
But yes, windows license are too expensive for us here. I'm one gnu/linux user because of it.
Average people here wins from R$300-500/month. They cannot afford for windows+office license that coasts over R$1000...
Speaking of freedom - Slashdot should boycott online publications that have this "register to view" nonsense.
I've often wished I could go somewhere that hasn't committed so thoroughly to so many mistakes as the industry here, and help them not just avoid pitfalls but catch some of the real gems that got passed over or are struggling to keep up from political dynamics rather than quality/functionality. How would one go about getting in on this Brazil thing? Are there any grad schools where one could go and maybe slide from the degree into mentoring positions? Is there opportunity with just a BA and experience, aside from independently blazing the trail as a consultant?
(and the subject was facetious, really)
I don't believe this. Not only is this article a dupe of an article posted yesterday, but now even posts are being duplicated. In other words you actually went and copied my post word for word, aka verbatim, the whole hog. Not only that but you actually managed to get a higher modding (not that I really worry about that) for my own post than I did.
While this is slashdot and rips in time and a certain amount of, uhm, deja vue, is to be expected, it does however raise interesting questions about copyright, don't you think?
Next, taking advantage of FREE rainwater or drilling a well will be seen as a "Leftist" (read; untaxed) action.
Open Source software just raises the bar. Nobody charges for a simple notepad like application--that becomes the standard or "base". The value you get by just having a computer. Open Office, raises that bar, so that a presentation and a document are the basics of what you get when you buy a computer.
This only forces "Solution Providers" and software companies to raise the bar to try and persuade customers that they provide enough value that it is worth paying for. That sounds like market forces to me.
It is interesting that, with the almost Zero cost of producing copies of software, that most "decent" applications, cost about $500 (the ones you might base a business on). And that this now exceeds the average cost of the computer. You are still going to need about 3 or 4 applications (like content manager or PIM, database, document and presentation, and a decent email/calendaring application for a Salesperson, for instance) to actually be productive.
The hardware is a smaller portion of that cost. No complaints. But is cheaper computers a sign of "Socialism"? No, that is real competition and improvement that we like in Capitalism. Software being, in general, impervious to deflationary costs savings, points to the Network Effects of Monopoly, and is the sort of capitalism that government needs to regulate so that Capitalism remains beneficial to the populace.
So, I see OSS as a consumer response to balance Oligarchy forces in many First World nations like the United States. OSS might have just remained the province of geeks and hobbyists if the government were doing its job.
I can see a parallel with this and the move by the Minutemen trying to guard the boarder with Mexico. This is like Open Source Security, due to the fact that the government is more persuaded by business interests than consumers and so therefore only makes a pretense of securing our quality of life and rights. I don't know if the Minutemen are vigilantes or the absolute right sort of patriot who says; "enough, I'm taking government into my own hands." But I know that almost every report is calling them "Yahoos" and "Vigilantes" --so it is likely they are responsible and doing the right thing. Now, pretending that they are securing the border and not preventing the citizens from ACTUALLY securing the border; here is the NeoGovernment response
But I do firmly have the opinion that those who create Open Source Software, are the sort of citizens that we need. Those that seek to give more than they take. Who want to make things better more than see what they can get. More my sort of Patriot and hero than those normally paraded about. Is sacrifice and civic responsibility "socialist" unless it is part of a Church function? I think that is the real talking point.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Try Open-Xchange. It's a bit tricky to set up, but it works, does everything Exchange does, and it can even be made to work with Outlook.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
In some countries, the best jobs around are the jobs in government. This is true just about eny place without a huge, active, stable private business sector. Did you notice after the Soviet Union broke up, how most of the good business consultants were ex-KGB? That's because the KGB was where a lot of Soviet society's top talent had made its home.
In fact, even in the USA it can be argued that most of the decent jobs any more are in the public sector. Unless you can live on minimum wage. Or unless you are 25 years old with 50 years experience in Cisco-Oracle-C++-and-HTML, and love 80-hour workweeks. Am I a fool to prefer a federal deskjob over working for a call center or a gaming company?
You are right to the extent that there is plenty of crap going down in any market sector. And consultants at every talent level do make loads of cash off the fear-of-failure of people who may in fact be more competent than them. But your image of public sector employees being across-the-board bigger fuckups than private contractors or corporate drones is probably just your own hallucination. Not every country has the great public-private divide in workforce quality that we do--or that our freemarketroid propaganda sector thinks we do.
Upon hearing that Brazil was rapidly embracing the open source movement, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld was said to be very upset with Brazil's decision.
"The movement threatens the very stability of this hemisphere!" said the Secretary of Defense.
"Why right now Al Queda trained terrorists could be learning about this arcane X-Windows technology. Possibly preparing massive spam attacks against the citizens of this fine country with offers of tax free cigarettes and P2P programs. We need to regulate the internet and this is not helping"
In other news, sales of antidepressants are booming!
The NY Article linked requires a free registration which I don't care for.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Wow, how impressive. He's now less Marxist then he once was. Call the papers.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
I couldn't agree more but I also blame the editors. Linking to articles behind a required login is like begging us not to RTFA and I think it shows in the comments.
Sorry, if you have something that, every time it is tried, causes unprecedented oppression and execution of a large chunk of the population, the problem is not PR!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
They're also a friend to free (beer) software (brturbo.com).
Wikipedia article.
But, even if you got the link right, I don't think you explained yourself well enough for people to understand what you had in mind.
That only shows that he matured. Why would anyone complain that he turned "against" the worst mass-murdering ideology of all time? My respect for Lula only grows.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Now, with your description of OSS, I must assume you mean F/OSS, which is different. (...) The advantage of open source for the customer is NOT the ability to modify & sell, but in the ability to modify & use.
Yes, I was thinking about F/OSS. I kinda consider non-free OSS to be such a fringe thing I ignored it. Almost nobody is a serious developer, and even if you were you would rarely spend time understanding a new project just to fix something. To me, OSS without the free part has close to no value. If I can't apply everyone else's fixes to my code, I couldn't maintain any application of significance.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's like the stupidest post I've read on /. in a while.
Just replace the whole intranet and in house apps with VNC? Man, you've got some great solutions, it's just amazing. Something tells me you work at McDonalds.
Besides, nobody wants to go the thin client way (because that's pretty much what we'd get as everything but office would have to be thru citrix or such). Nobody wants to deal with terminal windows, the associated lag and other issues - especially when you got thousands of 3GHz PCs on every desk. And have to buy lots of very expensive powerful (windows) servers to run all this so people can use terminals... Never gonna happen, and not quite an acceptable solution.
You as a client, as a user of software, are raising your request by referencing a particular vendor's implementation of an application. It looks like you went to MS, took a list of their product's specs, and included it in your request proposal.
Uh, again, you just don't get it. People have and need the functionnality of what they currently have. It has nothing to do with implementation or who makes it or anything. It's only about having the features, and sufficient compatibility with existing documents (and it's not like OO is good enough at it, and it lacks things like VBA so in most cases it just won't cut it).
It shows you don't work for the government, you clearly lack understanding of how things work here... Once you have any kind of experience or knowledge of how a typical government works IT wise, then perhaps you can come up with valid answers. You think you somehow have the answer to everything, whereas just about nothing you mentionned would quite cut it. That didn't debunk anything, and it completely missed the whole point of the post. Sounds more of a linux fanboi (I have nothing against linux personally, I also use it at home) more than anything.
Now I'll have the "girl from ipanema" song going through my head all day. Thanks a lot.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Actually parts of the federal government use Red Hat >.>
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is