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Governments & Open Source
sydney-computer-support writes "The Greens in New Zealand who advocate the use of OSS are upset about a Novell contract because it doesn't support open source. The article mentions the greens spokeperson saying
the contract "cleared the path for government agencies to adopt and expand their use of non-proprietary software" -- failing to note that Novell is a company offering proprietary versions of OSS."
Slashdot is just taunting with this headline. I mean, come on! "Open Souce"?
My humor is probably your flamebait
Good luck.
My workplace recently started moving some critical servers from Solaris to Red Hat. Of course this is a proprietary (and often reviled) Linux. But that's not important.
What's important are the number of people installing test boxes and "piddle" boxes running Linux to get more familiar with it. Some of these are Red Hat, but a couple folks are starting to look at the other non-commercial packages. I fully expect more to do this.
Once corporate folks have put their feet on the Linux platform and found it will both hold weight and perform fabulously, they can then move on to the freer options. I think almost all of it has to do with support and CYA.
Personally, my philosophy is "best tool for the job". If that's a commercial/proprietary Linux, so be it. If it's Sun, so be it. MS...same deal. This adoption of proprietary Linux is a first step towards a similar, more open philosophy, so it shouldn't be poo-poo'd.
If the system does what it's supposed to do, with an appropriate cost to taxpayers, what's the problem?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Novell, in case the Greens didn't notice, has been releasing more and more of the Ximian and SuSE code under the GPL and making their distribution much easier to acquire gratis as well as libre. So what's their complaint? Reading TFA it's hard to tell.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The news post claims the greens are upset about this deal, then links to an article in which two different spokespeople from the green party praise the deal.
And what's with the jab at Novell for offering "proprietary versions of OSS". What does that even mean? Is Suse Linux somehow now less open because Novell owns it?
Am I missing something here?
Souse \Souse\, n. [OF. sausse. See Sauce.] [Written also souce, sowce, and sowse.]
1. Pickle made with salt.
2. Something kept or steeped in pickle; esp., the pickled ears, feet, etc., of swine.
And he that can rear up a pig in his house, Hath cheaper his bacon, and sweeter his souse. --Tusser.
3. The ear; especially, a hog's ear. [Prov. Eng.]
4. The act of sousing; a plunging into water.
So what's happening is that governments are struggling to keep the salted pickles free for everyone? So is that free as in beer?
How, "of course?"
I'm by no way a Red Hat fan, but every byte of software that Red Hat produces is under the GPL, and they not only tell you that in their LICENSES file but give precise instructions for how to remove the Red Hat trademark files from their distribution so that it can be redistributed.
If that's "proprietary" then we're well on our way to becoming what the anti-OSS crowd call us: religious fanatics, more interested in internal inquisitions for insufficient piety than in the real world.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
It's poorly researched and little more than "MS good, FOSS bad". The fact that he uses Laura DiDio to support one of his points (with a minor disclosure about her being viewed as a troll) says all I needed to see. Atleast is marked as a commentary.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
The /. lead-in completely misrepresents the article in question. Had the submitter actually read TFA, he would know that the Greens are actually very excited about the deal. The quotes from Gren spokespersons cover a lot of the standard ground for OSS advocacy. However, the article in question was written for the National Business review, and is primarily a "debunking" of OSS, and of the Greens' enthusiasm for open solutions.
...as long as they employ open standards which would guard against vendor lock-in. If M$ were involved in any way, I'd be very worried, but Novell, no problem. If Novell tried any monkey tricks, that will automatically generate bad publicity. I am sure Novell does not like this.
Are we sure Hemos that SUSe soruce is nto aviable to cusotmozie and use for free from Novell or are just guessing?? Try guessig a little harder next time
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
eh? Proprietary OSS?
My karma is not a Chameleon.
What stake do the "non-violent direct violence" Greens have in open source? I mean, they might be a significant part of whoever actually is supporting open source, but are they actually spearheading it themselves? Why? What does this have to do with dismantling capitalism with environmental rhetoric?
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
What really maters is that the file formats be 100% open, 100% available to Microsoft and NON-Microsoft products alike. And without the usual closed source tricks of useless proprietary extentions, traps for proprietary lock-in and the usual antics employed my MS Office in the past.
If it is created with OSS or OSS made proprietary or even Microsoft does it mater? If created with Suse open office, it can be viewed by all - even Microsoft users. This is the point.
Proprietary file formats are bad for all.
Sorry but you shouldn't believe everything you read.
The Red Hat Enterprise distribution includes some trademarks, logos and what not, but it is in no way proprietary. You can download all the source code directly from Red Hat's own ftp servers for free. And you can even create your own linux distribution based off the source, however, you must remove the trademark logos and what not before you distribute as you are not Red Hat.
If you don't believe then try checking out http://centos.org/
Or just peruse the Red Hat website and read their licensing agreements for their products.
It seems you've bought into FUD spread by both the anti-OSS crowd saying "...Red Hat is no different, its proprietary just like Windows..." and the Red Hat bashing linux elitists "...Red Hat is the next Microsoft, they took our linux and made it proprietary...". Its all BS.
burnin
"...failing to note that Novell is a company offering proprietary versions of OSS."
WTF does that mean ? What exactly is the proprietary OSS software they are offering ? And do you mean "selling" or "offering for free" ?
Sure, they sell proprietary OS software (count the number of 'O's) and I have no problem with them doing this, as I'll always pick their free OSS stuff any time.
The suggestion that Novell are not OSS friendly is just plain wrong. Their latest product, SUSE Linux 10.0 even comes in a totally "OSS" version with no MP3 codecs, Java, Flash etc. for example. You can't get much more OSS than that.
How do corporations offer "proprietary versions of Open Source", more specifically closed-source versions of GPL'ed programs? Doesn't the GPL prevent a recipient of Open Source from "taking it proprietary"? Not just the sleazy technique of hiding the source so completely that its origin in GPL'ed source isn't apparent, but well-known examples. How do they get to do so?
--
make install -not war
Did I miss something here? Is Novell's contract under attack because they didn't specify Slackware? Gentoo? Minix? Are we too far gone to realise that there are no feasible alternatives to ZenWorks and that eDirectory is rock solid and reliable?
It's good news for Novell that they won this contract. Jeebus knows that they need the money.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Like other political movements/parties, the Green parties in various countries around the world try not to stick to one issue, though they are named after their signature issue. Surely the desire to keep governments from being held hostage by software companies with monopolies through the use of open formats and open source software is something that would make sense in a party that is suspicious of multinational corporations? Perhaps you were being sarcastic and I misinterpreted?
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
That's the best pun I've seen all week.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This whole mess just fortifies in my mind the clear lack of understanding of FOSS and licensing. I think its time some new terminology gets added/altered/adopted to allow for a more clear description, and thereby understanding, of all the options available.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
This does not surprise me. In my city there were plans for a power plant which would use household waste as a fuel. First there would be a multi-stage segregation process to divert glass, metal and some plastics for melting down; secondly a gasification stage converting organic matter to methane, and finally a turbo-charged, intercooled, internal combustion engine spinning an alternator at constant RPM.
The local Friends of the Earth miscategorised this as an incinerator, claiming that it would produce dioxins {about as much in one full year of running as 5 November} and CO2 {instead of an equal amount of CO2 which would no longer be produced from other power plants and some of which would be from non-fossil fuel sources due to the presence of plant and animal matter in the process feedstock}. When these arguments were shot down, they still claimed that the plant was a bad idea as by improving recycling rates it would encourage people to throw stuff away! In the end, the plant did not get built and people are still being poisoned both nearby {by leachate from landfill sites, which produce methane -- one molecule of CH4 is equivalent to 21 molecules of CO2 in terms of heat-trapping power} and far away {by mining metal ores to replace the recyclable metal being buried in landfill}. All to avoid a negligible effect on air quality in an area where the majority of the population smokes fags anyway.
There's no point even trying to reason with Greens, because they fundamentally don't get science.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
If you mean that Red Hat won't support you unless you purchase a Red Hat support contract, then I guess my response is, "well, DUH!"
If you mean that you can't install the bits that Cadence guarantees will work, you're flat wrong. Read the Red Hat LICENSES file. Sure, you can compile it yourself or go with all the other precompiled RH options out there. But for that you don't really have a contract with RH do you? In that sense it's technically "open" but that's not what companies are doing. They are going with the proprietary version that asks for licensing info when you install it.
Tautologically true -- if you don't have an RH support contract, you don't have RH support.
On the other hand, take the CDs for RHEL and they have instructions for doing an unsupported installation. Same RPMs, no need to compile your own, install from their CDs (but replace a couple of trademark files) and you're up and running. RHEL is a proprietary, purchased license to use. You can't say "I'm going to run critical application X on Red Hat" unless you're going to purchase a Red Hat license.
Male Bovine Excrement. I've installed any number of applications that even check for Red Hat revision level -- they run just fine on systems prepared precisely to Red Hat's specifications. Unless, of course, you're referring to the fact that "Red Hat" is a trademark and only applies if you have a contractual relationship with Red Hat -- which isn't a comment on Red Hat, it's a comment on trademark law.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
It's a moot point. Moot. Moot moot moot.
I'm not usually this much of a jerk, really. I have a cold, you see.
It seems that the Greens could, in this case, be shooting themselves in the foot proverbially. Microsoft bashing aside, but the a portion of revenue generated by software sales which winds up in Bill Gates' pocket ultimately winds up at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Foundation is known for its support of (generally) socially liberal causes. Although I haven't digested what they are pouring money in of late besides HIV prevention programs, they could well be a source of funding for environmental issues. The same could be said for Oracle, Sun, Apple and the other multi-billion dollar gorillas pitching non-OSS warez.
Maybe open document formats are acceptable when it is a matter of Word & Excel docs. But what about specialized softwares like CAD programs? Autodesk & Bentley, the two big boys of the CAD world would never agree to it. /. zealots need to realize that advocating of open standard documents by governments doesn't always work
Open souse = free beer!
Tom Geller
Did anyone read this? It's just a badly done rant against the Green party and open source.
It's got nothing to do with the Greens being ticked off at Novell. In fact, I'm not sure how anyone could get that out of the article.
The article is really just a snarling howl against open-source, with some mindless praise for Microsoft and its software.
Steven
Ok, as the parent points out, the person who submitted the story to Slashdot got the article completely, totally turned around. Even the summary, itself, shows this confusion by contradicting itself (which had me confused, so I just went and read the article). And, as the parent points out, the article linked to is little more than re-hashed Microsoft propaganda - the article even links to Microsoft's corporate "Get the Facts" Anti-Linux website.
Sometimes, I truly wonder how articles get accepted or rejected by the Slashdot non-editors, and why they never edit any article summaries, or just re-write them, to make them make *sense*?
Something else I forgot to mention on this topic. Does anyone remember when Red Hat launched the Red Hat Database ? I'm not too familiar with the history, but if I remember right, this was a rebadged PostgreSQL.
:D
Well, does anyone want to guess what DB their RHN tools use ? yep - you guessed it - Oracle. Oh, wait... That's not what you guessed ?
The do claim that Oracle is one of the main reasons that their RHN products are so expensive, and this is something I can believe!
The Greens are a political party with policies on all areas of governance in NZ. They were in the last New Zealand government coalition (although they missed out this time, they still have members in parliment).
They are a left wing, environmentally focused (but not single issue) party.
Yup, read it. Definitely one from the "Green Bashing" camp, and tinged with frothed spittle. Totally misses the point of Open Source and Open Standards. But most of the NZ press is like that - you get used to it.
:v)
I'm an NZ resident, and there's a funny thing going on. In the corporate backrooms, Linux is the preferred environment. But the Microsoft vendor lock-in is very powerful, and execs just don't get the concept of Open Standards. Their laptop came with Microsoft Office, so that's what everything else in the company will use to make sure they can read everyone's documents.
Companies that are just a front for overseas operations don't give two hoots because they can't change anything anyway. They'll just sell what they're told to by the absent head office.
Microsoft knows it'll loose really quickly once OSS gets hold, so it pumps Microsoft "development projects" to ensure its wares get entrenched as much as possible. Open Document will sort them out eventually, but it's going to be a long, hard slog.
Vik
Even as a supporter of the Green Party in New Zealand (vote and donate), I'd still ignore anything they said about technology. They are vehemently anti-corporate, so their support of OSS is guaranteed regardless of its merits.
The closed nature of the Microsoft Office ecosystem is exaggerated.
Microsoft Office 12 -- the coming version -- will use an "open" XML code system, catchingly called the Microsoft Office Open XML Format, as a key component of its code engine.
Sorry, I just had to laugh here. At the same time they plaud the "openness" of the XML file format, they link to an article that states:
The company has previously declined suggestions that it should open up its file formats to an industry standards body
Besides, the business sector has a long-held grudge against the greens, as the greens do annoying things liks supporting Kyoto and advocating "NZ Made" promotions.
And as for low linux desktop usage: what may turn out to hurt MS later on is that at my university all the CS students now run Debian/NetBSD/Other distro, because uni runs NetBSD and has advocated the use of *nix based OS's. These are the people, mind, who are going to be SysAdmins for large companies in NZ in the future.
Real men don't write sigs
We need to wait until MS is defeated before we start publicly fighting among ourselves. When the audience is persons considering free vs. MS software, we need to convey that all the distros are good guys, and save the XYZ distro is evil stuff for those who are converted already. Besides, it is true, every one of the Gnu/Linux distros is staffed by far nicer human beings than MS has, even the ones that steal the credits from those who write the stuff.
See the shades of grey please people.
I'm not saying your necessarily wrong, but it would be useful for you to give some more background about what you are talking about here.
The submitted story doesn't make sense. I can't find any mention of the Greens being upset about the govt Novell contract in that article. In fact the original Green Party press release praises the govt decision. Govt software deal great news for Open Source cause in NZ http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR9324.html I think a more accurate story would have been... New Zealand weekly magazine 'National Business Review' has attacked the NZ Greens for supporting open source. In a long article they reproduce many lies and misconceptions about OSS - is there a media kit that M$ supply that makes it easier for such journalists to write this crap? The Greens may not completely get OSS, but the NBR don't either. Have a read of this pathetic article and wonder why the journalist has his face up M$ arse.
"But most of the NZ press is like that - you get used to it."
Agreed, the newspapers are very pro-M$ (especially a buisness rag like NBR who are somewhere to the right of Gengis Khan), NZ PC World has long since dropped their regular Linux column, and the imported Aussie mags are either vociferously anti-Linux or just pretend it doesn't exist (except when they need to fill up their cover DVD's, in which case they'll slap on some hard-to-use distro). And M$ had nothing to do with it I'm sure...
"In the corporate backrooms, Linux is the preferred environment."
Shhh, don't tell anyone, but there's more of it out there than anyone cares to admit to for fear of their M$ preferential pricing deals. Even the big banks...
John.
P.S. Slashdot editors need a remedial reading class, me thinks...
It doesn't supprise me really. The Green party has a nasty habbit of blowing things out of proportion. I can still remember the time a National MP played a prank of them by informing them of a dangerous chemical commonaly found and sold in NZ that was responsible for about 100 deaths each year... Well next thing you know some of them were vocally calling for the ban of this dangerous Oxygen-Dihidride.
Karma? Hey I just call it as I see it.
Shame it isn't in the universities.
For reference, the address to send feedback to Francis Till, the author of the NBR article, is ftill@nbr.co.nz.
However, whatever the submitter was smoking is stronger than whatever Francis Till uses. Till actually makes sense, even if he's wrong practically across the board.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This guy is their own (IIS+ASP.NET) webmaster. Broad range of experience? I think not.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...which is also correct... twice a day.
Seriously, although most Greens act like they've ODed on herbs at some stage of their life, that doesn't stop some of them from being very bright dazed naifs. And sometimes they get stuff right for the wrong reasons, too. (-:
Now I want to know what everyone else's excuse is. Self-interest and ordinary stupidity, while attractive for their simplicity and abundance, can't explain it all.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
By treating Microsoft as just another enemy, we reduce them in stature to our size. That's just gotta be humiliating for a corporation that has tens of billions of dollars in cash reserves just sitting around gathering interest.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"cleared the path for government agencies to adopt and expand their use of non-proprietary software" Am I missing something or does non-proprietary mean something else nowadays?
Hey Axe: grind much?
This article is heavily slanted and appears to set out to expound an anti-Green or at least fanboyishly pro-proprietary software (no surprise?) agenda.
"failing to note that Novell is a company offering proprietary versions of OSS."
Man, he's right. Because Novell does happen to offer "proprietary" versions of Linux, that means we should choose an even more proprietary OS vendor. While we're at it let's cut off our nose to spite our face.
"Microsoft Office 12 -- the coming version -- will use an "open" XML code system, catchingly called the Microsoft Office Open XML Format, as a key component of its code engine. "
Wow, that's totally k-rad awesome to the max. Do we get a pony with it too? Or maybe there's a secret decoder ring at the bottom of the box. I sure hope so - we'll probably need that decoder ring.
"and if users based decisions on whether to use OpenOffice or Office on which was likely to be supported in ten or twenty years, Office would have to be the winner on the day."
Is this a statement for support of dictatorship due to its stability? We best be nice to the massa.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?