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Penguin Not Taking Flight Down Under
Bill Bennett writes "New Zealand Reseller News reports that Linux adoption down under is three times lower than North America. From the article: 'Adoption of open source software is slow in the Australasian region according to a report from analyst firm Forrester. Only 18% of the businesses in Australia and New Zealand surveyed for the report were using Linux, while 11% were considering its use. Analyst Sam Higgins says the low rate - three times lower than North America - is because open source is caught between two worlds. He says customers have been conditioned to buy software from vendors and their approved partners.'"
He says customers have been conditioned to buy software from vendors and their approved partners.
Who would have thought there'd be sheep in New Zealand?
Seriously, if they want to waste their money, I guess it's good for me. Less competition.
If you take two separate monkey clans and observe their behavior, you will find that once a certain number of one clan starts doing something specific (like washing food in a stream before consumption), that the second group, without any contact with the first group will also start doing the same thing automatically. It is called critical mass, and it explains why it takes a long time for something to initially occur, but once a certain number of monkeys start doing it that it automatically spreads to other unrelated monkey clans (of the same species).
Sounds like my dick.
Linux is a subset of OSS
The article pretty much uses OSS & Linux interchangeably, which isn't the case.
Anyways, with that in mind, what exactly does the author mean by "Trojan Horse"?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Over 50% of companies in North America are using Linux? Does this count companies that have someone who checks Slashdot once a day as 'using Linux?' Can anyone substantiate this rather surprising claim?
North America's adoption rate is three times higher than 11-18%?
33-54%??
Really?
If that's true, that's pretty good!
Can somebody confirm?
There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
Maybe sh**ty download links from Bigpond Telestra - during the peak open source adoption phase - had something to do with it?
Try and download an ISO without local mirrors in Sydney?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
According to wikipedia it seems that this isn't exactly a recent problem, penguins have been flightless for over 40 million years...
Surly when people have the choice, they make the correct decision, right?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I have found that the adoption of Open Source software directly ties into the amount of money that a SMB is likely to make. For example in the UK, adoption is probably among the highest. However, SMB's are wortha bout 25% of their counterparts across the pond. In Austrailia the same holds true, SMB's are typically of higher value. Therefore, adoption of Open Source software is less. I know that there are exceptions to this rule, and some very wealthy companies use Open Source software, but 80% will follow this rule.
If it's anything like it is in South Africa, there will be a strong perception that "Windows is for serious professionals on the cutting edge, other OSes are for everybody else."
Notwithstanding that Ubuntu (the word, the concept and the distro) originates in South Africa.
Nevermind....
"I'm a snake if we disagree"-Jethro Tull, Bungle in the Jungle
Well, using statistics, those companies do not have to be surveyed to be represented in the overall statistics. How many people watch the Super Bowl? I have never been asked if I did, yet they know. The wonder of Standard Deviations and Representative samples!
When I was in Australia a few years ago, I found that internet penetration simply wasn't as good as Canada. Sure, the major cities were well connected, but many of the smaller ones suffered from absolute shitty service, connectios, availability, prices, or any combination thereof. Even in the cities the prices weren't all that great. Hell, dialing a local number by landline still costs per call (which really sucks for dialup especially when crappy connection=random disconnects).
Open-soure in my mind often tends to depend a lot on a decent connection to the 'net. Downloading CD ISO images, installing packages/updates from apt/etc, downloading packages or source files, reading online documentation, etc.
It could be that "down under" is simply being hindered by a case of lacking resources, mainly comparatively crappy internet service.
A guy I used to know developed a product in Australia, and could not sell the product or the business to anyone.
So he moved his family and business to America. Some 3 years later the product was being sold by his American company to Australians, amongst others, and his business was purchased by one of the bigger companies for $US 20 million.
Then he and his family moved back to Australia.
It seems for some stupid reason that Australian businesses want to buy products from overseas companies, America being a popular choice. It also seems that obviously they don't want "free" stuff, because there's "no such thing as a free lunch" down-under. As a culture, we are wary of gotchas, too much for our own good. I believe it to be nothing more than an over-cautious approach to new things without obviously proven major backing.
I'm interested in hearing other peoples' takes on this...
If the monkey clans don't have any contact, how is it explained that the second group seems to be copying the first group ? Is it behaviour that would just be expected to evolve independantly by each group just due to monkey psychology ?
Or more likely that there is contact (visual of the stream at least), it's just that the researchers didn't see it....
But what happens if you the standard deviations don't float your boat? What happens if you only like non-standard deviations?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
They're a bunch of criminals down there, they probably just use pirated copies of Windows and other copyrighted material.
Now excuse me while i go watch my newly downloaded Stargate Atlantis episode.
I am not a manual I am a human being! - The distress call of the TechSupport Badger
New Zealand has a very large number of very small companies. It's much more common for companies to "outsource" things like email, webhosting etc. and, generally speaking, not bother with servers at all. Of course 90% of the people that provide these services do it on Linux boxes but, of course, they don't show up in the stats.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
I work for a largish reseller/supplier/hosting and support services IT
company in Australia.
The slow roll out of Linux in Australia I believe is directly
attributable to two things:
1) IT staff are not trained to support this "new" beast in the market,
and if not trained can not offer support.
2) the sales guys all think it's a load of "hippie love" and can't
understand how there can be any money made from it. Those that do
understand are very few and far between, but don't care anyway because
the proprietary software sellers are offering larger bonus's for
selling their gear.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I am seriously not surprised, everything is slow down here in Australia. The only environment I have seen OSS used widely is in university (UNSW).
I tried to convert my current workgroup from using Photoshop to GIMP, because seriously, we DON'T NEED Photoshop to adjust colour levels and crop images, but I was told that, no, we WILL use Photoshop because all softwares used at work require proper licenses. At which point I simply gave up trying to explain. Same with converting from IE to Firefox, although I have been more successful there, thanks to the unpatched IE flaws and nifty features in Firefox. The boss is still using Avant browser though, not believing me when I told him that the Avant browser is only as secure as IE.
Other trends down under:
Computers using AMD processors are still rare in major IT retailers, see www.ht.com.au and www.csw.com.au. Not so long ago, a colleague was looking at getting a PC and he was convinced that a 3 GHz Celeron must be better than an A64 3000+, since the latter only runs at 1.8/2.0 GHz!
Gadgets that have been out for months or even years overseas sometimes never even make it to Australia. I remember when I had to get a Shuttle XPC from overseas when the nForce2 version came out, because most shops have never even heard of Shuttle or SFF then. Of course, now they are pretty popular... but I am still crossing my fingers and hoping that Nokia 770 will make it down here soon.
Lastly, I think most Australian still don't realise that no WMD were found in Iraq, while the rest don't even realise we participated in the war...
Australia is small in comparison to the US and Europe - stating the obvious I know... But very relevant.
I work in IT for a Medium sized company - by Medium I mean 500 staff. I have 4 citrix servers, 1 file and print server and 1 database server and 1 exchange server. WIndows 2000 AD. I have an ISA server on the edge and a couple of PC's with server OS installed on it doing various little "things" inside the network.
We just got VMWARE ESX to try and get rid of the PC's.
The 3 main applications we use are Windows based... There is no alternative for 1 of them... we would have to write our own. We have no Linux skills internally - we would have to hire in or skillup. We have no money to spend on a large scale development project to give us the software we need to change over. We can't afford the duplicate hardware to allow the parallel running required to make the change over a smooth as possible.
Granted all this can be staggered BUT... I recently asked the owners of the company to give me $200 000 to put in a complete DR solution and they said no - without even considering it. Imagine asking for a million dollars to change the whole network over.... and they ask WHY? - and I say: Linux is a better philosophy for running a computer network, and we'll save money - HOW much? I don't know, but we will. HOW long will it take to see the savings? Years and years.
Somebody up the back is now mentioning the savings on license costs... Sure - if you were building a network for a brand new company this would be considerable - for an already establised MS shop, these costs are annoying yet manageable.
I am very impressed with Linux (the VMWARE ESX version anyway). I have played with Linux before and I knew there were things about it that were better than MS - but it's not until it's in production on enterprise level hardware that you really appreciate it's simplicity and robustness. And it doesn't crash - ever.
It's simple really - there are probably 200 companies in Australia that have 3000 staff or more (not counting government departments), of those 200 companies maybe half of them are doing something with Linux because they can AFFORD to - they have the budget and the staff.
All the rest of us struggle on with what we've got - and if what you've got works - and your $100 million a year in turn over company keeps making money - how do you justify the change?
I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that 50% or more of North American companies are using Linux in some capacity, and plan to continue to add Linux servers in the future. Medium and large companies especially have lots of smallish projects where a LAMP solution (for example) is a perfect fit: setting aside for the moment companies that find good fits for Linux in support of large applications.
As for Australia not following this trend...hey, every company or individual has that choice. I'm not an evangelist: I'm of the mind that you use the right tool for the job- Linux, Windows, OS X, VM, OS/390: whatever. And sometimes, due to skillset, previous investments, or what have you, some companies make a good case for using some platforms that might not make complete sense to me.
Another way of looking at it: its an untapped market for future growth!
I've never let go of MSSQL, however, since the existing software was always dependant on it. (I'm not saying there isn't a way out, just we've always been very happy with MSSQL, one of the few outstanding Microsoft products).
Linux appears to be as popular with home users here too. Before 2000 I worked for IHUG, which became NZ's most successful ISP though the boom, who used almost exclusively Linux.
The most interesting deployment has been Asterisk. While not a smooth ride, we've now got a reasonably reliable software PABX with two GSM lines and four BRI, and it's already providing a cost-saving without even touching VOIP. Sure, the companies may have paid me in wages what they would have otherwise spent, but they get to keep the skills (I'm very loyal to all those who employed me, and continue relationships with them), and they're feeding my family, not a greedy corporation.
Its quite easy. Read the article and read especially the fact that people want to buy. So first step is stopping to offer downloads for free and offer Linux in a box.
Next step is to look at whom you are targeting. The people in New Zealand have hardly ever seen a penguin in their life. So replace that Tux with a friendly looking Kiwi bird and you'll get much more attention from the people there.
I guess those 2 small steps will double the impact of Linux in New Zealand.
This is so true. I know of a nz high school student who knows more about his school network/computers in general than the admins seem to... Perhaps it's a problem of computer literacy, rather than simply non-availability or whatever.
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
United States of America: 24797 registered users, 86.73 users/Mpop
Australia: 2338 registered users, 120.90 users/Mpop
New Zealand: 687 registered users, 177.06 users/Mpop
A lot more Linux users per capita Down Under than Out West.
The Linux Counter has more.
My rule of thumb is that perhaps 1 out of 200 Linux users register with the counter - but there doesn't seem to be a reason for Australians to register in larger droves than the Americans.
Guess they just don't tell their bosses about it....
Get Counted!
You're not an evangelist, your a pragmatist. Welcome to the club. :)
Re: Linux/OSS uptake in AU, some of the fault lies in the education system that has it's head stuck in Microsoft butt (TM). As a TAFE teacher I find it annoying on a daily basis how closed minded higher level IT management is. It has been a real struggle encorporating linux/BSD into the curriculum for networking over the years I have been there. I believe in teaching a generic version of computer networking that can be applied to whatever OS you happen to be using. Unfortunately, this is not a view shared by everyone involved in teaching computer studies at the TAFE. I hear pro-Microsoft raves from teachers with an MSCE, or MCP and I cringe. I don't want no Microsoft, I want even exposure to a broad range of the OS software that is out there. I wish TAFE did too.
For all we know, 100% of all companies in Australia and New Zealand are using Linux and/or a *BSD for their web server, mail server, ftp server, print server(s), DNS/DHCP server, etc. The only ones of those you can test are the ones with a public interface, and I'll bet you anything you like that these market researchers don't have a copy of nmap handy, even to test those.
It is very hard to determine actual uptake of Linux, until it reaches a critical threshold of acceptability in a region, because it is so easy for it to stay under the radar.
For smaller companies, the bosses may well know about Linux installs but not want to admit to them, fearing looking bad or being perceived as cheap. Again, that's not going to change until Linux is deened acceptable enough. No sane boss is ever going to say something that puts their end-of-year bonus at risk.
Finally, on the results aspect, it also depends on how the question was asked. It is easy for studies to ask questions in a way that forces the response. If you answer a particular way three times in a row, you're likely to answer the same way on the fourth question without thinking about it. Studies are extremely difficult to do well. This is especially significant when someone with a vested interest in a result pays for the study, as it is (by the nature of the beast) extremely easy to ensure the results match what the sponsor wants to see.
(I don't believe a single study on the dangers of smoking, sponsored by a tobacco company, ever established even the remotest possibility of there being a connection between product and result. I've even seen surveys showing sugar isn't a factor in tooth decay... sponsored by sugar companies.)
The bit about trojan horses is indicative that there's something more to this than meets the eye. The implication is that people have been "gifting" companies with Open Source, only to slam them with high service charges, perhaps for maintenance or administration. (eg: a company might provide Linux servers and not pass on the license fee, but charge double for all technical support calls.) Either that OR the reader is supposed to believe that is the case.
The "trojan horse" is really just a play on Microsoft's "Total Cost of Ownership" attack on Linux, where Redmond accused the Penguin of being more expensive when all costs were factored in over time. I can't see Microsoft themselves going after a market that they'd barely notice even if it did switch overnight, but I'd be willing to bet that those sponsoring and/or running this study have read Microsoft's claims and phrased questions accordingly.
Sadly, I know of no country where manipulating market research constitutes conspiring to defraud. If anything, most countries seem to encourage deceptive use of market research to the point where it is simply not possible to trust any results that are produced, even though it is hazardous (in that you're not listening to the user's requirements) to not have such information. However, because it is statistical, such studies can always produce results anywhere in the distribution function, including the extreme tail end. The sample size is generally very small and the confidence limits are usually not stated, so there is nothing anyone can do to really fight the claims. All that can be done is to find a group with greater influence and get them to falsify - err, produce - a counter-claim.
Either that, or conduct a real, in-depth, self-vali
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The publically available summary of the research doesn't give much information on whom was surveyed. Perhaps the survey group was primarily composed of small businesses, which make up the largest number of enterprises here. Those businesses would likely not be using servers, which is where you'd expect to find more Linux users (cf. the desktop).
The survey aside, there are lots of companies using Linux in New Zealand (including yours truly). In a week's time we are hosting one of the three biggest Linux conferences right here in Dunedin. And even companies like Microsoft are making the most of Linux down here.
The end is perhaps not quite nigh.
--
One of those rare antipodean companies using Linux
Australia has the unfortunate tendency to blindly accept these imports - software being a significant and costly example. The so-called "Free Trade Agreement" codifies and enforces this disastrous situation (thankyou Mr Howard), right down to "fixing" our patent system and making our continent safe for US multinationals. The inevitable, if unmentionable, corollary is that local interests (such as the independent developer you mentioned) are completely compromised, as everyone knew they would be (hence the widespread protests).
Yet there are many talented Australians doing great work in Open Source. Thanks perhaps to its proximity to high-tech government and defense users, Canberra has produced many of the best known names in Linux and other free software projects - including Andrew Tridgell, Nick Piggin, and many others - and remains a hotbed of hardcore kernel hackers. In Victoria there are active Open Source representative groups and many intelligent supporters. However none of this has influenced public policy as much as one might hope.
Yes, much more activism and lobbying is going to be required to eject Microjunk from the default purchasing roster, and from the IT mindset. But I am not sure things are so much better in the US - perhaps the mindless M$-centric view has simply been all-too-successfully exported. Just one more indignity ensuing from a decade of Conservative rule. The destruction wrought by the Howard Government was a major factor in my belief that the country was hopelessly regressing, and my decision to leave Australia for a more progressive and much less US-centric society. If they ever get rid of that government, and restore egalitarian policies, maybe I'll go back.
you had me at #!
To help put the story in perspective, New Zealand's population is 4 million, 0.067% of the population of the world.
Australia's population is 20 million, 0.33% of the population of the world.
Australian management is very slow to respond to anything new. Unless it has proven fiscal success in America and/or Europe (preferably both!), they are just not interested.
Critical mass has a lot to do with this. Australian business simply can not afford to take economic risks for a marginal success. Seeing what works and what doesn't in larger population bases gives at least a basic idea about what should happen here.
Interest in technology or design/engineering concepts that are yet to be proven only seems to arrive because of a managerial import from America or Europe (CEO/CTO).
Lastly, on the point of OSS; I can't think of a single medium (or larger) business that I have been involved with that didn't use some sort of OSS. Chances are that most of the IT Managers in this survey are not aware of the open source nature of all of their applications or they surveyed many small business owners.
That being said, *nix on the desktop (even corporate desktop) is almost a joke in this country. Even if a business makes a economic decision to move to *nix, the reality of the situation here will quickly move them back into reality.
Microsoft is practically ubiquitous in homes around the country; even Apple is very rare. This has a direct effect on the expense on transitioning your workforce to a new operating system, chances are nobody you employ (other than your IT staff) have any experience with *nix.
A smaller, but longer term problem comes to human resources. People become more expensive to hire (you need to train them) and thus more costly to loose. This leads to a secondary effect of keeping people who are woeful to your business, simply because they know the system. It is a sorry state.
It will change, probably 5-10 years after the US/Euro, but then we will be behind somewhere else ...
On the matter of OSS and Australia, Things are happening to make (F)OSS adoption a bit easier for those new to the area. The Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software ASK-OSS is a government funded grant thingy (they call it an "initiative") aimed to provide a knowledge gateway specifically for the Australian higher education sector.
The website's just gone live so information's a bit thin on the ground, but there is definitely movement down here!
The company I work for (in Australia) would take Linux a lot further if the majority of software producers would support Linux. We run Linux on most of our routers and servers however, we would probably take it as far as the desktop in the office network if the 3rd party software we use would run on Linux. I'm not talking about e-mail, or word processing software I'm talking about online banking interfaces etc. Every few months or so we install another piece of software somewhere that only runs on Windows. At least our own software engineers build the majority of our proprietry software to run on Linux.
Without buying the Forrester report, it's hard to know what exactly the article is commenting on. On the other hand there are some real reasons why Linux is going to continue to find it difficult to obtain more acceptance in Australasia.. although I guess the problems will be more Australian then New Zealand.
- Bundling of Microsoft Operating System with new PC Hardware.
It is not possible for the public to by a PC (including laptops) from any of the mainline retail outlets without Microsoft Windows on it. Individuals can buy parts and assemble their own PC without paying the 'Microsoft Tax' but don't expect any system support. I have used Intel Celeron systems that have been sold as 'working systems' which appear to operate fine under Microsoft XP, but systematically lock up under Linux when stress tested. (This makes Linux look bad.)
- Microsoft Licensing in Education Sector (Schools etc.)
In some places in Australia, it is rumoured that the Windows licensing arrangements for an educational institutions is done on a per PC bases, whether that PC is running Windows, Mac OSX, BSD or Linux. (I'm happy to be proved wrong...) This means that there is no monetory advantage to Schools installing anything else other than Microsoft Networks. These licensing arrangements are negotiated state-by-state, rather than school-by-school.
- System Administrators in Schools
These are typically teachers who have (off their own back) taken on this role. They do what they know. The installation and configuration of computers is given to the lowest bidding service provider, and the typical installation today is Microsoft XP and Ghost.
There are exceptions though, but it needs support from the Education adminstrators to remove barriers (see previous point).
- Business Solution Providers
These people are generally not interested in providing anything that would company specific. Australian providers (business services, telecommunications) are generally lazy and will generally on-sell a foriegn solution then invest in a local product. There are, as always, exceptions, but these companies have to work particular hard to prosper.
- Lack of local promotion of OSS and Linux Solutions
There are no brand name companies in Australia who have gotten behind Linux in any meaningful way to Mr and Ms Jo Bloggs on the street. At no time are they given a choise, or presented with an alternative to the status quo, and the media is happy to promote the next round of anti-viral and anti-spyware products, when one option is to use a system that doesn't require these 'fixes'.
(There are possibly a lot more reasons..)
All this means that there is a huge gap between those that use, develop and understand FLOSS software in the community, and the business, education and public decision makers. Hopefully the Gardiner report had something to say about this as well.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Here in Australia, and I'd have to guess that it's similar in New Zealand, there is a certain mindset of most people that reflects the greater consumerism ideal around the world of,
"Why should I know how to use this? It should just do what it's supposed to do."
This leads to several problems which are continuously and vigorously pounded upon by anyone who both has a clue and is making money out of the current status quo.
It's hard to put into precise words but basically, most people here are sheep - no pun intended - or, if you wanted a slightly noisier example, cattle.
They want their television shows to watch, cars to work, dinner on the table at a certain time, and computers to function enough so that email can be read and letters written.
When it comes to how a computer works, some people will become almost violent in their protests of "I don't need to know that!", despite the fact that they want to know why they just paid money for someone to clean up their spyware encrusted hard drive, and heaven help the poor soul who suggests that the ignorant user try something else.
"This is how I've always done it", "I can't learn something new", "Free is crap", "Well how come Microsoft is so popular", "I'm sure that the government would say something about that", "What's the catch", "Why does hosting cost so much here then if it's so easy", "I'd never use that", "Why is my computer so slow", "How come you can't make this go faster? It's better than the old one right?"
IT in Australia is in a fucked up state because the majority of people who don't use computers don't know, or care, how computers indirectly influence their lives, and the majority of those that do use computers don't want to know anything more than what they need to do to send an email, play a game, or balance their taxes.
If a virus hits, "Oh well, the salesman said this virus program thing would keep me safe there" - an unpatched copy of Norton's Anti-Virus from 2001.
If their dial-up is dropping out - while trying to send or recieve a multi-megabyte email that you've told isn't going to work - because they've got a shitty internal windows driver-run modem then it's the ISP's fault because, "I only just bought this last week. Why are you kicking me off-line all the time? I want to talk to your manager. You guaranteed unlimited internet."
If they've got DSL - which is 256/64 "for the kids and their games" and the little snot's bitchin' to them and ultimately to me because it's "laggy" - and there's a problem at the exchange, it's the job of the guy in the call centre to physically go out and hand wire them back into the net because "it's really critical I get this email to my friend!"
Some of these examples may sound familiar to some of you. I deal with this crap often, working in IT as a tech support guy and having family and relatives that own various sorts of computers. My Dad got a computer fairly recently. I forced him to get an iMac, predominantly because he knows absolutely fuck-all about how a computer works and I am fed up supporting every little fucking glitch on everyone else's Windows-running PC.
I use Linux. I have it set up to be simple for someone who's used a computer to simply load a browser and surf the net, while I'm fixing their piece of crap.
"This is nice." they say.
"I can show you how to use this on your computer if you like. I'll set it up, and it can be almost exactly like what you used before. There's none of those viruses to worry about that you hear on the news, and look, it's got that card game you like." I reply.
"Oh, uh, no, I don't know how to use this."
"You don't know how to use Windows either."
"Yeah but, Bob gives me a hand sometimes, and a reboot sometimes fixes things, and I can take this to the shop to get fixed too."
Fucking cattle. If there isn't money involved then they don't have a yard stick to measure what's happening. I hear so many peopl
His name is Robert Paulsen...
in new zealand there is a monopoly over broadband with only one provider that charges crazy prices for real broadband.
the best consumer plan you can get offers 2Mbit download with 128k upload for US$40 per month with a 10 gig cap.
If you want real broadband at 8Mbits with 2Mbit upload then you'll need to write a cheque for US$616 a month for 10 gig, or US$1645 a month for a 30 gig plan.
When there is only one provider of broadband in the country, businesses can simply not afford to download open source software.