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Novell Signs Linux Deal with Australian Government
truthsearch writes to tell us ITWire is reporting that Novell has just signed a deal with the Australian government to become an approved supplier of Open Source software and solutions. This deal, believed to be the first of it's kind, "places Novell on the NSW government panel of preferred open source suppliers. This is the first panel contract of its kind by an Australian jurisdiction that contains provisions specific to open source software, giving government agencies and departments formal access to Linux solutions."
Why don't all governments switch to Linux? Microsoft's Vista release should be the perfect opportunity for government agencies to get out of this vendor lock-in. What programs are government agencies using that can't run on Linux? Open source word processing on linux should be ready for primetime soon, and until then wordperfect is still available. Any non-activeX web app should not be a problem either.
.NET. That would be stupid.
I just hope that any new government created is not made with Microsoft SQL and
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
While this is a good thing the summary overstates things a little. It is, in fact, just one department of one state. A mere chink in the armour.
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
I've only used Novell setups a bit, but in my experience, they don't have nearly the functionality or sophistication
of some of the other Linux configurations out there.
Also, a little known fact is that NSW used NetWare up until 1999 I believe. That could have had something to do with
their decision to allow switching.
SuSE? Not sophisticated or functional? Where have you been?
After Microsoft nearly killed Novell by using brutal, unfair, monopolistic tactics, Novell now has a fighting chance to just survive. Finally, there is some justice.
I don't know how much the State Government of Victoria wastes on Open Software licencing with MS. For the cost of a CD schools can buy open licences for Windows Server Products, Windows XP, Office.
A primary school I was administering for a while was had open licence copies for Win2K3, WinXp, Office2k3, Exchange 2K3, SQL 2000, ISA server and all that was used was WinXP & Win2k3 Server.
It seems a waste of money, moving to linux could help cut costs on resources and and put it into what should matter in schools. TRAINING!!!
There is value in having a company to blame and hold accountable when things go wrong.
You buy Microsoft, you get to run bill over the coals.. You choose OSS, its your own ass that goes in the furnace.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Every tech uses the "Microsoft is stupid" excuse when they cannot fix a problem, don't they?? If you are not using MS, then you can't say that, and it becomes "my choice of OS is stupid", which is more your problem, isn't it?
Still, I would love to work in a wholey non-MS shop.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
A year ago Novell seemed to have lost its way with its SuSE initative. The executive who had directed the open source strategy had departed, and much of the rest of the company just didn't get it.
Then they decided to release OpenSuse. OpenSuse is now more popular than Fedora Core. That won back the devs like me who had not been listening. And OpenSuse is polished.
This announcement of itself is not that huge. But when taken with the other things they have been doing I can see that Novell can gain mindshare amongst developers and their traditional corporate base. That bodes well for them.
It may not help, but it is a great start in many cases to file bugs for feature requests such as this, especially as you can provide use cases as well as specifications. I'd go file at OpenOffice at least, perhaps at KOffice and Abiword too. Also, it could pay off to file bugs for these kind of features at your distros local bug tracker, as the distros themselves have something to win from this and usually does local development that is forwaded upstream. Ubuntu, Novell, Red Hat or Mandriva for instance are all quite big and could use any leverage like this.
Actually, if you collect the info needed (short use case, rationale and specification + links) and place it in an accessible place and let people know, others may help file the bugs, do the drafts and maybe even develop the thing.
It all depends if you can catch the interest of someone with enough knowledge to do it.
Good luck!
Spine World
> There is value in having a company to blame and hold accountable when things go wrong.
:)
:)
Right, and this is presumably why they went with Novell, specifically, rather than simply going with "open source" in general.
> You buy Microsoft, you get to run bill over the coals
Ha ha, you're funny!
> You choose OSS, its your own ass that goes in the furnace.
This is stupid; borderline FUD! If you choose OSS, then it's you OR YOUR VENDOR'S ass that goes in the furnace, depending on whether you have a support contract or not. Once again, more options, not fewer. You can try to support it yourself, or you can pay someone else to do it. If you pay someone else to do it, going with OSS means you're not locked in--if Novell turns out to have problems, switching from Novell to Red Hat (for example) is far easier than switching from MS to anything.
I assure you that people don't usually choose Red Hat over Fedora or Novell over OpenSUSE for technical reasons. They do so purely and simply so that they can have someone to blame! You're right that this is an important issue, but you're an idiot if you think this is a dividing line between OSS and MS. It's the other way around--with MS, you're FORCED to have someone to blame, whether you want to or not; with OSS, it's optional.