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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
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.
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As much as I like to think that my state is a little more important than the others, it's pretty obvious from the title of TFA that the deal has been signed with the New South Wales state government, not the Australian federal government.
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
The article clearly states that the contract is with the New South Wales State Government. So this covers New South Wales only, not the entire country, as the slashdot title indicates.
Also, just because Novell is now an approved supplier doesn't mean that NSW State Government can't implement non-Novell solutions, or purchase OSS (solutions) from anyone other than Novell. AFAIK, it merely means that some paperwork can be skipped in the procurement process. For instance, I think that when dealing with a non-approved supplier, evidence of comparative offerings from at least 2 other suppliers is also required. At least, that is what it would mean in a Federal Government context.
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.
Because you can't download a free support :)
I can't download free support from M$ either, even though I allready paid them.
A panel contract means that the supplier can be used to "purchase" software without having to go through a formal tender process or get a waiver. The contract sets pricing and levels of service expectations.
PCs have been purchased on panel contracts for at least 20 years. You don't want to have to go to tender to buy a single, or a handful, of PCs - even if it weren't expensive for all concerned you would have people twiddling thumbs for months until their PCs arrived. Nor would you want to do large numbers of such purchases with waivers, with the invitations to corruption that would create.
So this really is quite a big deal.
Of course, any group that has sufficient compute savvy to do their own support will still be able to download and do their own support. They quite likely also have the level of expertise and size of project to purchase software via tender.
Its the small non-technical groups that would make small purchases using panel contracts that benefit from this - a high barrier for them to adopting Linux solutions has been removed.
Squirrel!
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!!!
NSW has about 35% of the Australian population. It isn't just 1 of 8 state and territory governments, it is the *biggest* state government.
I am anarch of all I survey.
1) When was the last time MS took the blame when their software went wrong.
2) Please name the CIO who thinks their company can sue MS so I can publicly humiliate him for his stupidity.
evil is as evil does
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 few facts about Microsoft:
1. If you can sue Microsoft, they can sue you. If you cant sue Microsoft you may be only seconds away from bankrupcy.
2. There are no bankruptcies. Only people who have met Microsoft.
3. Microsoft defines competition as the reluctance to be bought out by Microsoft. If your company still exists, its just because Microsoft hasn't gotten around to buying you out.
4. When Microsoft enters a new field it doesnt join the market. The Market becomes Microsoft.
Netbooks, they come with Linux or a $3 copy of Windows. Either way, Microsoft loses.
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.
If you can suggest an Open Source application that cleanly supports an interface with Document Management Systems, such as ODMA, I'd be very interested.
I work in a (non-US) government department, and we're required by law to keep all documents for certain amounts of time ... the exact amount of which depends on the type of document. We also have some legal requierments to protect certain types of documents from some employees. (eg. If two branches of the department are supposed to be providing independent advice on the same topic from different perspectives, we need to be able to demonstrate they haven't been reading each other's work.) This sort of thing is also often very important for law firms.
We do this by educating staff to save documents into a Document Managenent System (we currently use Interwoven's Worksite but aren't locked into it), which requires them to enter some extra metadata about what the document is, and helps to centralise the whole document management thing immensely.
I use OSS at home for my own things all the time, and at home I've gone without Microsoft products at all for at least 2 years, but last time I looked at the main Office tools (OpenOffice, KOffice, AbiWord, etc), I couldn't find any reliable support for ODMA. To be fair, Microsoft Office also has hopeless half-done support for ODMA, but at least it's popular enough that the main Document Management System providers have grudgingly written their own plugins to work with MS Office. ODMA's an open protocol that's already supported by much DMS software, though, and it's unclear to me why it wasn't supported by open source office and related products long ago.
They've done it last year in New Zealand - govt. contract to supply OS/software (SuSE of course) to nz primary and secondary schools.
:o)
So, mainland first, then west island
WRT "a little known fact is that NSW used NetWare up until 1999 I believe" - the NSW Ministry where I am a contractor is *still* using Netware (Groupwise, eDirectory, iPrint, ...) and are (AFAIK) quite happy with it. Any mention of bringing replacing the Novell products with Microsoft ones is met (figuratively) with fingers held up in the sign of the cross!
> 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.