Spanish Region Goes Entirely Open Source

greengrass writes to tell us TechWorld is reporting that the Spanish region of Extremadura has decided to go completely open source with their day-to-day operations. While the region has long been a supporter of open source software, within a year it will be a requirement that all officials use the ODF and PDF formats for all documents. From the article: "Extremadura, Spain's poorest region, made headlines following a 2002 decision to migrate about 70,000 desktops and 400 servers in its schools to a locally tailored version of Debian called gnuLinEx. The government has estimated that the total cost of this project was about 190,000 euros (£130,000), 18 million euros lower than if the schools had purchased Microsoft software. "

Comments

Good

[Wylfing]

Good. Now if only my local government would listen to me and stop wasting millions of dollars on MS licenses. (Their "compatibility" issue boils down to being compatible with the printer -- they always print out their stuff on letterhead and mail it through the post!)

Credit

[indrax]

I think 'Extremadura' would be an awesome name for a release of a major distro.

It takes time, but it happens

[RoLi]

Slowly, but steadily, Linux is gaining ground.

With every year, MS Windows loses another advantage or another killer-feature and the playground - while far from fair - gets a little bit more leveled.

I still remember the mid-late 90s, when you still had to recompile the kernel for sound (now it's autodetected), when there was no office suite (StarOffice came IIRC somewhen around 1998), when there was no KDE.

Of course, in many areas (especially gaming) Windows is de-facto without competition, but these areas become smaller with each year.

For the pioneers like Extremadura and Munich, a lot of political will and forsightness was needed.

For those governments that come later this political will won't be needed (or let's say not nearly as much will be needed) as the migration will be easier, cheaper and faster than in Extremadura or Munich - because of the experience made there, because some programs will already be ported, because the software was developed further.

In the next years, the biggest chance for OpenSource are the OpenDocument formats. While the old .doc format will remain "the standard" for quite some time, I think OpenDocument has good chances beating Microsoft's new XML format and becoming the standard in maybe 10 years. (Mainly because MS XML doesn't offer the advantage of the old .doc format (= being established) and has no advantage versus OpenDocument)

If that happens, MS Office loses it's dominating grip, Microsoft loses a lot of revenue and the ability to fund expensive pet-projects like XBox - and Windows loses another advantage...

Re:It takes time, but it happens

[ajs318]

Exactly!

Open Source is based around Economics of Plenty, rather than Economics of Scarcity. IR1 promised to usher in the Age of Plenty. IR2 actually created a product which is truly plentiful, having zero cost of replication.

In Economics of Scarcity, some portion of the value of things depends on how hard they are to get hold of. In Economics of Plenty, things are not at all hard to get hold of. Because we've been living in an age of scarcity for so long, we've tended to neglect that portion of value that does not depend on scarcity, and in fact some have sought to manipulate values by creating artificial scarcity: in the most egregious cases, overproducing goods in order to bring down the unit costs through economies of scale {itself taking advantage of Plenty}, then destroying much of the production in order to increase its market value. |Example: it costs little more to make six Widgets than to make three; but if there are four potential customers, then you'll get more money for each one if they are arguing over only three Widgets than if there are enough Widgets to go around.

One of the "counter-intuitive" {though note, there is nothing intuitive about Economics of Scarcity, being purely learned behaviour} things about Economics of Plenty is that the value of goods actually goes up when demand increases. {Side note: we are seeing this same phenomenon with recyclable materials in household waste, which are currently Plentiful. As recycling rates improve, recyclables will begin to obey Scarcity laws again.}

Another -- and this is what really rankles with anyone coming from a background of the Economics of Scarcity -- is that dividends are paid to investors in proportion to the total amount invested, rather than the individual's investment. The Sum Total of Open Source gets better everytime anyone improves an Open Source project; anyone who joins the Movement benefits from all the improvements that have come before, and the later you join, the more benefit you gain.

Now, many people have been brought up to resent the idea that someone else might benefit from their hard work. In the Age of Scarcity, that might have made some sense, since the only way you could get richer was by someone else getting poorer. But in the Age of Plenty it does not matter: one person's gains need not be balanced by another person's losses. Everyone can gain together.

It takes someone with real vision, and who does not mind making a large initial investment knowing that others will eventually benefit from it as much as they did, to see that.

Re:It takes time, but it happens

[RoLi]

That's because it's been a sitting target.

Yes, because what most people do with computers today (essentially word-processing, email and websurfing) is a solved problem and except for bugfixes there is little demand for anything "new". Actually, quite contrarily most people don't want anything new.

That's the main reason why the transition to Linux takes so long. The advantages have to overcome the resistance of anything new or different.

MS presented it to us at my company - little there to tempt us, but lots of flashy effects to wow consumers. And you know that new computers will come with it installed as a given.

So you honestly think that "flashy effects" will "shift the goal-posts? Honestly?

Sure Vista will be installed on new computers, but people tend to keep their old computers for longer and longer times. IIRC it took WinXP 4-5 years to get to 50% of the installed base of Windows. The truth is that most people would be perfectly happy with a bug-free version of Windows 95, a system that is already over 10 years old.

"Flashy effects" will not shift any goal-post.

Actually, as I already said, people want to be left alone when it comes to computers. They want to keep using the same software because it already does anything they would remotely want for many years. The way I see it, Vista will take an awful long time to get on to the majority of running Windows-machines, certainly longer than XP did. Even if we assume 5 years (very optimistic as the PC-market is even more saturated than when XP came out) that moment wouldn't come before 2012.

Actually the temptation for Microsoft to somehow force customers to Vista will be quite big and may be a big push for Linux.

Let's take Munich as an example: The city was perfectly happy with it's Windows NT4 architecture and would certainly still run it today if Microsoft didn't drop support for it.

When Microsoft drops support for Win2K, many customers will wonder wether some bugfixes are really worth all that money for licenses, new hardware, retraining, etc.

Also, you seem to miss the main point:

Microsoft already owns almost 100% of the "consumers" because of computer games. Even if they "wow" consumers, it won't matter a lot because they will go from almost 100% to almost 100%.

The interesting field of the desktop is not the "consumer" desktop.

• It's the desktop in callcenters or other workstations (for example 3d-modelling where Linux has already made great advances) that only need to run a single (or very few) applications.
• It's the desktop of governments that benefit hugely from OpenSource because all the costs go to the local economy and about half of that comes back via taxes.

"Flashy effects" may wow consumers but they won't have any effect on governments or callcenters.

After many niches will be filled by Linux and after the important applications have been ported to these niches (what we saw in 3D-modelling 3-4 years ago and currenty see in government and callcenters), the next step will be the general-purpose corporate desktop. (the consumer desktop will come much, much later)

Re:190,000Euro divided by 70,400 computers.....

[Murodese]

I'm sure that with some thought they could cut that down to x minutes per infinite computers (unattended installations, etc), which would certainly make the price tag seem more logical.

Re:A Goal!

[kripkenstein]

This is what Opensource should be using its power to do. Good work every one!

Yes. A few detailed points:

1. When you have tens of thousands of desktops, the money saved by not paying Microsoft is so great, that you can even afford to pay people to code a few specific things you need (regional customization, etc.). This is the beauty of the open source stack - you get 99% of the code FOR FREE; salaries for a few good programmers to code the last 1% is cheaper than 70,000 MS licenses. Now, I don't know if the region of Extremadura pay the salaries of the LinEx people; but my point is that even if they did, it would be a huge savings.

2. That last 1% of code may be GPL (in case it's integrated into the system and not completely standalone, or, even if it is standalone, a government or nonprofit might free the source code anyhow). So others will also be able to benefit from it.

Back to the article itself, this latest news is very good, and may be another sign of slowly-building momentum for the Open Source movement.

Re:Is it just me?

[kripkenstein]

I misread it the same way, and I am in the process of actually founding an "Open Source Religion". A coherent organized worldview that is dynamic, module-based and upgradable. In contrast with the thousands of years old, monolithic, static and all-to-often fundamentalist doctrines that monopolize the religious market today. I say it's about time they get some competition.

I have heard there are these things called 'science' and 'philosophy', both of which have coherent organized worldviews which are modular and upgradable.

Proof that MS-fanboys just don't get it.

[RoLi]

Comments like these just flow over from ignorance and stupidity.

Let's review the statement from Extremadura:

The government has estimated that the total cost of this project was about 190,000 euros, 18 million euros lower than if the schools had purchased Microsoft software.

Do you think that "Before buying printer, check Linux compatability at linuxprinting.org." is included in these 190,000 Euros? (= well over 200.000 US Dollars)

Do you think that they called vendors ahead before they bought whatever was needed to upgrade 70,000 computers to the new printing-needs?

Do you think that they called vendors ahead before they set up printers for 70,000 computers, no matter if run on Linux or Windows?

OK, I fully admit it:

For some gamer who runs a single computer in a basement, Linux is probably not the prime choice. Even for many non-gaming home users Linux might not be the best choice.

But this is about a government organization that:

• Doesn't need games
• Runs so much hardware that the cost for checking out (or even creating fixes or workarounds for) hardware-compatibility is neglectible

Re:Proof that MS-fanboys just don't get it.

[RoLi]

The parent comment may have been incorrect but it was not rude nor did it suggest anyone was stupid or ignorant.

Implying that the time of anybody who uses Linux is without value, is rude.

Not everyone wants the hassle of switching OS or running duel boot systems that does not mean they are stupid, ignorant or "fanboys".

True.

But to talk about printer-setup for a single computer when the topic is a government with 70,000 PCs switching to Linux IS stupid, ignorant and "fanboyish". So I stand to everything I wrote.

It seems that no matter the topic (for example in stories about embedded systems, servers, clusters or big governmental installations) some people are either knowingly (which would be fanboyish) or not knowingly (which would be ignorant and stupid) talk about personal home desktops.

Even you seem to fanatically stick to home desktop systems. OK, maybe I was not clear enough:

This is not about home desktops. Forget dual boot, forget games, forget users failing to install hardware (that's the IT-department's job), forget all that.

Also, it's "dual-boot", not "duel-boot". Nobody is dueling.

Also, just FYI, setting up printers with Linux isn't nearly as difficult as the grandparent wanted to suggest, almost all printers are autodetected. But that is offtopic here.

Re:Is it just me?

[Eideewt]

Hey! Don't mix those dirty new-age hippies up with us dirty open-source hippies!

99% Off!

[bobpopo]

The government has estimated that the total cost of this project was about 190,000 euros (£130,000), 18 million euros lower than if the schools had purchased Microsoft software.

Just to make it really clear: 190,000/18,000,000 = 0.01 So this price is 1% of the original price. A 99% saving. You don't see that kind of deal often!

Re:A Goal!

[Deusy]

I'm almost as pro open source as they come, and this kind of news makes me smile.

However I really am sceptical of the cost comparisons. They do not seem to take into account distribution or installation or any of the other many factors that come into servicing an entire region with software.

I also suspect it does not take into account any discounts you may be able to get from Microsoft for such large scale installations.

Yes, there may be a large difference in licensing. But to say that you are getting a 99% discount is a fallacy. The cost of software is not just in the procurement.

As a community we should be encouraging responsible reporting so we don't fall into the same obfuscational traps that corporations like Microsoft revel in. It would be nice to be able to have faith in pro Free Software articles rather than approach them with the same sceptism that stigmatises any pro corporate publishing.

There's no substitute for hard facts and honesty and I feel the open source movement is becoming as marketing savvy as the commercial competition. It may win a bit in the short term but in the long term may undermine the cost-benefits that people perceive.