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: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.

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: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.