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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. "
Is this just a localised Linux distro, or does it have other specific properties? Small footprint, extra security, that sort of stuff? TFA weren't too clear about that, and the gnuLinEx website was a bit... Spanish.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Soon they'll propose a counter offer that costs less than the open-source solution.. for the next few years. Then they concentrate on taking the deciding parties to cruises, trips to USA and Bahamas etc. to keep them from ever again even thinking about migrating to another system. Or maybe I'm just becoming a bit jaded? :-)
Most religions are already open source - apart from the Scientology that is.
What exactly do schools look for in "Computer curriculum"? Most I know only look for a browser, a HTML editor and some presentation s/w on the clients side. The servr side is mostly some Courseware s/w - Moodle or Drupal; LDAP; Centralised File System etc.
There has been no incentive for schools to upgrade from Windows 98, indeed many schools near me have about 80% of their systems running Win98, and the students are quite happy with what they're getting. There's absolutely no incentive to upgrade to WinXP (although a RAM upgrade might allow XP to run).
Schools in fact have every reason to ask Microsoft WHAT EXACTLY they get in return for Big $$ they need to shell out in MS upgrades. If they switch (the servers are already on Linux) the clients also to Linux, schools will have absolutely zero incentive to upgrade to Vista.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Good argument for GNU, Linux and open source in general with your boss: cuts your software costs by 98.9%. Finally someone puts an official number on this.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Here you can find the "home-user" version.a zine_DVD.pdf
And here (PDF Warning!!),
https://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/64/Linux_Mag
you can read an English language article describing this special
home version called JuegaLinex (Play LinEx).
It gives an option at install-time to d/l nvidia or ati 3D drivers.
I put this on a 800mHz mini-itx box for my niece and nephew--
They loved it!
(You can easily localize this version to English)
Many educational apps and a ridiculous number of games!
I recommend to try it on any small people you may know.
Extremadura is the region of Spain from which most of Spain's global conquerors launched, starting a half-millennium ago. While that "pioneer" legacy does make it natural to lead in the brave new world of OSS, it's worth considering that its primary legacy from its past colonial leadership is extreme poverty.
--
make install -not war
Even though it's clearly an ignorant troll, he's not completely off. Spain has a LOT of blood on its hands. First the moslems, then all of south and central america. We're talking millions and millions! And then "recently" the civil war and the fascistic dictatorship until 1974.
However - They've learned their lesson - that war does no good! And is now very peace-loving people. Passionate, but peace-loving. It was simply amazing to see how people went on the street after the Madrid-bombings to demonstrate for PEACE - the day after they had been victim to a large-scale terror attack. Their response was not to start wars. They had learned the lesson.
Other countries and people could learn from that......
Disclaimer: Yes, I live in Spain.
And said patents do not (and never will) apply in Spain, where there is no such thing as software patents, no such thing as conspiracy, five years for drug dealing would be considered a cruel and unusual punishment and shoplifting is legal if you are hungry. Even if Spain legalised software patents, any Open Source PDF generator could be cited as Prior Art to block Adobe's application for them {any existing, falsely-granted patents would not just become valid, since that would constitute retroactive application of a new law ..... which is also illegal in Spain.}
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I worked for a company where server were serviced for something like 1000 EUR/month per server. There was not much difference between a Windows Server and a Linux Server ( when you factor the fact that Windows server were smaller box and Linux server were generally more entreprise grade ) except that with the Windows Server you had an initial cost for the OS. After a year, the cost of the initial license wasn't really a point.
You still can be a little sceptical when you look at the numbers: Total project in 1 year to migrate 70.000 desktop = 130.000 GBP. If you pay a developer less than 10.000 GBP a year in average( not much for qualified personel, even in Spain ) that's a team of 13 persons for 1 year. Manager, coordination and everything included. Well sure that's not a lot.
Not saying it is not a good think, even if it was more expensive to go opensource. OpenSource and Open Standard makes *especially* more sense for a government. But in this case the difference is so huge, you would like to ask a breakdown of that. It looks too much more like "become an expert C Unix programming in only 8 hours" or "loose 50 kilos in less than 7 days"