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French Parliament To Go Open Source
dhoyte writes, "Newsfactor.com reports that next June the French parliament will be switching from Microsoft to open source products such as Linux for desktops and servers and OpenOffice for day-to-day documents. They see it as a cost-cutting measure." The French have not settled on a Linux distribution yet. The article quotes an analyst voicing a note of caution: "'The evidence on the cost savings attributable to a switch to Linux has been mixed,' according to Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis at research group NPD. 'There has been some evidence that companies have to spend a good deal on training and support after you deploy...'"
Keep the money in their economy. I'd rather have my government paying citizens who will buy goods from other citizens.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It seems to me that money spent on education tends to pay off all around especially when that education teaches people how to do things without being locked to a certain vendor. Education passes from one person to another whereas buying commercial software locks you to that vendor and is not allowed to pass from person to person. Even if the costs are identical the opensource solution empowers the user more than a commercial solution.
My experience though is that if the tasks you need to do can be done using opensource you will save quite a bit of money. If there are rough spots you need fixed you can spend a little bit of money to hire, or sponsor, an existing developer of that project to make things work the way you need. For what you could spend to buy a few licenses of your average commercial app you could have the opensource equivilant customized to your needs. That is power over your own fate. How much is that worth over years or decades?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
As Stallman explained at WSIS, if we argue based on cost, they can offer that too, but if we argue based on freedom, they're not even in the running.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
that very well may be, but i think it is also a political move of independance. Being French myself, I find it quite surprising that the software used at the center of democracy, where all of the economical, political and social decisions are made, still relies on a foreign company, microsoft. this is especially true since the UE has started giving microsoft fines; on one hand we punish microsoft, and on the other we ask them to please allow us to not cripple our democracy. this move to opensource is very good news.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
you have to remember that its the French Parliement. Parliement, not any kind of technical branch of the government. The people affected by this move will only surf the web, write reports and emails.
I dont think that a massive training will be needed to switch from IE to Firefox, etc. Nor will it be from scratch. From a strictly user view, for the computer illiterate, the only changes they will notice will be maybe fonts, or colors.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
> Getting someone to use OOo doesn't make it one bit easier to switch from Win32 to Linux on the desktop.
Oh hell yes it does, especially in an organization. If all of an organization's data is in Office format that organization will probably stay on Windows. Crossover Office ain't going to cut it (Office license + CX Office license and forget getting a sweet deal on the Office licensing) and neither will OO.o's import filters. First time a document doesn't work 100% in the initial testing a MS fanboy (MCSE type afraid of learning) will raise holy hell.
Get everyone off of Office and IE first and swapping out the underlying OS is a lot easier. Remember, people don't run an OS they run applications.
Democrat delenda est