Slashdot Mirror
Some European Moves Towards Linux
Readers VE3OGG and FFFFHALTFFFF write in with three pieces of a global picture that is emerging of governments and corporations moving away from Microsoft and towards open source. First, France: the French automaker Peugot Citroen has announced that over the next several years they will be integrating up to 20,000 Novell SUSE desktops as well as 2,500 SUSE servers into their facilities. (Let's hope that, in Novell, Peugeot Citroen hasn't bought a lemon.) Next, Sweden: the Swedish Armed Forces has made a decision to migrate its Windows NT servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Finally, Russia. VE3OGG writes: "It would seem that after the recent Russian piracy debacle that could see a school headmaster jailed in a Siberian work camp for purchasing pirated copies of Windows for his school, the Ministry of Education in Russia has decided that the school boards will no longer be purchasing any commercial software."
When do we get to meet this mystery European?
2^4 * 3 * 20929
Although it sounds very grand when whole countries or states or cities make a lot of noise about switching to open source software, if you follow them to the conclusion it always seems to work out the same: they end up sticking with Microsoft. I suspect that Microsoft comes in a makes them a sweet deal (maybe they'll open the source code a little, maybe they'll drop the price) and in the end they stick with Microsoft. As more and more groups do this, I think it's just part of the negotiation.
"We've already established what you are, ma'am. Now we're just haggling over the price."
Which European? He must be pretty important to get a Slashdot frontpage notice.
ShoutingMan.com
Let's just hope the Russians don't decide to accept a deal from Microsoft for cheap software, ultimately if they do that they're just setting themselves up for future problems down the line. When funds are tight it is very useful to be able to have software where it's legal and encouraged to copy it. The amount of piracy that goes on with Microsoft products just shows how much that people consider Windows the only option, once they have other choices then more people are going to go for free and legal over free and illegal.
Back when I was a student Linux was a great way to free and easily get all the tools needed to learn Perl and C. The documentation on the internet provided most you'd need but I still bought a few O'Reilly books for reference, I learned a lot more using Linux in the 90's and using Linux gave me the skills to get a better paid job when I left university, people coming out with only Windows skills do not get the same salaries.
Some people say that teaching Linux in schools is a bad thing as the commerical world is all Microsoft on the desktop. That's total rubbish too, people should not be taught 'Word' they should be taught general word processing skills and preferably be exposed to a few alternative apps so they don't think there's only one way to do it. Versions of Microsoft applications change the UI between versions so even if they do end up working at a Microsoft shop they'll adapt better to the changing UI's between versions. Also a better all round education will open up alternatives to businesses, if the staff are better trained then switching to alternatives will be easier, it can save the economy a fortune in the future.
It would seem that Microsoft's campaign against the poor, Russian school teacher backfired miserably. Microsoft has now incurred the wrath of the Russian government and has just locked itself out of a market. That's a real smooth way to do business and has just opened the flood gates for open source software. Bill Gates' tacit denial of Gorbachev's appeal shows an utter lack of foresight and has caused an ultimate loss for Microsoft. And all of this occurred because Bill wanted to make an example of a poor, Russian school teacher whom was using Windows, not for commercial gain, but for education. If Microsoft were wise, they would have provided free, genuine copies because this teacher is educating future Microsoft consumers. Instead, they caused alienation, and, as anyone can tell you, alienation is a bad thing. So now, Red Hat has the chance to build loyal users. Go Red Hat!
Clearly MS hasn't learned its lesson yet. While I don't begrudge MS for trying to protect their copyrights against piracy, they do need to learn about subtlety. Does Ernie Ball come to mind? Ernie Ball had more copies than licenses; they didn't keep up with the licensing like they should have, and they admitted it. They were a good MS customer and would have preferred to work with MS on any licenses problems. But raiding their offices with armed federal marshalls? Now, they're a Linux shop. MS lost a good customer and got bad PR. All for 70 something licenses that Ernie Ball would have glady paid for had it had the chance.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
In Sweden one university was thinking of switching to Linux - a couple of days later it got a sweet deal from Microsoft.
According to rumours they got a 90% rebate on the normal licensing fee for software.
Just saying it like it are.
All of these groups didn't stick with MS: http://www.linux.org/info/linux_govt.html
Should work even better than the old successful IBM FUD piece "Nobody has been fired for buying IBM". And like good FUD pieces, it has some truth in it.
I thought that Linux was always bigger than MS in Europe already, was I wrong?
Yes your are (still) wrong. but it depends of the market we are talking about. If you mean the web server market, clearly Linux won. If you mean the desktop PC market, Linux is almost non-existant.
Concerning corporate/administration networks, each migration from Windows to Linux makes headlines (Munich city, French Police/Gendarmerie with Open Office, Swedish army, etc.). So I guess it is still considered as "extraordinary" events. Most are still running Windows. But it may change with the official support for Open standard/format that I've seen in recent call of tenders. Microsoft will clearly lose a big advantage.
The situation in Europe isn't that different from the US, except maybe that the Microsoft lobby is less powerful.
Drink with them, make friendship, du not fully trust them, too many crooks, but many also are nice, make business with them, but never every try to be arrogant against them or bully them. They are very proud people, and the usual american arrogance is not really accepted. (I am not russian and live in central europe btw.)
The russian mentality in many ways is somewhat different to the usual western mentality, you really have to be open to keep friendships with them or generally deal with them and you have to learn their ways to some degree.
Excellent! This is exactly the kind of strong government action we need to see more of. Obviously the Russian government sees quite clearly that Windows' DRM, lack of security, and general brokenness presents both an economic and security threat to the state, and is willing to take a stand to prevent this cancer from spreading any further. I think anybody who voluntarily buys a copy of Windows deserves to spend time behind bars, and now it's time for Western governments to step up to the plate and make this a reality.
There is a spellbook here; eat it? [ynq]
Yes, you were wrong. It's pretty much completely unheard of at home or at work. MS utterly dominates. At work we've got one Linux server now (as in: within the last year), cos I helped push towards use of an OSS CMS (plone as it happens), but apart from that, it's all MS. If I went around the office I doubt more than a couple of people would have even heard of Linux. MS having an uphill battle to get in?!? Absolutely not. (Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about the super big Enterprisey systems. I doubt it's much different to the US tbh - there's Linux adoption but the Linux installs are probably replacing Unix more than anything else.)
How about "Some moves towards linux by Europe" or "Europe makes some moves towards linux." These capture the essence of the original without being confusing. However, they are still kind of dumb. The concept is that more people or agencies in europe have been using Linux. "Moves towards" isn't the best way of poutting this. "More Agencies in Europe Adopt Linux" or "Linux Usage Rising in Europe" would have been much better.
"Some Lazy Editor Moves Towards Cheetos." Why do I suspect that these guys really just want to sit on their asses all day playing video games while the money pours in and they do as little as possible? I know the submitter probably wrote the headline, but that's what editors are for: editing.
I feel like the editors resent everything they actually have to do, like they are some kind of royalty and we are the peasants whose duty it is to support them. Hmm, I wonder if slashdot editors get Primae Noctis rights?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Sounds like we need to paradrop some bearded Linux hackers into the Perm region for an emergency education operation. Some of the heavier ones may need two parachutes.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.