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Secret EU Open Source Migration Study Leaked
Elektroschock writes "For 4 years MEP Marco Cappato tried to get access to the EU Council's 2005 open source migration study because he is a member of a responsible IT oversight committee in the European Parliament. His repeated requests for access were denied. Now they have finally been answered because the Council's study has escaped into the wild (PDF in French and English). Here is a quick look. It is embarrassing! Gartner, when asked if there were any mature public Linux installations in Europe, claimed that there were none. Michael Silver said, 'I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only one or two StarOffice deployments.' Gartner spread patent and TCO FUD. Also, the European Patent Office participated in the project, although it is not an EU institution."
Actually, those two demographics are the easiest to convert. While my mom isn't 96 by a long stretch, she uses Ubuntu and has no problems whatsoever. Her computer literacy is close to 0.
The problem users are those we call "power users". People that have used Windows for years and know the ins-and-outs, but do not know them deep enough. They can pretty much be found in the 20-65 demographics, also known as those of working age. My dad falls in the power-user demographic and he still uses WinXP. That said, he is very open to Linux and understands it well enough to use it.
Do note that you said "use". The system still has to be set up by someone who knows what he does.
Sue Silver for fraud; also he has a conflict of interest because he is a self-declared Windows tool and Linux is the main competition (sorry, Mac users.) Finally, never ask an all-business BA+MBA for technical information. You will only get statistics.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> precisely what Ubuntu is trying to do. It is a matter of opinion
> as the whether they are succeeding, but I believe that they are.
At the latest when my GF wanted to burn a simple mp3 file and Brasero mumbled something about an "missing gstreamer plugin" she said, that (Ubuntu) Linux is still too complicated for normal users. I couldn't really argue with her, just explain the Why's and How's of proprietary stuff and the legal issues of their use. Installed the restricted stuff (which she'd have had no idea to even look for!) and she was set and likes it.
Another point in the slides of TFA was, that just because Linux is free it's not inexpensive. True that. Just spoke to the director of IT for a large/well-known european city and he too said, he doesn't see a business point for Linux (and he likes it personally). Basically the Unix side is taken by AIX (license costs per WS/Server are negligible, especially for a rich town) and the Windows side is, well, gonna stay that way (all city desktops are going Vista).
So Linux, despite the fact that the official city site runs on it is basically kept on board just to have the know-how around. That, however, costs salaries and if several admin's pull 100k/y each then I can see, how from a business point of view Linux doesn't make sense atm.. Rock and a hard place for adoption and likely in other locations you'll find similar situations.
let's see from the top of my head:
- all government and schools in extramadura in spain
- schools in gran canaria
- french police (still migrating)
- munich
and those are just the ones that immediately come to mind, there's undoubtfully more if you dig a bit.
Windows Media Player does not play MP3 files by default and I believe you don;t have a CD/DVD burner out of the box.
Lets start from the point where the systems are configured equally for the most common tasks and see how systems fare from there.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu.ars
Does this count, Gartner?