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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."
Someone needs to pull a John Stewart/Jim Cramer on Gartner. These guys spread so much BS, yet continue to be considered an authority.
Mod me down if you want, but Linux needs to go "full retard" in order to reach the masses.
Essentially, a 6 year old and a 96 year old need to be able to use the system. If they can't, start over.
And that is 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.
Was the article not clear in any fucking way? Linux needs Microsoft to stop manipulating parliaments to reach the masses. Period.
I am the lawn!
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.
I'm in no way trying to defend Gartner and his study, but I believe there is a huge difference between Linux adoption in 2005 and now. Some slides from the pdf linked in the article suggest that major portions of the study were made even earlier, in 2003. Of course basing any technology-related decisions on such a outdated study is another matter...
I love it! Here's our infamous "Gartner" group in prime form. FTFPDF, we see that they are predicting the arrival of WinFS anywhere from late 2008 to early 2010.
Now, anyone who's been around as long as Gartner knows that Microsoft has been promising this "feature" since Windows codename "Cairo," which was announced in 1991, and publically demo'ed in '93. There was a lot of hope that it would be delivered in NT 4.0. That's roughly 16 years folks. WAY more time than they had to develop Duke Nukem Forever, and it's just a _file system_.
If you want to talk about basing your corporate purchasing decisions on "features" like WinFS, then all this slagging off on Linux as not being "there yet" is directly hyporcritical, now, isn't it?
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
Gartner also made the case that EU governments should not abandon open standards, but rather redefine open standards by removing royalty free use. Thats basically tossing the success story of the Internet out the window and still using it as branding name for the new EIFv2 "European Interoperability Framework" See EU-commission pages at: http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7728 and a post about it here: http://bosson.blogspot.com/2009/05/stealing-free-from-open-standards.html
I am not some bitter FreeBSD user hiding out in his mother's basement.
Goddamnit, for the last time, it's not a basement, it's my command centre.
You're unhappy with Linux because you're making the fatal mistake of trying to live a Microsoft life with a Linux based OS. It's like deciding you like nautical life so you buy an airplane. I had the same problem when I switched from windows 98 to Linux. I used XP along side Linux for a while, but eventually Linux (more acurately, POSIX) felt oh so more right and sensible than windows. Now, if it isn't POSIX compatible, it's a weird niche system to me. If you can let go of all your windows-isms and microsoft-isms you can be much happier with your computer. You can't constantly compare the two OSes, either. You'll never be satisfied like that, especially if you're really used to the first OS. It's like watching a really great movie many times and then years later watching a remake. Even if the remake is fantastic and new and has all the elements of the old that you like, it'll still be different. It will still feel like a shameless copy that doesn't quite work the way you want it to. You'll expect a line from your favorite character only to hear something different. Does the fact it was different from what you expected make it a bad line? Probably not, but it still leaves you a bit disappointed. I guess my point is to leave behind all your preconceptions about what an OS is and how it should behave, if you truly wish to switch to Linux--or any other OS for that matter--and be happy with it.
Okay, enough bad analogies.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
This is not that Linux is not mature, this is that Linux is not what you want.