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German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows
vbraga writes "The German government has confirmed that the German Foreign Office is to switch back to Windows desktop systems. The Foreign Office started migrating its servers to Linux in 2001 and since 2005 has also used open source software such as Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice on its desktop systems. The government's response to the SPD's question states that, although open source has demonstrated its worth, particularly on servers, the cost of adapting and extending it, for example in writing printer and scanner drivers, and of training, have proved greater than anticipated. The extent to which the potential savings trumpeted in 2007 have proved realizable has, according to the government, been limited – though it declines to give any actual figures. Users have, it claims, also complained of missing functionality, a lack of usability and poor interoperability."
Switzerland and Spain are doing great with OSS in government. What makes linux a bad match for the German Foreign Office? Or what are they doing wrong?
It is worth noting in this context that there were a number of changes of government in Germany, implying that party politics might also have played a role. Between 1998 and 2005, the German government was a coalition of social democrats and greens (with a green foreign minister); between 2005 and 2009, the government was a coalition of christian democrats (conservatives) and social democrats (with a social democrat foreign minister); and since 2009, the government has been a coalition of christian democrats and liberals (with a liberal foreign minister). The "SPD" mentioned in the article is the social democrat party.
A comment from someone in the government shows that this isn't going down without a fight. The FO's answers to inquiries claimed driver costs were high. Officials say that something's wrong if writing drivers costs more than refitting the entire bureau with new Win/Office licenses.
Put identity in the browser.
Someone at the top of the ladder @ Microsoft must have seen where this was going.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-06/microsoft-s-ballmer-to-invest-billions-in-cloud-data-centers.html
While it's very likely that Microsoft-addicted users complained, I am absolutely certain that no resources were spent on "writing printer and scanner drivers", thus making the whole claim untrustworthy.
Someone has to be investigated for corruption -- IIRC, in Germany it actually something that matters.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Really?
I mean, I suppose I don't really know much about this, but did they really have the sort of volume where a rollback to Windows was cheaper than writing printer drivers, and writing printer drivers was cheaper than buying a printer with open drivers? Seriously, what doesn't CUPS support these days?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The foreign office is run by Guido Westerwelle, leader of the FDP (so called "liberals") who are pretty known for having close ties to companies and the industry in general. To be more blunt: pay them enough money and they do what you want them to do. Just recently they halved the taxes on hotel bills - after receiving a noticeable amount of money from a company running lots of hotels (Mövenpick) for their election campaign a few months prior.
So it's safe to assume that some coffers with money changed owners in return for this step. They are corrupt (pretty much everyone knows this) and they use it where ever they can. So far they (mostly) managed to stay within the legal limits (which is not too hard considering that there are very few restrictions for politicians in Germany, so basically once elected you can do pretty much anything you like without too much fear of of any serious consequences).
We can do an instant poll of /. readers right here inline! Then it wouldn't be anecdotal. Errrr, well, maybe it would but it would be less anecdotal. Except for the self-selection and lack of double blind and randomly selected poll targets and...
Personally, I'm typing this on a linux system and have been using linux desktops more or less exclusively for oh, fifteen years, sixteen years, who can remember. Since the days that Slowaris replaced SunOS. I do run XP Pro safely in a nice little VM on the rare occasions I need a specific piece of Win-only software, where it can do no harm. Obviously Linux cannot possibly provide a functional desktop, and the fact that my Luddite wife is typing away on the other side of the room is some sort of atavistic exception or the result of spacetime distortion from another dimension.
One does wonder just what the German Foreign Office was doing that required them to "write printer and scanner drivers" or train people. I envision a training session just like this:
Hello, today I'll be your personal trainer, and we'll see if we can wean you away from Windows. Let's see -- login, check. Type your userid into this itty bitty box, then your password. That's p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d. Now, to write a word-processed document you have to click this icon and select this second icon. No, I know, there's no fourcolor box at the lower left. Yes, I mean the foot. I know, a foot isn't as pretty as the fourcolor square thingie, but click it anyway, there. Now that one, yes. Good job!
What? You don't know what to do? Look, see the funny little blinky thing? That's called a cursor. Now, press a key. Look! A letter appears on the screen! It is the same letter. If you want to write a document, say a strongly worded note urging Mubarak to step down, you press these keys in sequence to type a letter. I know, I know, you miss your Microsoft Word (tm). It came with Strongly Worded Letter templates and Open Office doesn't, but try to bear with me. Now, let's see if you can s-a-v-e and p-r-i-n-t. Yes, yes, yes, no, not that one, down one, oh, sorry did we forget to change the character set and language settings to German well here, oh look now you can read all of the commands except of course all of the icons are little pictures and you don't really need to. Goodness, it isn't printing!
Hans? Hans! Could you write a print driver for this printer? She wants to print. What's that? Did we actually plug the printer in to the system and select it from a menu? No, we tried inserting this CD that came with the printer and it wouldn't run, said something about needing Windows. Cups? No thank you, it is too early for a cups of beer, but cups of coffee would be nice. Systems administrators? Why certainly. All of our systems were set up by MCSEs, who (as everybody knows) have the best possible education in systems management and training that money can buy and earn fabulous salaries as a consequence. Hans? Well, he's our only linux trained admin -- we didn't want to have to fire all of our former staff -- and because none of these CDs work, he has to spend all of his time writing drivers for these cheap-ass Taiwanese printers we bought.
Now let's work on the Internet. We are going to s-u-r-f the w-e-b using a b-r-o-w-s-e-r. I know, I know, there is no little "e" on the menu bar, click on that reddish orange thing. It's supposed to be a "firefox". What? Yes, I know there is no such thing as a firefox. Y'know, it does look a bit more like a pearl dripping orange sherbet or a plucked out eyeball, now that you mention it. Look, try squinting a bit. See it? A firefox. Anyway, try clicking it. I know, you're used to clicking the "e" for "explorer" and this is quite different, but go ahead, give it a shot. There! See? Where are all of the ads? What happened to the viruses you used to get that would send Mubarak offers to
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Well,, I'm from Argentina, and I disagree. I know TONS of people (even non-geeks) that use ubuntu or some other flavor of linux on the desktop willingly, and the cost of a copy of windows here is absolutely irrelevant, as almost everyone pirates it, unless it came preloaded with a notebook or a brand pc (and even then, many notebooks come with win7 home or starter and it gets replaced with a pirated copy of win7 pro or ultimate).
Also while I agree there must be a few, I haven't seen any jobs where you're forced to use linux on the desktop, but so far I've worked on 3 companies that either let me install it on my desktop, or already had a corporate approved image with all the corresponding software to use at the workplace (i.e. with lotus notes etc)
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
We have scanners and printers running no problem in our office on Ubuntu. Why exactly does he mention having to program printer and scanner drivers?
Now I'm just throwing this out there, but it might be possible that there's more then one printer company that makes more than one type of printer so that there might exist in one of the foreign offices of the German government a printer of a make and model which isn't the exact same as yours?
Instead, lets blame the idiot vendor they're relying on to deliver their solutions.
The 1 system not running Linux in my house is my wife's Macbook. My 2 daughters run Linux successfully. We all print to and scan from a multi-function scanner/printer/fax/copier. We can all network print. I have a scanner that I use for more detailed work. My wireless router is a homebrew running Linux which also functions as a print server.
My business runs on Linux. My client solutions run on Linux. I'll just say it, my world runs on Linux.
This article states there has been a change in leadership. The new boss is apparently anti-Linux, despite their own studies showing that the current systems are viable.
"Lame" - Galaxar
I work at a university campus library, we're a tiny little outfit (a mere 140 staff). However we deal with public service as well as maintaining fairly sophisticated servers for the collections and providing cafe-style computer access to students.
140 staff, another 100 student accessible machines. All are running windows, and those licenses run us $0. This is partly because the people in charge won't allow buying anything but IBM (lenovo) which means that all computers come with windows. The other part of it is Microsoft giving us the software we need free because they want people hooked.
We have $64,000 in printers, $34,000 of which need to be replaced if we switch to linux, another $10,000 that should be replaced as support is existent but spotty. (I went through all of this when I tried to get a switch happening).
Without going into staff training or anything else, that means a cost of at least $34,000 (around $250 per staff) in printers to switch to linux. I assure you that printers are a big part of linux's problem in the workplace.
Is it unfair to linux that the extra cost of buying lenovo desktops can't be factored in (I could by locally for about half the price)? Yes.
Is it unfair to linux that Microsoft gives away software (and developers to manufacturers) where needed to make the switch to linux harder to sell? A little, but that's business.
Does it matter? No.
The simple fact is that as much as I do like linux, Microsoft isn't lying when they say it's more expensive in the workplace. They're being slightly underhanded, but not lying.
In other words: They are able to do their jobs now with what they have and you want to "help" them continue doing their jobs by making them learn something new.
I made money modernizing offices, and the attitude you have shown is counter-productive.
The number one error that office managers seem to make is buying a PC with a word processor and a spreadsheet program and installing it on each employee's desk. After which they instruct the employee to learn how to use it, and quickly go to their superior and brag about how they modernized the office. The mistake being that no effort was made to understand why the employee was so productive, and giving the employee a general purpose tool to replace what they were accustomed to using. This results in the employee having to learn something new "to make someone else's job easier" and the employee "knowing" that the office manager is trying to make himself indispensable by introducing something into the workplace that only he understands.
In one of the offices that I "modernized" there was an employee that used a typewriter to keep up with the inventory. It worked flawless for him, and since the trucks arrived very early in the morning, he had all workday to do the tallies. He would white out the totals and add new truckloads to the bottom of the list, cross out the truckloads that were no longer at the warehouse, add up all the numbers, and put a new total at the bottom of the list. He would then make photocopies of his "master list" and send them to the other office workers. He did this every day for the past 15 years, and he was able to do all this quickly (much faster than I thought possible). I was able to "win him over" by creating a specialized spreadsheet application that allowed him to continue to work the way he was accustomed to, and he saw that the instantaneous totals made his job easier. The key was to make the software conform to the worker.
Today I see the reverse being done. Terminals that had forms that the data entry clerk could quickly fill in are being replaced with window machines running software that don't even come close to being the same thing. Worse I've seen terminals being replaced by windows machines running terminal emulators. This shows a lack of thought by IT. No wonder employees despise them. Of course IT people are accustomed to windows, so they don't see why the employees are so problematic...
I did this all in the 80's when personal computers in the office were new. I'd thought people would have it easier today.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...