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Egyptian Government To Adopt Free Software On Larger Scale
ezabi writes "After announcing a 43 million USD license agreement with Microsoft, the Egyptian government was faced with a protest from FOSS enthusiasts staging a protest before the cabinet. Later, representatives from the community had a meeting with the minister of communications and information technology. Such a meeting led to the ministry issuing a press release (in Arabic) stating its commitment to gradually move to open source (Google Translate to English) as a strategic option for future projects. It's worth mentioning that all governmental websites used in the elections and constitution referendum were all based on open source solutions."
What are they going to do with all the Microsoft licenses?
Free software for people who are not free... Yeah. That's fucking hilarious.
How about adopting some free speech, equal rights? Maybe some basic human rights? Or how about just a little decency...
Thats some fine trolling there egypt.
Hard to imagine that the Egyptian Government will be happy in the long term with software which gives the user full control over encryption and messaging. They will want a nice closed source solution with DRM right there in the kernel, firmly attached to the hardware.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Is Egypt not in enough trouble already?
Great. So now Linux will be associated with both the "communists" and "islamic fundamentalists". ;-)
Yeah, real surprise, all the government websites use the world's most popular webserver... -_________-
The last thing the Muslim Brotherhood wants is "Freedom".
The one thing that brought the Egyptian government to the free software is that Egypt is facing imminent bankruptcy.
Egyptian pounds have lost 50% of its value since the uprising, and it's poised to lose even more, thanks to the clueless Muslim Brotherhood on running anything effectively.
Right now, as we speak, Egyptians are busy changing their Egyptian pounds into foreign currencies because they know that the Egyptian pounds gonna be devalued even more !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
What this muslim brotherhood thug government wants. They pay thugs to gang-rape female protestors. They imprison and torture dissenters. Is this supposed to be somehow a "victory" for FOSS? This is like when the freetards get all excited that China is making its own linux distro. WTF?
"The one thing that brought the Egyptian government to the free software is that Egypt is facing imminent bankruptcy."
..
Maybe what caused Egypt to go bankrupt was the US$43 Million they gave to Microsoft for toilet paper
Savages, huh? There are still savages in the world. We read about some of them in the news from time to time. I'm not even Arabic, or related to any Arabic or Egyptian people, but I can definitely recognize that Egyptians aren't savages. Syrians? They're a bit closer to savagery. You want to meet some real savages, catch a plane to Pakistan, or Somalia. Geez, Louise - some of you think that anyone who isn't American or European has to be a savage. Grow up, get an education.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"stating its commitment to gradually move to open source as a strategic option for future projects"
They aren't changing anything. They're going to use the Microsoft licenses they have already bought.. but on future projects, open source may get a shot, but probably not.
I'm glad these people chose to go protest over some Microsoft licenses amounting to $43m, instead of clearly less important things, like Morsi throwing their momentary democracy in trash.
... it's not THEIR evil dictator enslaving the population.
Nobody of your opinion makers gives a single shit about the dictator and enslavement part. All that counts is if the US (= US companies) can make a profit off of it.
And since you have only the illusion of free will and "unbiased" reality, that's your opinion too.
If the evil dictators were the American Brotherhood (Haliburton, Monsanto, Blackwater, Eli Lilly, etc), they would tell you it's a "beautiful democracy" and you would believe that shit, no questions asked.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it".
"using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981" Charlie Brooker
AccountKiller
The only form of legal assembly was religious groups so they were the only ones that were organised enough to run the place after the old government was kicked out
U.S. taxpayers give over $1 billion (with a "b") to Egypt every year. Why not give part of that as software and keep the software engineers working in the U.S. It's called tied aid, and every country uses it for foreign aid.
also able to put it out there in text, many others know this but arent able to put it out there in so few words
clear, concise and to the point.
happy new year
It's all good an well to talk about using open source software, but like a lot of other companies that have decided not to use it it has to work well and be supported right?
MS will support Egypt. Is Egypt supposed to just use forums? Egypt is not a tech company like Google.
What are they going to use for Exchange?? Open office blows. Active Directory works well for organizations like it or not.
You want to compete with MS...compete, but don't just do it on some ideological merit. OSS or Closed source ain't going to change much witt the regime other than maybe the bottom line...and it isn't always that simple.
I use Linux, nginx, Apache, Python, Node, and many other OSS bits for all sort of "server"\"app" level stuff. I might use Google docs, Gmail, etc...but at the end of the day Google services are closed source. OSS has just not cracked the enterprise desktop environment yet...and until this crowd understands(and wants to) why it won't.
They probably want free software as in free beer. Or perphaps they're tired of running software that allows a foreign government to control the source code.
Anyhow, it means less money for Microsoft so it's good. With some luck the culture of free software will do them some good as well.
Great, the economic support in the form of loans going to Egypt is actually impacting the Egypt and not circulating back to feed the hungry in the US. For that there is Pizza Hut.
hey, I'll take what I can get.
Free software for people who are not free... Yeah. That's fucking hilarious.
How about adopting some free speech, equal rights? Maybe some basic human rights? Or how about just a little decency...
Thats some fine trolling there egypt.
who said we are not free? lol , at least we had a social revolution which is still going on too till now,and we had free&transparent elections since the revolution started! and until now,multinational corporations are not brain-washing us and controlling our life like the usa , so i guess judging others like this is just a symbol of jealousy maybe?
Excellent. A double portion of a free beating for you.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
the Egyptian government was faced with a protest from FOSS enthusiasts staging a stand before the cabinet http//www.egyptindependent.com/news/activists-protest-microsoft-deal
Y'know, they really should invent a way to visit links quicker than copying and pasting the text into the URL bar.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Q: How do you know we're talking about a fucking backwards country?
Didn't RMS say he didn't have a problem with pedophillia? Islam doesn't have a problem with pedophillia between men and girls either, nor does the early parts of the other religion indigenous to the region (not christianity, which is a greco-roman religion with a gloss of middle easternism).
Maybe that's the thread that binds?
Maybe that's why Islam exist, a last gasp of what once was in the world, more violent so as to weather the storm better than the older religion(s) that faded?
Maybe the muslim men know this, and they will fight for the ancient world?
I have no idea myself, just ideas, observations.
I find the calls for free and open software fascinating. For years the news about deals involving Millions of dollars from Mircosoft and other softwere giants with the Egyptian government were common in Egypt, where 40% of the population live on less than $2/day. But that is no surprise, I guess MS knows its way well around corrupted governments.
Now when the Muslim Brothers respond in their first months of governing to calls of turning to FOSS, they get flamed That's just beyond me.
Just because our democracy brought in power someone you dislike, does not mean it is not a democracy. Most of you know nothing about the Muslim Brothers more than their name -which is enough for some to form an opinion about them- or the biased western media coverage about them. Given, or democracy is not perfect, but we are only in its kindergarten, and may be you should ask yourselves first, how a lot of your tax-money found their way to Mubarak's bank accounts for the last 30 years.
If it aint helping dey wimmin (and marrying young girls doesn't help wimmin: competition aint no good for a racket) they don't like it: they want to ban, impprison, and bomb
Egypt has zero money. They have enough currency on hand to buy food for the next 3 months. And that's it. If I were them I'd double down on Microsoft and dare Redmond to try to collect.
who said we are not free?
And you would be female?
who said we are not free?
And you would be female?
or Christian, secular or atheist.
"multinational corporations are not brain-washing us and controlling our life like the usa "
No you are being manipulated by a 6th century cult demanding your ever lasting and unquestioning obedience. The protesters and citizens of Egypt got the same screwing as the Iranian protesters did after their 1979 revolution. Evidently the people in the Mideast are experts at street protests but don't have a clue about how to organize and implement any of the changes they were standing out in the street demanding. And all things being equal I will take Exxon, IBM, Apple, or any other multi national company over any group who uses religion to project their power.