04.05.09
Reminder to Hungary: Novell is a Mixed Source Company
Summary: Hungary starts embracing more Free software, but Novell is a mismatch
THIS is not yet another report about Microsoft’s corruption in Hungary [1, 2, 3]. Hungary is actually beginning to soften (not Soften) and consider Free software. Mistakenly however, an official in Hungary lists Novell as a prime candidate, despite the fact that Novell — by its own admission — is merely a mixed source company. Here is the word from realdeal.hu (small Hungarian press):
Under a general agreement on public procurement procedures, the same amount will be allocated for the acquisition of Microsoft and Novell products as for open source software, said Ferenc Baja. The sum available is 12 billion forints each, he added.
From Heise Online:
The Hungarian government has announced that it will be modifying procurement rules to allow open source to be used in public sector organisations. Previously, procurement rules had apparently named vendors such as Microsoft and Novell. The new rules, according to Ferenc Baja, deputy minister for information technology, will allocate the same amount of money to acquiring open source products as to proprietary products. The move was announced at a press conference on April 2nd.
This is said to be targeted at education. Some years ago, when Hungarian schools were bound to go GNU/Linux, Microsoft dumped Windows XP, Office XP, Front Page, Visual Studio, and BackOffice CAL to sabotage this plan, as revealed by its own confidential documents. The monopolist is likely to try this again, so it’s important to keep one's egg basket in check. █
“If you believe that discrimination exists, it will.”
–Anthony J. D’Angelo
Jose_X said,
April 6, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Interop is covered in comments here http://www.linuxtoday.com/it_management/2009040600439OPCYOO .
Also check out that crazy list from the main article. It features Microsoft as the number one company helpful to FOSS, and Novell is featured at number two.
What an ANTI-List!
[Red Hat thrown in to legitimize the mix? Yeah, that worked really well.]
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
April 6th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
It looks like arbitrary blog, so why worry about it?
Let’s crown GWB the best president ever.
Jose_X said,
April 6, 2009 at 10:38 pm
FWIW, here is one ridiculous story that was published on two sites very recently and a week apart http://www.builderau.com.au/program/linux/soa/10-ways-Microsoft-could-help-Linux/0,339028299,339295823,00.htm and http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=616 .
Microsoft is being linked to a long trail of foolishness and distortions. That can’t help their credibility. Of course, having just made headlines for the attack on TomTom, their plans to be embraced back by the community is in jeopardy.
Here is another piece about how ordinary the MS-PL is supposedly http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-04-06-012-39-NW-MS-OO-0003 .