The Foreign Ministry is migrating all of its 11.000 desktops to GNU/Linux and other Open source applications. According to Schuster, this has drastically reduced maintenance costs in comparison with other ministries. "The Foreign Ministry is running desktops in many far away and some very difficult locations. Yet we spend only one thousand euro per desktop per year. That is far lower than other ministries, that on average spend more than 3000 euro per desktop per year."
Four days ago, an article purporting to analyse the raison d'etre behind the website BoycottNovell.com appeared on the linux.com site. The author, Bruce Byfield, who styles himself as a "computer journalist", however, failed to tell his reading public that the piece was just a thinly disguised and veiled attack on the person who runs the BoycottNovell site.
So a success? Yeah, I'd call it that. We can do better and we will. Next stop? Sometime after the holidays in a little place called Taos New Mexico. First though, look for some upcoming articles and Spotlight blogs on TouchStone Technology, Loye Young of Issac and Young Computer company and of course...one of the people you might least expect to become a Python Scriptor.
"Open source copies from commercial software." "Without commercial software spending so much money on research, open source software would have no new ideas." "Open source needs commercial software to survive." These are some of the statements about open source software made by those with a vested interest in seeing it fail or flounder - but are they justified or merely FUD?
While there are several logical arguments against this, and we will touch upon a couple, the best argument is real world evidence: cases where open source developers have been the innovators, and often where commercial software has followed.
Overall a nice demonstration of how Mom-compatible both Kubuntu and KDE4 already are, enabling a computer newbie to use her computer without those "horrible beeps" and restarts she experienced before. She doesn't miss Windows at all and say that it's far more beautiful and not more difficult now than before :-)
Comments
David Gerard
2008-10-29 14:42:15
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-29 14:51:43
"Bruce your ability to offend people and then disingenuously crying wolf does not amuse... "
"This was a common trick by Rob Enderle [...] Back in the anti-trust trial/sco trial days; put out something that is nothing more than flame-bait and then cries of "poor me" or worse "those open-source meanies"."
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-10-28-036-35-OP-CY-0000
"Ah brucy [...] He must be torqued off about the backlash from his boycott-novell article on Linux.com. Here's news for you bruce: It's not just FOSS."
"The fact is the FOSS community is a community plagued by fears; fears about Microsoft, sellout Linux vendors, patent trolls, SCO, Apple, you name it. And when people get afraid, they get irrational, and everyone starts looking suspicious."
David Gerard
2008-10-29 15:02:46
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-29 15:14:55
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-10-24-030-35-NW-CY-0005
"'Tolerating' an opinion just means to not otherwise try to prevent people from voicing it except by arguments to the contrary. This implies that people who call publishing an opinion which is not in line with some or all of their own 'intolerant' are actually themselves guilty of being intolerant. "
In general, LinuxToday readers are quite supportive of us.
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2008-10-24-030-35-NW-CY