eGov News: Moves to Free/Libre Software
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-10 08:45:53 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-10 08:45:53 UTC
UK
Influential government service supplier Memset has urged local and central government to ditch VMware in favour of open source alternatives, promising that open-source-based service suppliers can shave as much as 40 percent off government bills simply by removing the licensing fees.
HMRC
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is driving the use of open source technology with a Hadoop NoSQL big data engine to analyse corporate tax.
Continental Europe
The European Commission and European Parliament are doing nothing to rid themselves of their dependance on Microsoft, two lobby groups said Wednesday, Document Freedom Day.
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and Open Forum Europe urged EU institutions to support open standards in an open letter to Giancarlo Vilella, president of the European Parliament's Directorate-General for Innovation and Technological Support. He also chairs the body that coordinates IT activities for government agencies including Parliament, the Commission and the Council of the E.U.
For most organisations the primary reason for moving from Windows to Linux is perceived cost savings. The secondary reasons are factors such as interoperability and greater compliance with standards, which themselves bring longer- term cost benefits. Unlocking interfaces and data from vendor lock-ins may be rather time consuming and costly in the short term, but doing so brings considerable cost and efficiency pay-offs in the long term.
One of the payoffs for the City Council, other German councils, the Linux community and other interested parties, has been the development of LiMux, the German language Linux distribution which has since been approved as an official distribution by the German government. The work of Munich will make it easier for others to follow.
In an ideal world, LiMux would provide a model that would inspire more government-sponsored IT projects in the UK, which are all too often outsourced to proprietary interests. Whether it does or not, is yet to be seen.
The TYPO3 CMS project has a long history as open source project, with its foundation going back as far as 1997 when it was initially developed by Danish Kasper SkÃÂ¥rhøj. Currently, the TYPO3 project has a solid foundation in Europe. Large cooperations like Deutsche Bank, Airbus, Air France, as well as, universities and non-governmental organizations like Food and Agriculture Organization, Greenpeace, and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons run on the TYPO3 CMS.
National Geospatial Intelligence Agency
The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency did a first for a U.S. intelligence agency by opening an account on open source site GitHub earlier this month.
NASA
As a part of a federal order to make technology transfer faster, NASA is building a central location for the public to dig into more than 1,000 of its past projects.
The 330-pound Robonaut 2 measures 3 feet, 4 inches tall from the waist, and is equipped with more than 350 sensors. Its stomach-located brain runs Linux on 38 PowerPC-based processors. The robot is operated remotely by humans, using the Robonaut Tele-operation System (RTS). This telerobotics system requires a ground- or space-based user to wear a 3D visor, vest, and pressure-sensitive gloves. (For more on the R2, see our original coverage.)
Misc.
LibrePlanet examines our modern technological society and finds much to criticize. But it is not a crabfest for frustrated policy wonks: these people are making new tools in hardware, software, and networking — tools that may well become as mainstream as GNU/Linux is already in data centers, cell phones, and stand-alone computer systems.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The High Cost of Making Scepticism of Proprietary Voting Machines a "Trump" and "Conspiracy Theory" Territory
- Time to get back to paper? Or read an old paper?
- Today We Got an Early Birthday Gift
- Exciting times
- [Meme] Going Too Far to the Left Can Breed Militant Ideology
- Some people can never be appeased because they prefer not to be appeased
- FSF Expressed No Preference Regarding Presidential Candidates (Its Founder Did)
- Because he is a principled person, he does not prioritise loyalty to customers or employers (money)
- Who Next on the Linux Foundation's 'Kill List'?
- Remember that only about 2% of the "Linux" Foundation's budget goes to Linux
-
- [Meme] Questioning Proprietary Software? Not OK...
- A disaster long in the making
- Links 07/11/2024: HTTP/3, Health Research, and Punditry
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/11/2024: On Writing Publicly and Record Player Table
- Links for the day
- Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Hosted SOSS as Microsoft Propaganda Platform With Microsoft Front Group OSI
- They essentially promote what they're attacking under false pretences [...] OSI is deeply corrupt. It's more toxic than arsenic.
- Anti-Linux FUD, Now in LLM Form, Thanks to Brittany Day
- They attack Linux with chatbots
- [Meme] When You Discredit People Who Discredit Secret Code
- proprietary systems with hundreds of millions of transistors (and hundreds of millions of lines of code)
- Links 07/11/2024: Online Manipulation in Social Control Media, Election Deniers, and More
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/11/2024: emacs-guix and File Hoarding
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Election Day at the European Patent Office
- Less than 60 minutes left to cast your vote
- Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO) Election Ending Today
- In one hour
- [Meme] When the Patent Office Does Illegal Things and Staff Speaks Out
- many leaks received today
- Apple's Debt Has Skyrocketed While Gimmicks Like Vision Pro Failed
- In Apple's case, the debt is almost double the "Cash on Hand", which isn't even cash
- A President Trump is Excellent News to Microsoft
- His racist policies gave lots of contracts to Microsoft
- Links 07/11/2024: Facebook Scams, Journalists on Strike
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 06, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, November 06, 2024
- Microsoft-Connected Publishers Want Us to Think That Linux is Some Sort of a Virus and a "Backdoor"
- "The problem is with windows and the attack vector is via Windows"
- We've Made it to 18! Here's to Another 18!
- Going on for another 18 years means until some time at the end of 2042
- Links 07/11/2024: Political Angst and Laptop Issues
- Links for the day
- Even LKML Subjected to Slop/SPAM by Guardian Digital, Inc (linuxsecurity.com)
- They're really awful
- Links 06/11/2024: BPF in RFC 9669, More Facebook Fines for Privacy Abuses
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 06/11/2024: Political Shock and Hermaic Encouragement
- Links for the day
- Planet Debian Allows Politics (But It Depends on Your Opinions and Debian's Big Sponsors)
- Planet Debian is OK with politics... as long as all your political opinions are the "correct" ones and you add cute animals
- What Makes RMS Such an Attractive Target ('Discreditisation' Campaigns)
- Don't be so easily fooled
- The Biggest OEMs or Vendors of GNU/Linux Stopped Competing With Microsoft (Which Pays Them to Promote Windows, Too)
- Where are the competition authorities (or regulators for that matter)?
- Let's Encrypt Falls to a New Low of Only 0.6% of Gemini Capsules Known to Lupa
- In Gemini Protocol, certificates for encryption are required, but centralised Certificate Authorities (CAs) aren't needed
- Computer-Generator Crap Flooding the Web, the Latest Example About "Linux"
- Here's today's example
- Links 06/11/2024: Election Disinformation and Legal Actions
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 06/11/2024: Stargazing and Death on Hallowe'en
- Links for the day
- Would You Trust a Liar?
- Why lie about the authorship?
- Mass Layoffs at Mozilla Announced During US Elections
- Maybe nobody will notice?
- [Meme] Announcing "Results" Before Everyone Even "Played"
- There is a "tech" angle to otherwise political news
- US Polls Close in One Minute (Social Control Media Does Not Care, Will Not Wait)
- US election results will be known in about 2 days
- Concentration and Centralisation Versus Aggregation or Syndication
- KDE has a history of burying old sites
- Social Control Media, Even Hours Before Polls Have Closed
- Has social control media controlled by CPC (TikTok) and the Trumpmobile guy (Musk's "X") done enough to convince people not to even vote (based on presumptive "results", presented a long time before all polls have closed)?
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 05, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, November 05, 2024
- Wayland Pains in Community-Led Distros of GNU/Linux
- Few people and companies use Wayland; there's hardly any technical or practical reason to choose it
- IBM Still Conflating Microsoft With 'Security'
- As a meme
- Sanctions Cause Fragmentation in Software
- some Chinese Linux developers are already subjected to restrictions similar to Russians'
- Web Failing With Slop, Even in 'Linux' Sites (LLM Spam)
- Add SEO prompting to the mix and the Web becomes a pool of slop, not knowledge
- [Meme] State of the World Wide Web and Online Journalism
- Technically a failure (DRM) and cannot even get basic things right
- Trump's signature policy, building a wall, copied from Irish-Australian student politician
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Linus Torvalds' self-deprecating LKML CoC mail linked to Hitler's first writing: Gemlich letter
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- [Meme] Turning 18 in One Day
- just one more day
- Birthday Tomorrow
- Many cakes and drinks are ready; we're one day away now
- The Internet is Failing to Protect Democratic Processes and Human Knowledge
- Amplifying lies, rewarding plagiarists
- Links 05/11/2024: Criminal Referrals Regarding Patent Trolls and Disinformation About the Election Process (Already)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 05/11/2024: 'App' Needed for Parking, NNCP, Gomphotherium
- Links for the day
- How Voting Does Not Work
- You cannot vote from an "app"
- Saving the Planet With Honesty, Transparency, and Sharing (Not Only of Computer Code)
- GAFAM is destroying the only habitat humans and other animals have and it'll only get worse
- Disinformation About Election Outcomes Even Before Any Election Outcomes (or Election/Voting!)
- seeding doubt about election outcomes
- Links 05/11/2024: Bluesky and Enshittification, Pugad Baboy, and Lots of Disinformation Flooding the Web
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Sweaty Under the Belly
- "OK, my critics are 'spam'"
- Microsoft Bribing Canonical (to Stop Competing) and Bribing Users to Shun the Competition
- Canonical is worth shunning
- [Meme] The 2024 'Info Bros'
- And prehistoric googling
- Computers Getting Worse (for the User) Over Time
- This is like Windows-ism coming to "Linux" through the hardware
- [Meme] How NOT to Vote
- Another form of (mostly-unspoken-of) election interference
- An LLM Inside a 'Search' Engine Means That Companies Tell You What They Want, Not What Web Pages to Visit
- The future of 'googling' things might be as unreliable as using Social Control Media as a source of information
- Google's Debt Has Increased and 'Cash on Hand' Fell by 22.27% This Past Year
- These are the numbers that the corporate media intentionally leaves out
- Against Outsourcing of Sites and E-mail
- Software Freedom is great, but it is not enough if you let someone else do it 'for you'
- Drew DeVault: People Talking About My Attack Site (Against the Founder of GNU/Linux) is "Spam"
- "Spam on sr.ht mailing lists"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 04, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, November 04, 2024
- There's a Reason Why Techrights is Turning 18 and Tux Machines Will Turn 20.5 Next Month
- I started advocating GNU/Linux when I was a teenager
- "Oppose the Fascist"
- what the founder of GNU/Linux said
- Techrights Has a Long History of Fighting to Expose 'Team Mono' or Microsofters Inside GNOME
- Never downplay the malice of Microsoft and its operatives
- Halloween, All Saints Day & Swiss citizenship
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 05/11/2024: Halloween Over, Intention and Implementation, Bookmark Syncing
- Links for the day