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
- Links 23/04/2024: US Doubles Down on Patent Obviousness, North Korea Practices Nuclear Conflict
- Links for the day
- Stardust Nightclub Tragedy, Unlawful killing, Censorship & Debian Scapegoating
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Richard Stallman's Next Public Talk is on Friday, 17:30 in Córdoba (Spain), FSF Cannot Mention It
- Any attempt to marginalise founders isn't unprecedented as a strategy
-
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 23, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, April 23, 2024
- [Meme] EPO: Breaking the Law as a Business Model
- Total disregard for the EPO to sell more monopolies in Europe (to companies that are seldom European and in need of monopoly)
- The EPO's Central Staff Committee (CSC) on New Ways of Working (NWoW) and “Bringing Teams Together” (BTT)
- The latest publication from the Central Staff Committee (CSC)
- Volunteers wanted: Unknown Suspects team
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Debian trademark: where does the value come from?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Detecting suspicious transactions in the Wikimedia grants process
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gunnar Wolf & Debian Modern Slavery punishments
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- On DebConf and Debian 'Bedroom Nepotism' (Connected to Canonical, Red Hat, and Google)
- Why the public must know suppressed facts (which women themselves are voicing concerns about; some men muzzle them to save face)
- Several Years After Vista 11 Came Out Few People in Africa Use It, Its Relative Share Declines (People Delete It and Move to BSD/GNU/Linux?)
- These trends are worth discussing
- Canonical, Ubuntu & Debian DebConf19 Diversity Girls email
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 23/04/2024: Escalations Around Poland, Microsoft Shares Dumped
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 23/04/2024: Offline PSP Media Player and OpenBSD on ThinkPad
- Links for the day
- Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, Holger Levsen & Debian DebConf6 fight
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- DebConf8: who slept with who? Rooming list leaked
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Bruce Perens & Debian: swiping the Open Source trademark
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Ean Schuessler & Debian SPI OSI trademark disputes
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Windows in Sudan: From 99.15% to 2.12%
- With conflict in Sudan, plus the occasional escalation/s, buying a laptop with Vista 11 isn't a high priority
- Anatomy of a Cancel Mob Campaign
- how they go about
- [Meme] The 'Cancel Culture' and Its 'Hit List'
- organisers are being contacted by the 'cancel mob'
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 22, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, April 22, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Don't trust me. Trust the voters.
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Chris Lamb & Debian demanded Ubuntu censor my blog
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Ean Schuessler, Branden Robinson & Debian SPI accounting crisis
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- William Lee Irwin III, Michael Schultheiss & Debian, Oracle, Russian kernel scandal
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Microsoft's Windows Down to 8% in Afghanistan According to statCounter Data
- in Vietnam Windows is at 8%, in Iraq 4.9%, Syria 3.7%, and Yemen 2.2%
- [Meme] Only Criminals Would Want to Use Printers?
- The EPO's war on paper
- EPO: We and Microsoft Will Spy on Everything (No Physical Copies)
- The letter is dated last Thursday
- Links 22/04/2024: Windows Getting Worse, Oligarch-Owned Media Attacking Assange Again
- Links for the day
- Links 21/04/2024: LINUX Unplugged and 'Screen Time' as the New Tobacco
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/04/2024: Health Issues and Online Documentation
- Links for the day
- What Fake News or Botspew From Microsoft Looks Like... (Also: Techrights to Invest 500 Billion in Datacentres by 2050!)
- Sededin Dedovic (if that's a real name) does Microsoft stenography
- Stefano Maffulli's (and Microsoft's) Openwashing Slant Initiative (OSI) Report Was Finalised a Few Months Ago, Revealing Only 3% of the Money Comes From Members/People
- Microsoft's role remains prominent (for OSI to help the attack on the GPL and constantly engage in promotion of proprietary GitHub)
- [Meme] Master Engineer, But Only They Can Say It
- One can conclude that "inclusive language" is a community-hostile trolling campaign
- [Meme] It Takes Three to Grant a Monopoly, Or... Injunction Against Staff Representatives
- Quality control
- [Video] EPO's "Heart of Staff Rep" Has a Heartless New Rant
- The wordplay is just for fun
- An Unfortunate Miscalculation Of Capital
- Reprinted with permission from Andy Farnell
- [Video] Online Brigade Demands That the Person Who Started GNU/Linux is Denied Public Speaking (and Why FSF Cannot Mention His Speeches)
- So basically the attack on RMS did not stop; even when he's ill with cancer the cancel culture will try to cancel him, preventing him from talking (or be heard) about what he started in 1983
- Online Brigade Demands That the Person Who Made Nix Leaves Nix for Not Censoring People 'Enough'
- Trying to 'nix' the founder over alleged "safety" of so-called 'minorities'
- [Video] Inauthentic Sites and Our Upcoming Publications
- In the future, at least in the short term, we'll continue to highlight Debian issues
- List of Debian Suicides & Accidents
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Jens Schmalzing & Debian: rooftop fall, inaccurately described as accident
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- [Teaser] EPO Leaks About EPO Leaks
- Yo dawg!
- On Wednesday IBM Announces 'Results' (Partial; Bad Parts Offloaded Later) and Red Hat Has Layoffs Anniversary
- There's still expectation that Red Hat will make more staff cuts
- IBM: We Are No Longer Pro-Nazi (Not Anymore)
- Historically, IBM has had a nazi problem
- Bad faith: attacking a volunteer at a time of grief, disrespect for the sanctity of human life
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Bad faith: how many Debian Developers really committed suicide?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 21, 2024
- IRC logs for Sunday, April 21, 2024
- A History of Frivolous Filings and Heavy Drug Use
- So the militant was psychotic due to copious amounts of marijuana
- Bad faith: suicide, stigma and tarnishing
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- UDRP Legitimate interests: EU whistleblower directive, workplace health & safety concerns
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock