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Author Topic: "Proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable
Cougyr
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posted 28 June 2005 11:16 PM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
On presenting his new plan for information technology in Norway - "eNorge 2009 – the digital leap", Norwegian Minister of Modernization Morten Andreas Meyer today at a press conference in Oslo declared "Proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government."
Tatle

Now, that's an important way of looking at it. That would an end to the practise of government dictating to contractors and funded organizations that they have to buy proprietary software in order to meet specs.

quote:
Without support for open standard formats, Microsoft will rapidly make itself irrelevant as supplier to both public sector, businesses and private persons, as they all have the need to communicate electronically with the government in the future.

So, how many governments have started down the open source path?

radiorahim, have you had any success urging Canadian governments to go open source?


From: over the mountain | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
radiorahim
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posted 29 June 2005 12:38 AM      Profile for radiorahim     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I posted the same info in "the rest of the world" over here!

quote:
So, how many governments have started down the open source path?


Most of Latin America is shifting in this direction. China, Korea and Japan have a consortium of sorts on Linux development...part of it has to do with the use of Asian languages. Western proprietary companies apparently just don't do a good job of it. There are moves in South Africa...and from there elsewhere in Africa.

In Europe, the shift to Linux seems to be happening the fastest with municipal governments.

Read an article in one of the British Linux magazines...either "Linux Format" or "Linux User and Developer" about all of the open source work being done inside the BBC. Apparently, its huge!

Canada and the U.S. seem to be the main holdouts on the shift to open source...although apparently the U.S. Navy is going that way. And that's a huge organization.

quote:
radiorahim, have you had any success urging Canadian governments to go open source?

Wish I had some kind of magic influence. I understand that there's some "low-key" behind the scenes stuff happening with the federal government...studies and that kind of thing...but no big move in the works.

Moving governments to open source software certainly would be a good economic development tool...and would also save the government alot of money in operations. No worries about licensing costs...less incentive for corruption...the MFP scandal in Toronto in the Mel Lastman years was all around proprietary licensing...understand they bought tons of Oracle licenses that they never ever used.

To give credit where credit is due because I bash the Greenies alot for being Tories who eat granola for breakfast they have come out in support of the use of open source software in government.

Mind you I don't think it would be all that difficult to shift NDP policy in that direction either...simply get some riding associations to pass resolutions to send to the next policy convention. I assume there isn't a policy (at least I don't think they have a policy...someone could correct me) simply because no one in the party has raised the issue.

[ 29 June 2005: Message edited by: radiorahim ]


From: a Micro$oft-free computer | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Cougyr
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posted 29 June 2005 01:59 AM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by radiorahim:
I posted the same info in "the rest of the world"

Sorry, I missed that. Actually, I wanted to bring the issue back home. I'm curious as to what to do to spur various Canadian governments, big and small, to desert proprietary software. It is very much an uphill battle.

I wonder if the NDP could be persuaded to adopt open source in its own operations.


From: over the mountain | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
radiorahim
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posted 29 June 2005 02:36 AM      Profile for radiorahim     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
I wonder if the NDP could be persuaded to adopt open source in its own operations.

I think that would be a good first step. Again, I guess it would be a question of putting forward convention resolutions at the constituency level that would go to the various provincial and federal policy conventions.

Actually, (a quick Google) this resolution was passed at the Manitoba NDP convention this year...significant because they're the government.

Manitoba NDP first in North America to officially endorse Free Software

I'm not quite sure the headline is accurate as I understand some states in the U.S. have gone open source...I think Massachusetts??? but not sure.


From: a Micro$oft-free computer | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 29 June 2005 07:23 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here's a company based in Silicon Valley that supplies telecom test equipment to Motorola, Ascend, Alcatel, Nortel and more for the testing of VoIP to ATM to 3G cellular and so on. Their main products are Solaris based systems running on Sun boxes. But beginning in 2003, they now have "LANCE", a PC based system running Linux. It's a very versatile, user-programmable system. Of course, Catapult has had some other stuff that never really caught on. This looks good to me.

[ 29 June 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Cougyr
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posted 29 June 2005 12:11 PM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There is a terrible inertia when it comes to open source. The inertia comes in the form of not conceiving f other ways of doing things. Some time ago, Sears sent me a CD catalogue which they were expiramenting with; and they wanted feedback. Well, to use it, one had to install it one one's pc; it was totally M$. I told them that it should be set up so that any browser could browse it; that's what browsers are for. This had never occurred to the people at Sears. They had a problem and automatically went to the biggest proprietary company for a solution. I also told them that the CD was unnecessary, that they could just put all the information on the Web to be accessed by all. Again, they hadn't thought of it. Inertia.
From: over the mountain | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
radiorahim
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posted 29 June 2005 05:53 PM      Profile for radiorahim     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hmmmm...interesting!

There's this assumption that because of the profit motive, that private enterprise will always choose the most efficient way of doing things.

That ain't necessarily true. Corporate bureaucracy can be just as pig-headed and set in their ways as government bureaucracy.

I did hear in the tech press BTW that Pioneer Petroleum has switched to Red Hat Linux. They operate a chain of often rather isolated gas stations and don't have tech staff who can go around constantly cleaning crud off their computers. With Linux they don't have to worry about any of the crud and they can monitor the computers and do updates via remote desktop software.

"Tight VNC" by the way is a great little programme for remote desktop...of course open source and free.

Tight VNC

M$ only started putting Remote Desktop software into the O/S after Windows 2000 Server...and it really isn't all that great.

[ 29 June 2005: Message edited by: radiorahim ]


From: a Micro$oft-free computer | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged

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