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Old 12th May 2011
J65nko J65nko is offline
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Default German Foreign Office explains open source elimination

From http://www.h-online.com/open/news/it...n-1241804.html

Quote:
The German government has given details of its reasons for migrating the German Foreign office from Linux and free software back to Windows and Microsoft software. The SPD (Social Democrats, the main German opposition party) submitted an initial question on "the use of open source software in the Foreign Office and other Government departments", but, according to the Green parliamentary group, the German government's response left various questions unanswered. These questions have now been addressed by Cornelia Rogall-Grothe, the German government's IT commissioner in a document
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Old 12th May 2011
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That's bad, very, very bad
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Old 13th May 2011
Mako_Elite Mako_Elite is offline
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Follow the money. I will bet, there are behind doors deals with all mighty
Micro$oft. Too bad making steps backwards.
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Old 13th May 2011
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Money talks, we have a rather conservative government in Germany at the moment. But on the other hand, ideology aside sometimes open source really sucks. Office 2007/2010 is rather nice and stable, furthermore it's perfect while working with Statistica. There are many more applications not available in open source or just not good enough for a professional environment. Most people advocating open source are either administrators/developers or hobbyists, not even aware of the needs of different professions.

The servers of the German government are working on Linux, back office too. Some clients are working with Apple or Microsoft operating systems, sometimes lobbying is the cause, sometimes just a rather pragmatic view.

I'm working with UNIX operating systems since the early 90s. Sometimes I have to work with Microsoft or Apple systems, because there is no alternative or the alternative is of low quality. Personally I avoid OpenOffice and use LaTeX, but if I have to use something different, then I prefer Ms Office and it's plethora of possibilities to connect to different applications like e.g. Statistica. Heck, I even leave sometimes *BSD far behind, because it sucks in certain areas. This is a fact, not fiction. There is no room for ideology in a professional environment and most 'facts' are indeed ideology-driven, ignoring lots of the real needs.
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Old 13th May 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oliver_H View Post
I'm working with UNIX operating systems since the early 90s. Sometimes I have to work with Microsoft or Apple systems, because there is no alternative or the alternative is of low quality. Personally I avoid OpenOffice and use LaTeX, but if I have to use something different, then I prefer Ms Office and it's plethora of possibilities to connect to different applications like e.g. Statistica. Heck, I even leave sometimes *BSD far behind, because it sucks in certain areas. This is a fact, not fiction. There is no room for ideology in a professional environment and most 'facts' are indeed ideology-driven, ignoring lots of the real needs.
+1

As much as I like my OpenBSD the truth of the mater is that is just a tool. It is actually a tool of very limited purpose (network appliance OS) which also makes an outstanding (probably the best) desktop OS for a competent Unix user. However, it definitely has its limitation in professional environment, and I am not talking here about the Flash and Skype Just like airplanes are not intended to dive and submarines are not built to fly OpenBSD is not built do do certain things.

Also the whole concept on depending on bunch of voluntaries is just unacceptable on the work place. Take a clue from RedHat vs Debian debate.
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Old 13th May 2011
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No single company or set of applications does *everything* right or wrong.

In the case of office, I rather like Ms Publisher. But have come to the conclusion that MS Outlook was spawned from the deepest depths of hell to assist the antichrist in sowing chaos.

There's plenty of bad open source software, take BIND for example ("buggy internet name daemon"), another fairly famous example might be sendmail. I'm sure you can think of others.

Open source does not guarantee anything what-so-ever about the quality of software, the skill level of the programmers does. What open source *does* guarantee is that 1) It's easier to see if the software is bad and 2) You can fix the software if it is bad and 3) You can extend or integrate the software.
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Old 15th May 2011
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But all of these mentioned points are just futile if you aren't able to see/fix/whatever. A mere user is just condemned to believe in others. Nowadays we're confronted with a different attitude: use it and don't care about the rest. See e.g. Ubuntu, the iPad, etc. pp. The ones able to fix or actually _see_ something are a declining crowd in my opinion. I hope the future will prove me wrong ...
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Old 15th May 2011
lumiwa lumiwa is offline
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A World is not the same as it was and I am happy that I am old. I had my OS/2 long time ago on 285 with 2 MB of RAM, StarOffice which was German this time and I did a job as I doing now on whatever computer. Internet? I used a Lynx, ftp email....it was time which I like it. Now is different and it is not more for me, it is empty...and at work we are doing the same as we did before (research, genetics) just money is different.

...and I agree with all of you.
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Old 16th May 2011
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I think a lot of it has to do with conditioning and I'm sure M$ knows this and uses it as a selling point etc.

Taking as an example a recent entry in the OpenBSD site undeadly.org:


http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=artic...20110420080633

Quote:
....But the real challenge comes from migrating users from a >10 years habit of using Windows and MS Office to an OpenBSD GNOME Desktop with Libre/Openoffice without impacting their daily work, aka production, aka company revenue.....

In other words, there were probably many complaints from end-users who were simply used to their own toolset. It's been my own personal experience that sometimes these same users are reluctant to learn new tools even if it might benefit them or their workflow later on--and at the cost of a slight learning curve.

But as Mako_Elite and others have hinted at, I'm sure there are behind-the-scenes workings preying on the said attitudes of end-users.
In the end, a sad situation.
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