Bill Gates works for the NBR!
One of the many things that the Greens talk about which no one else around Parliament seems to notice is the issue of Open Source software. Nandor put out a number of releases (links below) on the subject and Metiria picked up the baton last week when she took over from him as IT Spokesperson.
Then on Monday Francis Till took aim at the entire sequence of releases in an online NBR piece called Open source in government: A delusional cheer from the Greens. (Also available here). Needless to say, the Greens don’t agree and I’m happy to pick the argument apart, so here we go.
Till writes:
When Laurence Millar, Deputy Commissioner for information and communication technologies at the State Services Commission, last week celebrated the negotiation of an all-of-government license agreement between the Department of Inland Revenue and Novell, hardly an eyebrow was raised — except in the Green camp, which exploded in a fit of irrational exuberance.Mr Millar’s enthusiastic take on the license — which extends discounts on Novell products, including its brand of Linux, Suse to approximately 50 government agencies, and includes support and price protection — would have made Nandor Tanczos happy.
In May, when the government released its rather woeful ‘digital strategy,’ Nandor had lamented the absence of any reference to open source products.
“Firstly, the potential role of Open Source software is not mentioned at all, which, given the increasing size of that sector, the potential for New Zealand businesses to get into the action and the fact that DHBs are investigating a move to Open Source operating systems, is both surprising and disappointing,” he said then.
Apart from the fact that ‘open source’ is treated as a proper noun by only acronym makers (OSS is ‘open source software’) and the Linux zealot faction of the IT universe, those for whom Microsoft is the software equivalent of the Great Satan, most of Nandor’s take on “the sector” was wrong.
When the Digital Strategy discussion document came out, Green IT folx noticed that Open Source / OSS wasn’t mentioned at all. And even though the Greens and numerous other submitters pointed this out to the policy wonks, it still didn’t make it into the final paper.
The point isn’t that OSS is a miracle cure, but that the proprietary-non-proprietary debate is a global one and is getting more significant, particularly with the stuff going on in the EU with patent laws. Therefore, how come this debate isn’t mentioned in a discussion document and strategy document?
For the record, the Greens didn’t think that the Digital Strategy should have been saying “yay let’s be like Brazil and go Open Source“, but rather, ‘how come this isn’t being discussed?’
Till:
[Nandor’s] errors were compounded by his replacement at the IT spokesperson helm, Metiria Turei, who crowed that the deal had “cleared the path for government agencies to adopt and expand their use of non-proprietary software” — failing to note that Novell is a company offering proprietary versions of OSS.
Novell is not selling a ‘proprietary version of OSS’, which is a contradiction in terms. Their Linux system - Suse - is still ‘free’ in the sense of ‘free speech’ rather than ‘free beer’, i.e. while Novell charge money for Suse and the entire service package that comes with it, they do not restrict further ‘free’ redistribution of the code and program.
Till goes on:
[Metiria] went on in a lamentably predictable — and utterly wrong-headed — way to say:“Clearly much will be made of the money that can be saved by moving away from inflexible licensing requirements, but, IMHO, the most important part of this deal is the opportunity for agencies to embrace the increased reliability, security and flexibility of Open Source,” Mrs Turei says.
“In turn, the economy of scale and credibility provided by the Government choosing Open Source should go some way to increasing its use in New Zealand generally, which in turn will start to roll back the virus-vulnerable Microsoft monoculture on Kiwi desktops.
“Also, Government has a democratic duty to provide information to the public that is in an accessible and open format. With Open Source software, no multinational company can limit what can be accessed and what is done with information.”
Ms Turei’s statement betrays an even more naïve understanding of the issues at stake than did even Nandor’s openly political rhetoric.
While it is certainly true that the open source movement has gained much ground in the last five years, revolutionising some practices, the tools it has produced tend to fill specialised, if not niche, needs — and not even those with universal success. [See, for example, the excellent paper, Open source: Open for business, from open source advocates, the Leading Edge Forum last year.]
What it comes down to for advocates, often, is not that open source products are better than those from, say, Microsoft, but that they are, well, not Microsoft products. For the Greens, as for many in the open source community, that’s enough.
The Greens’ line on Open Source has always been that it is about choice. Sure, many people are sceptical about Microsoft (and they have a right to think that if they want), but the main issue for the Greens has always been that people should have the right to make an informed choice as to what solutions are best for their own needs. If the decision is made that Microsoft is best, fine, but that decision needs to be made by people here, not lawyers in Redmond.
Till:
It can’t be, for the rest of us.A few little judder bars on the road to enthusiasm
In looking over the Green statements about open source, a few problems stand out above the rest.
1. Health boards are not “investigating” the deployment of OSS. Only the Whanganui DHB is involved in anything like an investigation into OSS, according to the Dominion Post — and that’s only a small trial.
Wanganui is trialling and Green sources have told me Capital Coast are very intererested in the idea and are keeping an eye on the trial and other DHBs have asked to be briefed. But public comments from DHB IT managers at the time indicated that they were keen on an uptake of OSS tools like Open Office for non-critical users. They were going to let the Wanganui trial go ahead first.
The issue for the DHBs was not the quality and security of the software, but the willingness of their people to use something that looks a bit different, which is, in effect, a training or even cultural issue.
When Nandor raved about the Wanganui trial, he wasn’t claiming that this was some major deployment, but a small step and he congratulated them on taking Open Source into account when making appropriate cost evaluation decisions, not just because they were turning their back on Microsoft. He did the same when Victoria University opted for Red Hat last year.
Till:
2. While the open source software stack contains a large number of major applications, most discussion about open source centres on the operating system, Linux. The Linux component of the operating system sector is, indeed, growing — but only in a limited way and in back-end operations where the code being used is often highly modified and resembles out-of-box solutions in much the way reformed alcoholics and French Legionnaires resemble their baby photos.Even in servers, its strongest point of contention, Linux holds only a very minor share of the market.
Like Weta Digital’s Linux server bank, which is the largest in the southern hemisphere, a tourist destination for computer geeks and about to make a movie of Microsoft’s Halo game!
Till:
More, much of the non-server Linux uptake in the enterprise market during the last several years has been experimental in nature, with little sign of escalation — often for good reasons that include both security and cost of ownership.
Till overlooks that Linux has long had ICO-level certification for security.
Till:
3. Desktops are not moving to open source at all. According to IDC research published this June, businesses and manufacturers said only 1.1 per cent of whiteboxes bought and made would use Linux as an OS in 2005, and only 1.7 per cent of consumers were opting for Linux on notebooks.Where Linux comes pre-installed, as with an increasing number of shipments to Asia, most analysts suspect that the OS is installed to reduce costs — and promptly replaced with pirated copies of Windows on purchase (or even pre-purchase).
Linux is, however, making great headway in places like China, but much of it is down to swapping Linux for Unix — and, quite possibly, that may reflect the ability of the government there to tinker with the inner code of any Linux release it approves.
Linux is also making great headway in places like South America, Germany, Austria, France, Ireland, Australia, just to name a few.
Till:
4. Regardless of a computer’s operating system, open source advocates are usually also hot on Open Office, a desktop productivity suite that has as its claim on audiences the fact that it is free, works almost as well as Microsoft Office 97 and is nearly interoperable with some of the Microsoft Office products that have been so far released.But for enterprises, interoperability with off-campus software is key, as is internal integration across all software modules — and without an Outlook-like component, Open Office compels users to go to yet another party for email, contacts and calendaring functions.
Simply put, what good is a perfect spreadsheet or presentation worked up on an OSS product if it cannot be exported meaningfully to a client?
It can be. A whole lot of Greens out in the field use Open Office and the Green Parliamentary Office, which is obliged to use Windows by the Parliamentary Service, has no problems translating their documents when they’re sent in. Has Till ever used Open Office?
Till:
With over 300 million installations, Office has about a 95 per cent share of the desktop productivity suite installed base.Based primarily on download information (40 million free Open Office downloads against over 300 million Office purchases), some analysts have suggested that Open Office commands between 10-15 per cent of the productivity suite footprint. [snip]
I’ve cut out there because Till goes on at some length about Open Office’s market share, which is not great, though he would see that as a victory for the superior Microsoft product, whereas I would see a commercial monopoly and software monoculture that is bad for the market, democracy and technological progress.
At least one independent tests has shown, over time, that Open Office — in all its iterations — is far less efficient to run than Microsoft products, something that will have escaped few resource conscious IT administrators.
Well, checking that link Till provides, I suppose I should assume that the guy with the blog knows what he’s talking about, though Till’s enthusiasm is beginning to make me wonder if Bill Gates has bought the NBR. 
Till:
5. The idea that there is a large, untapped pool of Kiwi independent software vendors capable of providing tools and support for mission-critical installations of OSS products is patently false.
The Greens have never claimed there is a “a large, untapped pool of Kiwi independent software vendors “. What we are saying is that those people that are out there that are providing the tools are unable to do so becuase the biggest buyer of IT services is the Government and its not buying NZ product, open source or not. The Greens just think the New Zealand Government should at least try to ‘Buy Kiwi Made’ by accepting a moderate price tolerance for local product.
Till completely contradicts himself with the next sentence.
While there is little reliable data in New Zealand about what actually is available, in Australia — where the government is committed to examining OSS alternatives as part of software procurement — Senator Eric Abetz, the Special Minister of State in charge of such things, said this in April about an economy with more than ten times our local resources:
The irony here is that Till is quoting the Australian example of one of the things the Greens are calling for in New Zealand- a Government-published guide to help its agencies assess Open Source.
Till:
Australia’s OSS industry is still in a formative phase. [snip]
Like NZ’s, which is why it needs nurturing by the Government. Till then details that statement.
Till:
6. The closed nature of the Microsoft Office ecosystem is exaggerated.Microsoft Office 12 — the coming version — will use an “open” XML code system, catchingly called the Microsoft Office Open XML Format, as a key component of its code engine.
The problem for the Open Office community is that they have standardised on another open source format, the OpenDocument format.
The upshot is that documents built on one system are unlikely to render properly, if at all, on the other. In fact, the new, OpenDocument-based OpenOffice 2 is not even backwards compatible with its own precursor.
Well, I have to say that the Greens are glad that Microsoft is moving towards standardised documents, it is about time. But why have they done this? Would they be doing it if the Open Source issue wasn’t around?
7. The “inflexible licensing requirements” Ms Turei described have nothing to do with Microsoft — which, if anything, has been faulted for the enormous number of options it offers.
Microsoft licensing has always been a sore point for the company, but claims that it is “inflexible” are last century bombast and getting farther from the fact every day.
In addition to special license structures for government and education use, Microsoft routinely negotiates even more flexibility into contracts with large users. The NZ government and educational system, in fact, are both beneficiaries of such negotiated agreements — and under one agreement, state and state-integrated schools can obtain an astonishing array of software (including Office 2003, Encarta and XP Pro) for under $50. Positively draconian.
Sure, the end-user licenses are becoming more flexible, but this is because of the criticism Microsoft faced. But they’re still very rigid, for instance try installing Firefox in a corporate environment, such as Parliament.
The question that has to asked, should children be educated in an environment dominated by corporations, let alone a corporate monopoly? There are obvious commercial benefits for Microsoft in having all school students being raised in their online environment.
8. The notion that open source products offer increased “reliability, security and flexibility” is increasingly difficult to credit.
See above re ICO certification.
On the security front alone, study after study has shown that open source code is more vulnerable to exploits than proprietary code — and the Linux community has been lucky, so far, that malware writers have tended to focus on other targets.
Well, malware writers target Microsoft because they don’t like them. Go figure.
Francis, the Greens recommend that you get yourself a subscription to 2600
[snip] 9. The idea that government “has a democratic duty to provide information to the public that is in an accessible and open format” is a fine declaration of principle, but meaningless in practice. If all the fancy word processing systems in the world were suddenly shut down, text documents could still be read — and if users based decisions on whether to use OpenOffice or Office on which was likely to be supported in ten or twenty years, Office would have to be the winner on the day.
Of course text documents can still be read, that’s cause they’re accessible and open formats!
Getting back on track
Despite Mr Millar’s ebullient waxings from the bully pulpit of the State Services Commission and ill-informed cheerleading from the Greens, not even the IRD is close to tossing Microsoft over for Novell and open source.
As the Dominion Post reported, the trial will allow the department to evaluate aspects of Novell’s software, measuring capability and price.
As it stands now, the government is a rabbit warren of department level bespoke IT solutions with isolated IT units sworn to their own unique visions.
Rather than encouraging further factionalism, the SSC should be taking a look at what Fonterra has done with its massive IT infrastructure.
Now in the final stages of unifying its far-flung IT empire under common standards, hardware and systems through a contract with EDS.
Fonterra’s EDS solution — or one like it — would not only produce actual savings for the government in the hundreds of millions of dollars once the churn subsided, but open new doors for innovation and the more effective, not to mention efficient, delivery of services through consolidation.
And that would be a real benefit to the ordinary New Zealander.
Francis Till needs to realise that the Green stance on IT issues is one based on freedom and choice.
The only reason Microsoft has stopped being so overtly closed and questionable over the last half decade is because of people questioning their proprietary, monopolistic approach to business. They have been severely punished for this both within the courts and in the public eye and they have changed their tune as a result. But they didn’t do it out of choice, why would they?
This debate is always a polarised one, there’s Linux geeks as much as there’s Microserfs, of whom Francis Till appears to be one.
The Greens don’t claim that Open Source is the solution for everything, but believe that as a nation, New Zealand needs to be careful about ensuring our business and our citizens are able to make informed choices.
October 26th, 2005 at 2:53 am
I went to write a reply to the nbr addressing this, and then on my second read through realised just how much there was to address. I’m glad to see you’ve made a good start on it frog.
I’m not quite sure what the Greens or the Linux geeks did to poor Francis, but with sentences like “Some suggest that as the purpose of malware moves to crime, the Linux systems that run corporate IT will be increasingly targeted.” you can tell it was something pretty brutal to write such rubbish.
“Open Source” is a trademark of OSI, am I wrong in thinking that trade marks get title case?
Yet again there is a reference to a study counting raw numbers of an entire distribution to just windows. Gee 5000 optional applications and servers have more security problems than notepad and character map - colour me suprised.
Also Microsofts “open” format for office doesn’t wave patent claims for any sub-licensees of your software making it mostly useless. “Yeah you’ve just bought my software but still you have to ask microsoft not to sue you over this plain text format we’ve made use of to interoperate with them” - A real winner with customers I’d imagine.
Linux is far from perfect and although I’ve used it commercially and personally for 5 years now it doesn’t suite everything, and I’m happy to admit that microsoft currently has far more integrated systems for some tasks.
And to finish off with an ad-hominem I find it interesting that Francis Till is listed on the NBR contact page as WebMaster.
October 26th, 2005 at 3:18 am
… ooh that’s nasty. Do you mean that NBR don’t have a proper IT journalist, or that they don’t have a proper webmaster?
October 26th, 2005 at 4:51 am
“try installing Firefox in a corporate environment, such as Parliament.”
Why is this a problem for you? Firefox/Mozilla will install on any Windows operating system. If you cannot install it at parliament then this is obviously controlled by your nexwork administrators.
The debate/war over Microsoft Vs OSS has raged for centuries, well it feels like it. Plain and simply i have no problem with either, and use both, but Microsoft products are just easier to use. If you like you can try and teach my grandmother how to use Debian/RedHat Linux and the software they provide!
Until OSS software is made easier to use for the majority of humble home PC ‘users’ Microsoft will have a overpowering stake in the market.
October 26th, 2005 at 6:53 am
Frog, a good article of yours but you didn’t show the bit starting:
“At least one independent tests has shown, over time, that Open Office…”
as written by Till!
It is well known that these “independent tests” were conducted by firms paid by Microsoft, and are designed to put MS product in a good light.
There is am inaccuracy in Till’s article (you are right, I don’t think he has ever used Open Office) when he says that “In fact, the new, OpenDocument-based OpenOffice 2 is not even backwards compatible with its own precursor.”
Just not so! What OpenOffice 2 does is to introduce the OpenDocument format while still reading and writing in both OpenOffice 1 formats, Microsoft formats and others. The man is ignorant.
I have used OOo for a long time now and recommend it to my friends and customers (I am a dealer in a small way). I tell people to use it instead of MS Office and spend the money saved on a good scanner or printer.
And as for the “wonderful” deals that educational institutions get on MS product, it is not hard to see why. The same reasons that MacDungalds
serve small children’s portions: get ‘em hooked. I look forward to the day when computer courses in NZ will be based on OpenOffice and other open source products.
Why do I dislike MS so much? Because the product is overpriced and MS marketing methods are designed to kill all competition. But some will say, that’s capitalism. Yes.
October 26th, 2005 at 6:57 am
I should add that I agree with previous writers on the subject of operating systems: Linux is not yet ready for the average user (but getting closer, try Ubuntu!) And so far there are many programs that I use that run only on Windows, though more and more are being ported to Linux. But give it time!
October 26th, 2005 at 8:15 am
Well spotted Greengage, that’s what you get with that much code in the midst of a big slab of text late at night, I’ve fixed it now
October 26th, 2005 at 8:31 am
um frog….with epics this size…could you not throw up a couple of paragraphs..and then have a ‘more’ link….?
reason being too much is booted off the page when an item of this size appears…
(also the scrolling is really dealing to my rsi…)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 26th, 2005 at 9:04 am
wow frog you are amazing, I couldn’t have begun to attempt such a compehensive rebuttal. My only addition is:
“study after study has shown that open source code is more vulnerable to exploits than proprietary code”
Which is absolute nonsense - he is talking out of his arse here. Provide the studies Mr Till. Bet you can’t.
It is intesting to note that Slashdot picked up this story.
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/24/132217
Ignore the misleading and opinionated original Slashdot story, but look at the comments. There are many comments such as…
“The NZ Greens are pumped about moving to OSS, but some random Microsoft shill at a business rag thinks the move sucks, because Microsoft rocks. Anyone with half a brain can dismantle most of the arguments in the feature article.”
“It’s poorly researched and little more than “MS good, FOSS bad”. The fact that he uses Laura DiDio to support one of his points (with a minor disclosure about her being viewed as a troll) says all I needed to see. Atleast is marked as a commentary.”
“It’s just a badly done rant against the Green party and open source. The article is really just a snarling howl against open-source, with some mindless praise for Microsoft and its software.”
October 26th, 2005 at 9:29 am
Big troll by Francis Till who obviously craves attention…I wonder why he thinks Microsoft should carry more weight in this debate than IBM? At least there should be some balance in and article for a magazine that represents itself as a serious business publication.
One thing you have not mentioned is that Microsoft has applied for an NZ patent on its XML “standard”. This is under review thanks only to the efforts of the NZOSS. Patent reform is desperately needed in NZ if the software development industry is to stand a chance of survival in the global marketplace.
The figures on companies that support OSS products is also very misleading. Most SIs and software solutions campanies in NZ will support OSS products to some degree or another. I bet EDS know how to support Apache, I know IBM, gen-i and many others support Linux. Some of the largest corporates in NZ use OSS products, some of them may just not know it
but are happy with the end result so have no need to query the brand of glue used.
As an enabling set of technologies OSS has everything going for it if you are a business looking for an advantage in a very busy market place. The philosophy that underpins the GPL, for example, is critical and it can act as a great touchstone for business decisions and focus. It has been instrumental in the successful growth of our company which sells software services to NZ and around the world.
By the way, I notice Rodney Hide is on the band wagon having recently installed Ubuntu on his laptop. Can anyone in the Green pop along the corridor and help him sort out his power saving issues?
October 26th, 2005 at 9:45 am
BTW, does anyone else find it ironic that Till uses Wordpress to power his blog? Wordpress, of course, is FOSS. Shouldn’t he bin it and use M$ blogging software. What’s that? There isn’t any M$ blogging software? Wordpress is one of the best blogging software products? Er…
http://www.till.co.nz/tillnet/
October 26th, 2005 at 10:06 am
stuey..what is your call on the rubbishing of wordpress and praise of drupal going on over at humphs’…?
how do they compare…(as in ease of use for luddites..primarily..:)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 26th, 2005 at 10:07 am
P.S. More detail to frog’s argument…
“Novell is a company offering proprietary versions of OSS.”
There are plenty of comments addressing this issue in the Slashdot thread. Only the Novell logos within SUSE are copyrighted. The software is licenced under the GPL, and comes with instructions on how to remove the Novell logos, so as to re-distribute it.
“called the Microsoft Office Open XML Format”
Many commentators on the web have pointed out that this file format is open in name only, and a deliberate attempt to counter the popularity of OSS, e.g.
http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/008558.html
http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000732.html
“Well, checking that link Till provides, I suppose I should assume that the guy with the blog knows what he’s talking about,”
you should look at the comments on that story frog, poster after poster report that they are unable to replicate the bloggers results, that the blogger was using an unrealistic sized file to do their test, that there may have been artefacts introduced when the file was created (the poster assumed that the test file was created by taking an excel file and converting it to OOo format using OOo 1.4) and finally that there are methodological misassumptions with the Memory footprint allocated to the processes part of it.
October 26th, 2005 at 10:24 am
Sorry I can’t leave this bone alone… Till says, but frog didn’t really address this..
“Even in servers, its strongest point of contention, Linux holds only a very minor share of the market.”
Bizarrely the link that Till uses to back up this claim goes to a story that positively crows about record-breaking Linux revenues, and another year of double-digit growth for Linux servers!
It is clear that this “very minor share” (11.5%) is based on revenue, not on number of boxes. Given that Linux server software is cheaper than M$ software (or free), no wonder the revenue % is low. If you look at numbers of boxes, Linux has a majority, e.g. for web servers… Linux/Apache = 70%.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html
October 26th, 2005 at 11:16 am
good post frog
While I haven’t looked at an NBR for a number of years, it would be interesting to estimate how many advertising dollars Microsoft throws NBRs way - OSS can’t compete with that. The business papers are usually heavy with IT related advertising.
October 26th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
I’m glad someone blogged on this, cause I penned a massive long note to one blogger, hoping he’d air it, then my M$ $&(#$& bluescreened on me and I lost the lot.
Frog’s covered the main points. My only 2c to add is that the NZ pool of independent developers for OSS is by no means empty. I am one, writing antispam software which is available on SUSE and has made us a lot of money. As far as I know our antivirus software is used by IRD (I’m not in sales) on their Novell boxes, and will run on SUSE if they feel the urge to flip over and save some $. So they’re buying kiwi-made, at least a little bit. Not that I especially care about that, I’d actually prefer to remain unknown to kiwi customers who particularly enjoy having a fellow countryman to hit up for free support.
I do find it humorous that IRD paid me, for once, with my own tax dollars. It’s less humorous that the money they paid me with is now going to go back to them via my hefty tax bill. Crazy world.
October 26th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
As a low geek level end user who has made the switch from MS to Ununtu - I found the Till article rather amusing. Open Office has been no more difficult to use than office - in fact, as I have to use MS at work, its better cos it doen’t keep autoformatting everything for me. Can’t tell you the time Ive saved not having to re format the auto formatting!
And there is only one software programme I haven’t found a linux replacement for - Pagemaker. Can’t find a decent DTP programme at all.
And best of all Ive gone from having multiple daily virus hits to not one virus in nearly a year on linux.
Oh… and I switich docs from home and work computers with no problems opening them.
Only problem I have is if something f***s out ie an install or something. I have to get Worik to bail me out…… but then I had to get other friends to bail me out all the time when my old MS box regularly fritzed itself too….. overall Ive had fewer major meltdown on linux than I did with MS.
Can’t see why more people don’t make the switch!
October 26th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
Russell Brown has put up a short but excellent critique of MS-NBR:
http://publicaddress.net/default,2645.sm#post2645
October 26th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
btw, my main source of bitterness was that the NBR was gunning for the Greens again, with a pretty tenuous link, and plenty of misrepresentation. They wonder why people don’t like their influence, when they come out singing the wondrous praises of M$, and bittering out on OSS like the Greens invented it to legalize pot with.
Ultimately, the IRD made an interesting decision, and we will see if it was a good decision. The Greens saw the decision as positive, because it is exploring a new territory which is mostly untapped in our govt departments. We will never know if it’s a good decision by arguing about it beforehand. Now at least we stand a chance of finding out something that isn’t just the partisan speculation of politicians from either side of the fence. Till’s made his prediction (cactuses and custard), and I suggest he be held to it.
October 26th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
I find all the inevitable arguments of OSS vs MS being dragged out yet again
tend to obscure what is, to me, the real important story.
That is that the uproar over the simple fact that an organisation is
considering their options for IT. That’s it. It’s not that the IRD is rolling
out Linux desktops nationwide. It’s not that they’ve dumped .DOC as
a document format. Merely that they’re /trying an alternative/.
To me the real story is that it’s such a big deal that someone is even
considering their options rather than blindly throwing all their resources
at the default. Since when was looking at a few alternatives such
a flammable, weird, strange thing to do?
- Colin
October 26th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
Don’t have time to track down the links at the moment, but MS’s claim about the next version of Office supporting open document formats has already been exposed as a large steaming pile of organic fertiliser. It’s quite clear that their half-baked ’solution’ (export to PDF, but not read back in) was trolled out just to try and stop the Massachussets state government going for a solution which requires OASIS compliant open document formats.
October 26th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
If Linux is so minor and insignificant, why is Francis Till’s own website running Apache on Linux?.
Also, regarding Office XML: the Commonwealth of Massachussets haven’t approved Microsoft’s file format because it doesn’t match their criteria for openness. Here is an excellent article about the process that led to the adoption of OpenDocument by Mass.
October 26th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
I knew I was among friends. I don’t even have to comment here.
At JPL we found a place for the “Designed for Windows” stickers that adorned all the laptops we got…. since the first thing that happened to most of them was that windows got nuked and linux installed the SECOND thing was the decoration of most of the commodes at the lab. It seems the sticky stuff works well enough for it to stay a long time too
respectfully
BJ
October 26th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
Sticky stuff? Yuck, dude!
October 26th, 2005 at 10:17 pm
Your defence of Open Source would sound less hollow if you did not keep posting Excel spreadsheets.
October 26th, 2005 at 10:22 pm
Those were probaby made on Open Office, and only put there for the poor people that paid for Excel.
October 27th, 2005 at 12:27 am
Don, (1) frog has stopped posting excel spreadsheets, (2) they were made in excel at Parliament because Parliamentary IT services won’t let anyone at Parliament install any OSS like Firefox or OpenOffice - the Parliamentary Greens have asked them many times, (3) frog was not really defending OSS, rather frog was defending the Greens’ position on OSS, having had a scurrilous attack from NBR (4) OpenOffice opens excel files!
“Since when was looking at a few alternatives such a flammable, weird, strange thing to do?”
Exactly. It is good practice, not weird. And therefore it is sensible of the Greens to praise the govt dept for doing so, and therefore, the NBR are being completely irrational to attack the Greens for praising them. A bit like everything that sad rag attacks us for!
October 27th, 2005 at 2:29 am
exactly stuey.
and if M$ was so wonderful, why do all these M$-worshippers get so worked up when they think people might find out there are actually some alternatives?
October 27th, 2005 at 7:41 am
People… we all know about Microstuff, the people who need educating are at NBR. This has been fun to read, but wouldn’t we be better served by addressing them?
respectfully
BJ
October 27th, 2005 at 8:40 am
bjchip: this post was sent to Mr Till early yesterday, I note it has been put up as a comment and linked to the article itself at his blog - http://till.co.nz/tillnet/?p=371#comments
October 27th, 2005 at 8:54 am
As a long-time MS user, and implementer/developer of heavy-duty systems, I think the main reason OSS is stuck at it’s low desktop market share is that the applications just don’t have the connectivity exhibited by MS apps.
There is absolutely no equivalent to VBA, which works, unaltered, everywhere in MS Office, for tasks such as using Excel as a viewer of accounting data.
OSS also suffers from the ‘who ya gonna call?’ problem, and at the server level this has only been solved, as your posts suggest, by being folded under the wing of a long established company (who, BTW, had it’s own proprietary OS and have basically abandoned it…).
Such OSS desktop apps as do exist are essentially free-riding on the standards, protocols and conventions long established in the Unix, Apple and MS universes.
And let’s not forget that Linux is rewrite #666 of Unix, the creation of that well-known open source foundation member, Bell Labs.
So when I need to populate a spreadsheet with a recordset from a SQL database in MS Office, I write four lines of VBA. How do I do that in OpenOffice again?
October 27th, 2005 at 10:01 am
VBA is a cool thing that is used by almost nobody who uses MS Office. I know this because I was ‘VBA Support’ in a big corporate environment for 3 years. In a company of 1500 people there were about 5 people who used it to write code, and maybe 50 poor souls using the apps developed. They’d always end up calling me when it crapped itself daily due to minor upgrades or incompatible files or any of the raft of problems that has led me to distancing myself from M$ and VB generally.
‘Who ya gonna call’ was me (and prior to me - noone). I was not always available, and by the time I left we had 5 people where there was one before (there was just too much work), supporting 5 hacks. We were responsible for many of the hacks ourselves since VBA apps are pretty much always very hacky. So far as I know from reports from ozzie, these reams of unowned not-understood poorly performing playthings are a major thorn in the company’s side.
I think the barrier to OSS is not anything to do with the quality of either product, and everything to do with inertia, and conversion costs, which can be substantial.
October 27th, 2005 at 10:09 am
maymad,
Two points:
a) Yes, MS does integration well with other MS products. At the cost of limited backwards compatibility, and poor integration with anyone else’s products (though various anti-monopoly regulators keep pushing them on that).
b) The “who you gonna call” issue is not nearly as bad now as it was 3 or 5 years ago. If you want a support contract for linux, there are a variety of providers who offer that. Likewise for JBoss, OpenOffice, etc. Yes, it’s companies like IBM, Novell and Sun doing it. So? What’s the problem with that? The point of OSS is not to undo capitalism: it’s to avoid monopolistic control.
c) WTF are we talking about the desktop and MS Office dbase queries from excel for? The vast majority of govt dept work is big enterprise computing systems. I’ve built this shite: you do NOT write a 4-liner VBA query to access an enterprise dbase, not without a project team jumping up and down on you afterwards and your manager calling you in for a little chat. That’s where OSS is needed (and, actually, is often used): the big, meaty systems that calculate electoral votes, figure out how much ACC levy you owe, etc.
October 27th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Need to get out more, guys. VBA is certainly not an end-user or ad-hoc usage tool, but consider a packaged-up Excel add-in…..
Then look around at commercial apps which link Excel to their databases. Via add-ins. Count ‘em. From my own experience in Govt systems, they’re crawling with them. Document management systems use them. Accounting - bigtime. Then ask where the support nightmares are. Not in this stuff. It just works.
As for OSS desktop apps: where’s the equivalent? Where are the tools? the object models? the code fragments? the IDE’s? the help libraries?
Now: answer the original question: how do I do this in OSS again?
October 27th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
waymad
When someone sends me something with a VBA add-in it is USUALLY an attempt to take my machine away from me. It isn’t necessary for ANYTHING, as there are other NON-proprietary ways to do those things that may be less convenient but which leave your machine more secure because there is no automagical execution of code embedded in anything.
That’s really the issue, the trade-off if you will, between people and apps that grab a VBA solution to whatever problem they encounter and the ones who write to the formal DB API in whatever language they happen to like.
I’ve never seen well written or necessary VBA code. Ever. In 25 years of SW Engineering. It is CONVENIENT, and quick, but I also have never had a machine succumb to a virus or exploit of any kind.
The major issue is the trade between security and convenience. MS has made it clear where they stand on this and the business community that backs them is several billion dollars poorer for that convenience. Is it several billion dollars better off because of that convenience? I personally think not… but you can make the case that the convenience of VBA has saved them $$$ in SW Engineering time… maybe.
The minor issue is the fact that MS provides this tool on top of an OS that has a monolithic security model. Basically any code that allows an exploit into an MS system potentially allows control of the entire system. I reckon MS can fix it in time, they HAVE been working hard at it (credit where due) but it is inherently difficult to deal with a situation where the browser and the mail client can allow exploits that actually compromise system ownership. On a linux system and the very worst that can happen in an exploit is to mess up my browser and MAYBE my local files. Monoliths make for convenient interconnections between programs, but they also make for convenient exploit propagation.
Me, I don’t like Microstuffed. I haven’t liked them since before Windows was a gleam in little Billy’s eye. Their code has been consistently second-rate (DR-DOS and CPM-86 and their compilers were better then) , now I can turn to the open SW and get most of what I lost when MS killed Wordperfect. Which was better than Office right up until it was sold up the river… (you can check the reviews, that’s a VERY consistent finding).
So when someone in government goes gaa-gaa over the latest $500 MS product that I can replace for free with an open SW equivalent, I have to wonder what they’ve been smoking.
Have you even TRIED eclipse?
Help is on your man page and on the web. I have never found it wanting.
Tools are free or you CAN pay for better ones. I really don’t see what you’re griping about since all this stuff is THERE.
The only thing you could possibly have difficulty doing is opening an Excel spreadsheet with the OpenOffice Calc when the spreadsheet uses VBA for its interface to something ELSE or uses a proprietary macro. OOCalc has its own macro tools.
… and I am talking about a Linux desktop, no MS software at all… and it was easy to install and use. Dead easy. Easier than reinstalling Windows from the rescue disk.
So I don’t know what other apps you think can’t be had. I rather tend to think that you have been. ( had that is)
respectfully
BJ
October 27th, 2005 at 8:27 pm
We are moving most of our Library systems over to OpenSource software - and it has nothing to with cost. Software costs about $US2 per CD for whatever is available. A DVD with every MS OS ever released is about $10
One of the main reasons is that it is - well - Open Source. The KhmerOS team have created Khmer versions of OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, and KDE. This software will find their way into the source tree and will be included in many Linux distributions. It is likely a branded KhmerOS distribution will be available before long.
In contrast, the KhmerOS team have written software to enable Khmer keyboards and typefaces on Microsoft XP Service pack 2. However, a Khmer version of Windows Vista will not be available, and enabling Khmer language will require a seperate download. We need to ask Microsoft to include it and … well they don’t want to and there is nothing we can do about it.
Our Library Management System - a closed source proprietory product - will be difficult if not impossible to convert into Khmer. We will need to ask the vendor to support Khmer. Watch this space.
We cannot modify the software to work with other software - such as the Open Source Digital Library software we are evaluating. Instead we will need to buy the vendor’s product. The Digital Library software is developed in New Zealand.
This software - which is in use in places like MIT - was donatated, but we will probably buy an Open Source but not free package from India because we *can* modify it. We can make it work with whatever other software we decide to use.
*That* is benefit of Open Source software. It is built with Open Standards and published API’s. It saves data in open, published formats. It can be taken and manipulated in any way you see fit. You can make an install CD with custom scripts which will install and configure a complete system for a specific purpose. For us it will be for small librariesWe are moving most of our Library systems over to OpenSource software - and it has nothing to with cost. Software costs about $US2 per CD for whatever is available. A DVD with every MS OS ever released is about $10
One of the main reasons is that it is - well - Open Source. The KhmerOS team have created Khmer versions of OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, and KDE. This software will find their way into the source tree and will be included in many Linux distributions. It is likely a branded KhmerOS distribution will be available before long.
In contrast, the KhmerOS team have written software to enable Khmer keyboards and typefaces on Microsoft XP Service pack 2. However, a Khmer version of Windows Vista will not be available, and enabling Khmer language will require a seperate download. We need to ask Microsoft to include it and … well they don’t want to and there is nothing we can do about it.
Our Library Management System - a closed source proprietory product - will be difficult if not impossible to convert into Khmer. We will need to ask the vendor to support Khmer.
Watch this space.
We cannot modify the software to work with other software - such as the Open Source Digital Library software we are evaluating. Instead we would need to buy the vendor’s product.
This software - which is in use in places like MIT - was donatated, but we will probably buy an Open Source but not free package from India because we *can* modify it. We can make it work with whatever other software we decide to use.
*That* is benefit of Open Source software. It is built with Open Standards and published API’s. It saves data in open, published formats. It can be taken and manipulated in any way you see fit. You can copy a CD with custom scripts which will install and configure a complete system for a specific purpose. For us it will be for small libraries.
Try doing that with closed source software.
Don
Hun Sen Library
Phnom Penh .
October 28th, 2005 at 1:30 am
Of all the things I love about springtime, the annual return of geeks to the sunlight is one of them, accompanied by the release of new software lines from the home of Satan, and the outpourings of love and devotion from said geeks for the unix/linux/red hat family of open source products, defending said open source against the marketing scourge of satan, I mean Microsoft.
Yes, ok, I’m a Mac user with Firefox installed for wireless; so don’t flame me yet!
I’ve grown up around open source, even my kids use open office on the PC; if a 12 year old can use the interface, it can’t be that hard, can it? Ok, their Dad was/is a unix geek, but that’s not so unusual these days, there’s a lot of second generation unix-kids around, they just don’t always know that the software they’ve been using is open source. My kids just know that Mozilla Firefox works on their PC when the other one doesn’t, ditto OpenOffice for wp; I’ve resisted getting any “Microsoft for Mac” product, and so far, it isn’t hurting me in the least.
Victoria University in Wellington, which was historically a unix site, has just been going through a big upgrade to linux systems; while getting my laptop configured to work on the Student Computing Service network, I had several of the smart young things compliment me on my choice of Mac over anything else available; most of the post-grad SCS geeks had their own iBook or Powerbook, and raved about Tiger, Mac OSX. They certainly have helped to bring me up to speed on the best functionality of my new workbench.
I’m not going to get into a rehash of the old “Steve Jobs is on the devil’s left hand, Bill Gates is on his right” argument; yes, there are many great open source products, and I’m a user, not a coder, so I evaluate things by how easy & reliable they are to work with;
Ubuntu I have seen, but not experienced first hand, although I’m reliably informed that it’s excellent. My choice of Mac platform was mostly about virus resistance, as it’s an issue which has crippled my elderly pc, which the kids rely on for games, msn, etc ( oh and homework)
What’s going to drag the PC software developers into the future will be the behaviour of big government sites. While the US military has proprietary software contracts tied up, that other alllied defence forces must integrate
with, there will be no complete government rollover to one source; although Fujitsu and Sun have still got a pretty good hold on the short & curlies where it counts here in NZ (to the best of my knowledge).
IBM and Microsoft will be positioned as advantageously as they can manage, but it always pays to remember that ARPANET was the originator of the www; and the US Defence forces net is still the primary arbiter of hardware & software issues, simply because of the incredible investment in R & D infrastructure that they support through defence contracts.
Iraq is merely a plug’n'play developement environment to some of those people.
OK, I’ll get off here before I offend any more americans (it’s not your nationality I dislike, just your military-industrial complex. Oh, and McD’s)
katie
or the serious coders amongst you.
October 28th, 2005 at 8:11 am
One of the neat things about the America I left was that it was really hard for people to impose stuff from the top.
At JPL the kindest word used for the collection of SW and HW used would be heterogenous. NASA said “thou shalt use MS” and JPL and the other centers largely said “Not if you expect us to do serious work for you”, and the bosses wisely said “OK”..
There are a lot of Mac users at JPL.
The point however, is that no American reading and participating here could possibly be offended. The ones who would be are the ones who offended us, and they aren’t here (except that I don’t doubt that the CIA/FBI/NSA may take an occasional look).
respectfully
BJ
October 28th, 2005 at 10:41 am
Frog said, “Well, I have to say that the Greens are glad that Microsoft is moving towards standardised documents, it is about time. But why have they done this?”
Going on Microsoft’s record it’s a pretty safe bet that this is a classic case of “Embrace, extend and extinguish.” Microsoft will “open and standardise” their document format to keep their market dominance, only to change and corrupt it, along maybe with its licence, ensuring that it is not really open at all.
You can read more about this strategy on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
November 24th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
[…] Apart from the incredibly unprofessional tone of the article, it appeared to rely almost completely on facts from Microsoft press releases and made many factual assertions that have since been thoroughly refuted. […]