Poland/ Eastern Europe: Community equals communism?
Spotlight project:
Warsaw, capital of Poland, is running the open source operating systems
Linux and FreeBSD on a total of 30 servers and plans to adopt open
source software for more servers and to run services related to its intranet.
Summary:
There have been few well-publicised open source migrations within the
Polish government. As well as the Warsaw administration, the Polish
Ministry of Finance and the Polish city of Gdynia are reportedly using
open source software.
No country in Eastern Europe, including Poland, has developed an official policy on open source software yet, according to Gartner's DiMaio. The Polish government has shown tentative interest in open source through funding research, which will be used to produce an open source migration guide for the public sector and through funding a translation of OpenOffice.org documentation.
DiMaio says that Poland is "very unlikely" to come up with its own policy on open source and is more likely to simply follow any EU policies that are formulated.
The situation regarding open source software is unclear in Eastern Europe, according to MERIT's Ghosh. He says that some Eastern European companies have already decided to go with Microsoft, such as Macedonia, which recently signed a contract with Microsoft for it to equip the entire public sector at a cost of $300 per seat.
"Countries where there is a relative lack of awareness about technology can get swayed by sales forces," says Ghosh.
Overall, cost is a "strong driver" for the adoption of open source software in Eastern Europe, due to budgetary constraints, according to DiMaio.
But Governor says many Eastern European countries are likely to opt for Microsoft as they "don't want to be seen as commies [sic]". "A lot of Eastern European countries look to UK and US for guidance," he says.
Quick Links:
UK | US | France | Germany | Norway | Spain | Poland/Eastern Europe
Talkback
Good research.
Oh, yes the "Old Europe" countries above all France and Germany OF COURSE switch to Linux motivated by anti-Americanism. Oh, gee give me a break, will ya?
Did Dubya force you to write such a complete bullshit?
It's not Holland, but The Netherlands. :-)
The allegation that TCO is smaller in the case of proprietary software is absurd and completely false. It's based exclusively on Microsoft's so-called "ge the facts" campaign, nobody can take that as a fact without being ridiculous. In fact, independent studies show that TCO is less than half for Linux and open source than for Windows and Microsoft.
My my my. France using Opensource softwares because it's not American? Gimme a break!
Fact is, a few well-known Open-Source elements originated in a French speaking environment... Let's see: gzip, http, divx (ProjectMayo, anyone? Gej?), the decision for OOo to go multilingual (ok, so maybe that one can be discussed...)
Note: recently started, France's numeric television broadcasting uses MPEG-2 - for public channels. Private, paid-for channels use MPEG-4...
Although it's gotten out of fashion, France also was the first country to have a state-wide telematic client-server architecture open to anyone: Minitel.
So, is it so hard to understand that a country with a culture where one is supposed to think about the society's welfare in general at the same time he thinks about his own, that has gotten used to everyday use nation-wide communication systems 15 years before the rest of the world got something similar, where all credit cards carry advanced securised microchips (and have been doing so for a long time) and where software has traditionally been developed in large quantities of ideas but never easily sold, got enthusiastic in the use of F/OSS?
Actually, does anyone remember that the personal computer has been created in France, but never got past a few prototypes due to lack of funding?
So, why would France's decision to go with F/OSS, that matches its methods much more closely than pure US liberalism, just be a way to spite the Americans? Why would anybody want to do things just like the Americans do them?
As a matter of fact, has anyone tried a French-translated piece of proprietary software? Microsoft's have content mistakes, language abuses, can't spell-check worth a damn, don't consider layouts other than QWERTY... Others usually don't even bother.
So, yeah, why would French technicians (who can code quite well, but not sell it because they don't consider the financial aspect when developing something they need) endure such crappy softwares when they can just modify other softwares to suit their needs, or just make it themselves?
You can whine about it all you want, just consider one thing: French people are usually quite the 'do-it-yourself' type (systeme D is a French expression - D stands for débrouille); what better software development model than F/OSS for that?
As far as I remember, Americans started making fun of 'froggies' because France didn't agree with the war in Iraq - which was supposedly a matter of days, and should squish terrorism instantly. Now let's see...
Just a little correction:
Software libre = free software
open source = codigo abierto
The French use Pays-Bas and most English speaking people in Canada and the USA say Holland. If you want to be correct you should sat :Nederland!