Germany Withdraws Open Source Article

leine writes, "The statement written by a part of the German government to use Open Source Software (see this article) has been withdrawn from the public. The German magazine c't cites in an article the spokesman of the German ministry of the interior, that the paper has been withdrawn on an order from the ministry. (The article is in German, babelfish is your friend.) "

Re:Why they don't want Linux

but let's face it, it's the TCO that counts in these matters.

... which, to be frank, isn't any LESS for that software maker with the window flag. Of course, look at the big gaping hole in my facts :o)

they would cost far more in wages than the equivalent professionals, MSCEs.

an MCSE that actually knows what they're doing with the products they're charged with supporting is arguably as expensive.

how long would it take for them to get a system up and running?

*shrug* a couple hours, if you do it by hand? Things can most certainly be automated.

staff training costs would again be enormous.

"staff training costs" are enormous, no matter how you cut it. Training is most certainly not free or costs less than Linux training... it just happens that MS training exists, and Linux training generally does not.

there's the image issue

Here's an image issue for you: Since there's a program called l0phtcrack out there, which only happens to work on NT/LANMAN hashes, and works pretty dang well, NT could possibly be used for "criminal activity." Also, the decss code was originally developed on a windows box. All that's needed to assess this is a bit of intelligence. Too bad your average Joe can't be bothered to use his brain.

--

This could be a good thing

Yes really. I don't want to say that pulling this article means they now want to offer more information or things like that.
But from a publicity point of view this should be interesting. Before nobody but some interested groups would have seen this information.
Now this has a touch of conspiracy and suddenly is interesting for many more people. The discussion forum at heise is exploding, the ct will report about that study next week - now the article or followers will be somewhat more - uhm - entertaining for non-techis.
Other newspapers will follow, even perhaps nontechnical. The ministry will get a lot of heat, people are discussing if there's a connection to some deals concerning free software from ms for schools.
Every newspaper can point out that free software is for free, they will not bother to discuss the TOC-issue so no chance for the ms-fud. They just will say "This costs xxx DM, open source cost 0 DM and you pay this with your tax."
Germans are very suspicious against government deals in the moment anyway, so this could hit a nerve.

Official reason

the official reason is that this paper was intended for internal use and evaluation of the ministry, even though they published it the same way as all other KBSt letters, and the others are still available online. Go figure.

Understand what this really means...

...not much. What happened was that an analysis in favor of open source software was redrawn from public display. A decision of any kind had not even been made yet. Though I can't imagine a reason either, except for not wanting to publically offend M$.

Re:Why they don't want Linux

Firstly, the cost of installing, configuring and running open-source software would be prohibitive. Yeah, sure it's free to buy, but let's face it, it's the TCO that counts in these matters. If they were to go with Linux they'd have to hire a load of sys admins to go with it, and they would cost far more in wages than the equivalent professionals, MSCEs.

"equivalent"? snigger...

Anyway, it's not a black and white issue. No-one would force them to use Linux for everything, immediately. The smart thing would be to start out with the servers and proceed slowly.

And then there's the fact that for your average Joe who works for the government, Linux is far too complex to use. Despite all claims to the contrary Linux is still unwieldly and old-fashioned in its approach to the user interface, and staff training costs would again be enormous.

Bullshit. Linux has ease of use like the best of them. Except when administering a machine. But especially in a government environment, the normal user wouldn't have to do that. In fact, the administarion would be much easier and cheaper with Linux because you can make it impossible for Joe Average to fuck up his installation. And you can have remote administration, which is a huge factor.

There's also the security issue. Governments love security and have been known to spend insane amounts of money on it.

And even apart from these issues, there's the image issue. Linux has recently been linked to all kinds of criminal activities in the public eye, especially the DVD pirating program DeCSS. If the German government were to embrace Linux it would seem like they were condoning the piracy of DVDs and the like. In the international community this would harm their reputation, something governments never enjoy.

Now this is total bullshit, if I ever saw any. As has been explained a 100 times before, DeCSS is not a "pirating program", and anyone with half a brain understands that whatever some people do with an OS, it doesn't make the OS bad.

Linux may have an reputation for being difficult to use among computer users, but I have yet to see it have a "criminal" image in the "public eye". In fact, it doesn't have an image at all to most people, who don't even know it exists.

Probably no biggie

The paper was only intended for the internal use and for the public, did not say Kiel.
Worrying should not be doing, because obviously just decision internal was, knickers should not be twisted until elucidation forthcomes.
Open source still may be option that is by the government preferred.

Re:Understand what this really means...

Uhm, the study was from "Koordinierungs- und Beratungsstelle der Bundesregierung für Informationstechnik in der Bundesverwaltung", that is kind of a central authority for IT knowledge of the german government ("Authority of coordination and consulting for IT in the german administration").
If someone decides to buy 3000 lincenses of windows 2000, it could happen that he has to justify his decision against the "Bundesrechnungshof" (central authority of accounting in the administration) which are very strict. He now officially has information about a competing product which at least is cheaper and evaluated positive by an official authority.
This report could even get companies like Suse ground to sue the government if they are not asked for a bid.

European Procurement Regulations

It is all a bit different then you think. Whenever a government organisation wants to buy something they have to check if the services or goods do not exceed 200,000 Euro. If it does, they are obliged to start a European Procurement Procedure. This Procedure is such that by formally announcing the intent to buy something in the publication paper of the EU you ask people to bid for the contract. It is an entire procedure that I could explain to you. (I wrote a 80 page report on it) The important part here is that one of the things you are not allowed to specify what product you want. Only what it is intended to do. This all became clear in the UNIX-case, where a government agency specified they wanted several UNIX-licenses. The judge ruled that they could not specify that. They should say that it had to be UNIX or similar.

In short this means that no government agency in Europe can just buy Windows 2000. The procedure has to be open to everybody supplying an Operating System, that is capable of doing the things which are specified. If Suse is going after the contract for an operating system then they have to be given an equal and fair chance against Win2000. (you ofcourse do understand that when government agencies really want a certain product they will change the specs in favor of the product they want. But this sometimes fails)

Re:Actual translation

I am a native english speaker and have lived in Germany for more than 8 years. My German is exceedingly good so let me take another crack at it.
-------begin translation--------

The cowardly Ministry for Internal Affairs draws back the Open Source paper

Obviously, the internal analysis which was released to the public was the work of some "Linux Crazed" programmer. The document, in which the experts of the ministerium stress the advantages of the free software as to it's security and possibilities of savings, was withdrawn immediately by higher ups who have consistently received payments from an unnamed west coast based U.S. software company.

The letter entitled "Open Source Software in the German national administration" was made available on the Internet last week by the so-called "Coordination and Advice Office for Information Technics at the German Administration" (KBSt, the letter was KBSt 2/2000). KBSt was obviously not recieving sufficient payments or the payments themselves were late in arriving for the month of February.

The text was withdrawn from the KBSt server after heise online reported about this letter, then it reappeared during this week again, but now it has finally disappeared. Answering a question from c't, Roger Kiel, the speaker of the Ministery, stated that the programmer who masqueraded as an official spokesman for the Ministry of Interior has been sacked. The supervisors of the programmer have also been sacked. The pointy headed boss of the supervisors has returned to Redmond for reprogramming.

Right now the letter is still on the list of KBSt letters, but the link itself points to an IIS server which is almost always down for maintenance.

Among the experts in the field, the idea of usage of Open-Source-Software as a possible alternative to commercial Software is widely approved. Daniel Riek, the member of the head-commitee of the Linux group "LiVe", said he regrets the decision of the Ministery and sincerely wishes that the Ministry could "shake the shackles of commercial corruption". This radical Linux advocate has been promoting the usage of OSS for a long time, and would gladly see a public discussion on this subject. "Those ministry of interior guys are a bunch of brainwashed cowards. Sure, they don't want Open source software. They're too stupid to know how to configure it without some sort of wizards", said Riek.

More informations about the details of this study [= KBSt letter] can be found in c't 7/2000 (which appears on Monday).

-----eof translation-----

Finally, Ive set the record straight. The original poster was obviously not a native German speaker.

r/

Dave

Quick translation

I'm not an eglish native speaker, and not a german native speaker, but I do speak both languages quite fluently. So - let's try:

-------begin translation--------

The Ministry for Internal Affairs draws back the Open Source paper

Obviously, an internal analysis about the use of free Software in the German administration was not appraised by some higher officials. The document, in which the experts of the ministerium stress the advantages of the free software as to it's security and possibilities of savings, was withdrawn from the Internet on the command "from people up there".

The letter entitled "Open Source Software in the German national administration" was made available on the Internet last week by the so-called "Coordination and Advice Office for Information Technics at the German Administration" (KBSt, the letter was KBSt 2/2000). KBSt is subordinated to the German Ministry of Intenal Affairs; the letters are supposed to give other administration offices a view and expertise about the developments and experiences in the field of computational techniques.

The text was withdrawn from the KBSt server after heise online reported about this letter, then it reappeared during this week again, but now it has finally disappeared. Answering a question from c't, Roger Kiel, the speaker of the Ministery, confirmed that the letter was removed due to a direction of the Ministery. The letter is supposed to be only for internal use and not for the public, said Kiel. Checking whether Open-Source-Software is fit for the use in the Ministery is - so Kiel - not finished yet.

Right now the letter is still on the list of KBSt letters, but the link is pointing nowhere, whereas all other KBSt letters since 1997 are still available.

Among the experts in the field, the idea of usage of Open-Source-Software as a possible alternative to commercial Software is widely approved. Daniel Riek, the member of the head-commitee of the Linux group "LiVe", said he regrets the decision of the Ministery. This Linux group has been promoting the usage of OSS for a long time, and would gladly see a public discussion on this subject. "The KBSt letter calls price- and security advantages as core arguments, which, so our analysis, support the usage of OSS", said Riek.

More informations about the details of this study [= KBSt letter] can be found in c't 7/2000 (which appears on Monday).

-----eof translation-----

Regards,

January