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UK Gov't Considers Expanding Open Source Use 213

Posted by timothy from the did-you-say-free-old-boy dept.
IonPanel writes "BBC have a story about the use of open source software at the heart of British government policy. The UK government is now running trials at both government and local level, citing the world-wide effort of a community of programmers fixing bugs and free upgrades as the reason. And all this despite the good friendship between Bill Gates and Tony Blair. There will be quite a few worried faces at Microsoft over the next few months ... Lets hope it's another Munich!" The experiments -- a joint effort with IBM, run by the Office of the E-envoy -- will "cover a range of departments, from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to the e-envoy's office itself."
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UK Gov't Considers Expanding Open Source Use More

UK Gov't Considers Expanding Open Source Use

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  • The real reason... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @05:13AM (#7193599) Homepage Journal
    The real reason is probably simple: Money
    Not money as in saving by using open source, but saving money as in getting Microsoft and other vendors to drop their pants, because open source is considered, and acknowledged as a competitor.

    Regards,
    --
    *Art
    • Probably. Its more likely a bluff to see what MS will do for them. I don't see Linux servers sprouting like mushrooms at the Govt. too soon.

    • Re:The real reason... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Money is indeed a very good reason, or rather, the lack of it. It impels those of us working in UK government departments (or local government, in my case) to adopt free and open source solutions simply so we can do our work effectively. MRTG [ee.ethz.ch], Nagios [nagios.org], KiXtart [kixtart.org], and SysInternal's PSTools [sysinternals.com] are all tools in my arsenal, and because they were free I just went and used them. No management financial decisions were needed, so a lack of budget couldn't get in the way of us doing our job properly.

      The problem is th
      • That reminds me of a friend of mine who was doing a computer science degree course with the gigantic Open University. He was entitled to a free personal computer with extras, so the O.U. sent him a catalog from the 'specialist suppliers to the education sector' that they use. This company was charging roughly twice the market average for the goods they supplied. Apparently the O.U. has the nerve to offer an economics degree course too.

        When politicians tell me they could simultaneously cut taxes and increa

    • Don't get it . . . (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Idou ( 572394 ) *
      This was brought up when South Korea announced its Open Source initiative due to MS having too much market control.

      I can believe that countries would let MS know they are looking at alternatives inorder to get a better deal, but citing "avoiding MS market dominance" or stating that the Open Source model results in more secure and stable code is NOT going to win them points with MS.

      No, if I was starting a project just to get MS to lower their prices, I would state that PRICE and only PRICE was what was dr

      • No, if I was starting a project just to get MS to lower their prices, I would state that PRICE and only PRICE was what was driving me to look at alternatives. I wouldn't mention reasons that might piss MS off and hurt negotiations.
        Who mentioned that stuff anyway? This article is not "news", it is commentary by a BBC columnist. The article alleges that they are studying the effectiveness and cost savings of open source, then the rest of the text is all the author's opinion.

        Frankly, I think OSS advocates
      • No. :P

        If you state just price, then they are asking MS to be cheaper (or close to) the cost of Open Source. If you state price + too big etc then you are asking MS to be a _lot_ cheaper, in order to make up for everything else.

  • But it should not be forgotten that the UK Government, like the rest of us, is already a major user of open source software, just because so much of the net's infrastructure depends on it.

    Exactly the point. What does this testing actually accomplish? The existing projects aren't getting funded; the existing open-source software are still going to be used as usual; the testing derives very little solid evidence of superiority; and the entire thing is just that the government might or might not open-source

    • Re:And...? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Rhinobird ( 151521 )
      I think the point they were trying to make is since the public (as taxpayers) paid for the software, that the public should have access to the source code.

    • Re:And...? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Talthane ( 699885 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @06:59AM (#7193728)
      Government (central and local) in the UK is very focused on process rather than delivery - partly because of scandals, partly because we have very tight auditing mechanisms. It's the reason that IT projects by government often come to nothing, incidentally. But the point of the project is that local authorities and central government departments will adopt nothing unless they're certain it's been tested and validated by someone who has some kind of authority. That authority used to be the US government, but things are changing and now the UK government has its own agenda - a Good Thing.
  • Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

    Note this.

    I am betting a case of beer that the BLIAR will once again suck up to Bill and open his election campaign at the MSFT UK headquaters near Reading as he did in the last elections.

    I am betting ten cases of beer that this will not get anywhere. You do not expect anything but MSFT to go around in a country where the prime minister prefers to open his campaing at MSFT headquarters instead of any members of the FTSE 100 list.

    • Remember, IBM is behind this one. Microsoft will tread carefully, this isn't like them facing Red Hat, which is basically a gnat comared to MS. IBM is a company with enough mindshare and economic influence they stand a chance against Microsoft here.

    • As far as I can see Blair does not appear to have any particular interest in local government, and it is indeed all done by Prescott and his department. And then they're really only interested in London councils, and make and bend the rules in order to play politics with London councils, as the world outside London doesn't exist.

      Of course the world outside London does exist, and there are lots of councils outside London, and they are caught by rules which seem completely daft and irrelevant and bizarre unt
      • You're a LibDem councillor, right Tim - and possibly a Bristolian (by birth) to boot.

        there are lots of councils outside London, and they are caught by rules which seem completely daft and irrelevant and bizarre until you have managed to work out which parochial little London squabble caused them to be invented.

        Indeed. And there are also alot of councils which seem to bend over backward to impose bizarre, daft and irrelevant rules on the people who elected then.

        The Lib Dem group in South Gloucester
  • I wish our government would try it also.
    They are currently doing the budget negotiations, they could find a huge saving post in OS...

  • John Prescott (Score:3, Funny)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @05:19AM (#7193612) Journal
    [grin] I just can't see ole "two jabs" [bbc.co.uk] using Linux. I can't see him using anything more complicated than a notebook and pencil, to be honest ... Concepts like 'desktop metaphor' were not meant for the JP's of the world (pun intended :-)

    Simon.
    • > I just can't see ole "two jabs"

      That's "Two jags" .. as in two jaguar cars.
      • Oh dear. I suggest you click on the link and read it ....

        Simon.

  • Blair != Govenment (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Captain Kirk ( 148843 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @05:28AM (#7193621) Homepage Journal
    Tony Blair may be pro-Microsoft but each department has its own budget and makes its own IT decisions. I've seen invitations to tender that specifically require programs to be COM based which makes it a MS easy win. Others require that the supplier have reference sites in the Government already (easy for EDS and Accenture) while others look for a fit with existing Linux/Apache skills. Tony Blair loves Microsoft but open source is alive and well in the UK public services.
    • Tony Blair doesn't love Microsoft, he loves big business, and he wants big business to benefit from every aspect of British life. Note that the Office of the e-Envoy isn't using an enthusiastic start-up for the pilots, it's using IBM, who have admittedly done good things for Linux and Open Source in the bigger scheme of things, but will be causing the e-Envoy's office to be overrun by enthusiastic but largely clueless (but chargeable) project managers. But it's big business, so it must be good.

  • One step forward for RMS' goals (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pflipp ( 130638 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @05:29AM (#7193622)
    While "we" are all making fun of mr. Stallman, his original idea (to create a user base for Free Software as to ultimately create a legal platform and status for it) is finally seeing the first tiny steps towards a result; recognition by governments is a good first. This should also (partially) explain his hammering on the GNU brand, as to promote the ideas behind the project on moments as these. You never know what they'll pick up in new legislation just because they've heard of it and find some kind of sense in it.

    Now of course this post seems like an open invitation to start another pro-/ anti-RMS GNU vs. BSD bash riot on Slashdot, but I honestly believe that most of that has been said before (duh!). All I wanted to do is put this single point of credit towards mr. Stallman, independent of any other credits he should or should not deserve in your eyes. (Let's see if this keeps you from throwing some old mud on Slashdot...)

  • I came across this story yesterday because it was linked from the front page of news.bbc.co.uk [bbc.co.uk]... that's pretty mainstream press coverage...

    Anyway, given that I live in the UK, I'm certainly hope this works out like Munich...

    • Same here. It always frustrated me that the government was seemingly so narrow minded towards open source.. but it looks like finally they got a bit of common sense, and are exploring the alternatives.

      Hooray for the government.. ahem ;)

  • Manuals (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @05:32AM (#7193628) Journal
    This could be a major boon for tech manual writers - you know governments - like everything documented (well - supposed to anyway).

    Tons of OSS stuff is severely lacking in the documentation department - if enough governments take it up then it could create a nice tech manual industry.

    • Wrong, I'm afraid. The process that led you to your decision has to be documented to death, in order to prove to auditors (and scandal-hunting citizens) that you didn't do anything wrong by choosing AnySoftware.com. Once that choice is validated, nobody cares whether AnySoftware.com actually does the job or how it does it. Auditors rarely examine that part of the equation.

    • Tons of OSS stuff is severely lacking in the documentation department

      That's probably true, but tons of OSS stuff also has some of the best documentation you're likely to encounter.
    • This should be coming in especially handy for the UK intelligence service. Now they'll be able to write their own LaTeX documents instead of borrowing somebody's thesis.
  • This is good. Even if they don't go open source, if more and more people see it as an option more will use it. Also, MS and others could drop their prices if Free Software becomes competitive enough.
  • Is this the best face [bbc.co.uk] they could find to put in an article dealing with Open Source adoptation?

    • Is this the best face they could find to put in an article dealing with Open Source adoptation?

      That face, I believe, belongs to Bill Thompson - the author of the article. His articles are generally pretty good considering the audience his column is aimed at. Do you perhaps think that his looks imply that he has nothing interesting or worthwhile to say?

      • Do you perhaps think that his looks imply ...

        I'm uncomfortable with what =you= imply. The parent of your post makes a good (and funny) point. Your post, ostensibly so caring and considerate, so PC, denies the intelligence and social skills of the poster, the Slashdot audience, the BBC audience, and Bill Thompson.

        Sigh

    • Is this the best face they could find to put in an article dealing with Open Source adoptation?
      I agree. This one [umich.edu] is much cuter.
      • This babe obviously reads /. too much and has mistaken BSD for toast.
      • Events during and after the battle for Munich's 14,000 desktops:

        Jan. 23, 2003: Consulting firm Unilog recommends IBM-SuSE's $39.5 million bid over Microsoft's $36.6 million offer.

        March 25: Steve Ballmer visits Munich's mayor, gives him a heads up regarding soon-to-be-announced 15% price cut.

        April 10 : Microsoft and German Ministry of Interior announce 15% discount for all German government buyers.

        April 15 : Microsoft announces strong earnings for the fiscal third quarter.

        April 25 : Microsoft lowers Mun

  • Tony and Bill (Score:3, Informative)

    by infradead ( 411971 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @05:44AM (#7193641)
    And all this despite the good friendship between Bill Gates and Tony Blair

    They fell out long ago. Tony expected Bill to provide UK schools with free software back in '97, but it didn't happen. Then he went along to M$ HQ in the UK during the last election, thinking it would be a good photo opportunity, and instead M$ used him to launch the latest Windows XP.

    I think Bliar finally got used to the way businesses like M$ work...

  • Blair and Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @05:47AM (#7193643)
    Blair is a lawyer (IDS mispronounces it "liar" in his peculiar accent, but that's what he means.) He also left legal practice well before UK lawyers decided that computers were OK, in about 2000. That means that the full extent of his knowledge about IT is:
    • Lower class people like secretaries and clerks use computers
    • Some of the people who have something to do with them, like Mr. Gates, apparently have lots of money and should be kept onside.
    I imagine if the thinks about it at all, he now thinks that computers are a matter for the civil service. The person who matters is Gordon Brown at the Treasury, a man who famously used to phone journalists up at 10pm because of something interesting he had worked out from a spreadsheet. And his approach could be summarised very briefly as:
    • Will this work?
    • Will this save money?
    • Will this affect UK jobs?
    The people to convince about FOSS are in the Treasury, and as they tend to be the smartest people in the UK government, there may be some chance of making it work.

  • What a travesty! (Score:3, Funny)

    by An Anonymous Hero ( 443895 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @05:49AM (#7193644)
    The experiments -- a joint effort with IBM, run by the
    Office of the E-envoy -- will "cover a range of departments, from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to the e-envoy's office itself."
    So the whole investigation is being run in .doc format?!? Obviously, the dice are loaded.

    I can see it coming. "Linux has GNUs", "ready to launch in under 45 minutes", blah, blah.

  • This is not just about MS (Score:4, Informative)

    by dipfan ( 192591 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @06:04AM (#7193661) Homepage
    The government's statement is here. [ogc.gov.uk]

    Contrary to the thumbsucking BBC think-piece pointed to, this is not just about Microsoft (although it concerns them, obviously). The UK government has had its fingers burned badly in the last few years over huge IT projects that have gone wrong - the Home Office passports debacle, thanks to Siemens, was just one of them, but there have been others involving EDS and Accenture, all using proprietry software, all costing buckets of cash and all having severe problems with overruns. This has as much to do with trying to avoid those messes than the BBC's "Beast of Redmond" bogey monster.

    Some more good news is that the government statement included this comment:
    At the same time OGC announced its latest deal on pricing arrangements for Software with IBM. This will offer enhanced discounts across the public sector with additional savings where Linux products are specified.
    • I was interested to see one of the pilot projects will be with London Borough of Newham Council (area of East London, quite low income generally, inner city). This council has been getting involved in some really interesting wired community projects already.

      [winsladeonline.com]
      Wireless connectivity on the Winslade Estate

      Carpenter's Estate online - Carpenter Connect [newham.org.uk]
      • Hardly *anyone* there uses computers at all - they need it more than Newham.

  • As a UK local government councillor ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tim Ward ( 514198 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @06:07AM (#7193665) Homepage
    ... I am involved in procurement. We are currently looking at an open source solution for a particular application (well, not completely open source, the back end is Oracle).

    So far I am not impressed.

    I'm not unimpressed witht the software; the difficulty is in getting a handle on what the software can and can't do and confidence that what it can't do will be fixed.

    When you're buying commercial software you get some or all of
    • a visit from a salesman
    • product brochures
    • a demonstration from an expert in the product
    • documentation
    • comprehensive on line help
    • a road map or new features release plan
    • clarity as to what you do and don't get in the support contract
    and so on.

    With this open source offering we appear to be getting few or none of the above: "here's the URL for the demo system, go and play with it". Um yes. Thanks. Not, I fear, a basis on which a public authority can spend lots of tax payers' money on a service for tax payers.

    Whilst it seems entirely possible that the open source offering is well designed to meet our needs it also seems entirely possible that it will be unable to demonstrate this to an acceptable risk profile so we'll have to buy something else. The competitors, as usual, include paying for a managed service elsewhere or buying commercial software.
    • Indeed. Most open source projects are appalling when it comes to documentation, demonstrations or future roadmaps. Why? Because geek elitism still runs deep in the open source world. "RTFM" (manual which often is in the incomprehensible-to-navigate, completely unstandard info-format), "search Google newsgroups" and "fix the bugs yourself" are typical responses to newbie questions.

      This time, however, the company pushing open source is IBM and they know how to sell well-rounded finalized products.

    • Sounds like FUD.

      I am sure that IBM, RedHat, SUSE, or whoever can provide all the things in your list.

    • This is probably why you need a consultancy
      firm (dare I say it... IBM or someone) to show
      you what is going on. If I had time... I'd be
      happy to show you what is going on.

      Raw OpenSource generally only appeals to people
      who are confident about what they want and understand the IT problem correctly. Then you can
      get this stuff for free, off the net and set up
      things for just the cost of the time of the guys
      who installs it. And generally it is far stabler
      than any "commercial" solutions.

      But, in the absence of some
    • ... I am involved in procurement.

      According to your web site and resume [brettward.co.uk], it appears that you are an independent software engineer, not a representative of government procurement.

      So far I am not impressed.

      This is not to be unexpected from someone such as yourself, whose career is heavily invested in Microsoft technologies. Your CV even shows that you used to work at Microsoft itself.

      However rather than posting vague generalizations about not being impressed, why don't you post what the open source

      • According to your web site and resume, it appears that you are an independent software engineer, not a representative of government procurement.

        In the UK being a councillor is a voluntary activity. Some councillors do do it full time, being retired or otherwise unemployed or unemployable, but there are plenty of us who have day jobs. Having a day job as a software engineer doesn't stop me being an unpaid part time councillor, and my colleagues seem to think that as I know something about software I should

    • Invite the author for a visit... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Corpus_Callosum ( 617295 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @07:08AM (#7193743) Homepage
      When you're buying commercial software you get some or all of....

      Go to the URL, find the name and email of the primary author of the software and send him an email. In your email, explain the situation and invite him for a consultation. Offer to pay airfare and expenses and, perhaps, a small consulting fee for the day. Your total expense for this will be insignificant compared to the procurement costs for commercial software.

      What you will find is that the person who shows up is an absolute expert in the software (he wrote it), will be happy to work for you as a consultant making your improvements and bugfixes (guaranteed to be competent, since he wrote it) and will probably leave you on that day with a fully operational and configured system at your location, for the cost of his visit.

      If you would prefer power-point presentations from a salesman who probably has never really used the software that he is selling outside of presentation environments to be followed by incredibly high licensing costs, delays and lock-in consultants at outrageous prices that cannot even modify the software that you bought, take the proprietary course that you mentioned.

      But I sincerely hope, for your sake, that you will give my suggestion a "go around". ;-)
      • Go to the URL, find the name and email of the primary author of the software and send him an email. In your email, explain the situation and invite him for a consultation. Offer to pay airfare and expenses and, perhaps, a small consulting fee for the day. Your total expense for this will be insignificant compared to the procurement costs for commercial software.

        This is a public service procurement. If we did that for one potential supplier we'd have to do it for all of them, otherwise they'd sue when they
        • This is a public service procurement. If we did that for one potential supplier we'd have to do it for all of them, otherwise they'd sue when they lost the business.

          It it at least possible for you to contact the author and ask if they are interested in tendering for the contract? I'd be surprised if they didn't put a lot of effort into addressing your concerns but not if s/he/they don't know you are looking at their system.

          TWW

    • Tim, you may or may not be a councillor (and I notice your CV says you were a Microsoft employee and are a software engineer) but this is largely irrelevant. Your contention misses the point entirely, because you're expecting to be feted by a company when no such company exists. OSS is judged by the performance of the software - support, resilience and reliability are up to you.

      Very few local authorities have in-house skills, which is why it seems like such a "risk" to you. I work for a Shropshire local au

      • The reason we don't have an in-house IT department any more is, I'm told (it was before my time), because once upon a time a mainframe came to the end of its useful life and needed replacing, and government would not provide the money (a small district council can't afford that sort of thing from its own resources). The only option was outsourcing.

        Incidentally, take a look at Cambridgeshire County sometime - they do some good work.

        I'm afraid I really can't reply to this, and I can't even give any hints

        • The outsourcing of IT is understandable, as it arose in the 1990s because people believed it would save costs. That model's proven to be unsustainable - here's another example, in the shape of Mendip District Council, which has done the same thing only to find they're paying thousands to Capita for no discernible return. Outsourcing is a way to maintain the status quo, not to bring improvements.

          My original point still stands - you need to focus attention on developing in-house skills, not on which company

          • Otherwise, you sound like you're only interested in effective contract management, not in the proper development of local government IT - I'm not trying to flame you, but I still think you're missing the point.

            We're not the slightest bit interested in either of those. We're interested in delivering services to residents. All the IT is totally ancilliary.

            • Which is exactly why you're missing the point, I think. Without a properly working back office, service delivery will forever involve people running around and paper travelling back and forth between floors and departments. A land charges search is a good example - transfer of information between various departments that all too often involves forms from Planning, Environmental Health, and so on. All too often that happens manually, when it's incredibly easy to automate. You really think IT is ancillary and

    • Much as I don't normally agree with Tim ;-), there is an important point here that everyone seems determined to ignore and that is the quality of support available. If you're an Open Source outsider looking to use OSS as an alternative to big boys like Accenture (who are truly corrupt - forget M$) you need some confidence that:
      1. You've found the right OSS product to start from
      2. It does all the things you need it to do
      3. You can train your staff to use it
      4. If it goes wrong someone can fix it or help work aro
    • What you want is a software company that also provides consultancy.

      Let me tell you what happens with that: the software company the software and sell it to you, then comes the consultancy part (that where you get the brochures, training, and the system set for you, all this followed by maintenance and hand holding. No warranites though, read your licenses).

      Here you have an intrinsec conflict of interest, this company will do the upmost to keey you locked with them. I know of companies that when they trai
    • Of course a free product doesn't include sales support. Often a very high percentage of what you pay for software is burned up in the sales process. Free products don't charge you and sales people don't donate their time very often.

      For a free product to move into the enterprise insiders need to consider it their responsibility to become the experts. "Procurement" would be cut out of the process entirely since their isn't anything to buy. Which means the job of assessing suitability and risk moves from
      • Stop thinking like a customer and start thinking like a citizen.

        Wonderfully put. If people and organisations would think "What can I do to help myself" or "What can we do to help each other" rather than "What can someone else do to help me" then we'd be in a healthier state.

        Yes, there are economies of scale in offloading work which isn't out core expertise. I get a landrette to wash and iron my work shirts. I pay half an hour's salary for a job that would take me a couple of hours - this makes sense! I
    • a visit from a salesman
      - A guy who lies for a living.

      product brochures
      - Glossy lies are somehow more true.

      a demonstration from an expert in the product
      - Like you know enough about the product to see through the half-truths.

      documentation
      - OSS usually has documentation that is useful. Not Doucumentation which is more marketing than useful.

      comprehensive on line help
      - hehe, they say you comming didn't they?

      a road map or new features release plan
      - Which has little or no relation

      • documentation

        OSS usually has documentation that is useful. Not Doucumentation which is more marketing than useful.

        That was a really good post, except for what I've quoted. Doesn't that seem a bit disingenuous? I am looking at the KDE help files right now, and here is what I see on many pages: "we are looking for someone to write this section." They're not the only ones. Even right in the comments for this article, there are people suggesting that government use of OSS could help solve our document

        • it has to exist first

          Good point.

          there are people suggesting that government use of OSS could help solve our documentation problem

          I've been thinking....

          All over the world people are investigating open source. Looks like quite a bit of money is being spent on such investigations. Yet strangely none of the results ever filter back... nobody makes their result open.

          So rather than a paradigm shift going on in the world of software I'm starting to wonder if all this is a bit of a con. Organisations wh
    • As a UK local government councillor
      If you are indeed a democratically elected officer of a Local Government body of some sort it is you job to set policy, not to concern yourself in any way with the implementation of that policy. To do otherwise is to leave youself open to the charge that you have a serious conflict of interest. Don't do it. It's not worth the risk.

      From your web page you claim to be a knowledgible sofware engineer. yet you say this lot:- When you're buying commercial software you get so

    • I think it's important to remember that things like support and documentation are where OSS developers get their income.

      You want a company to build a solution, release the source, have a salesman visit, give you a product brochure and write a load of nice user-friendly documentation, all for free? Where's the company's income?

  • Control (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WebfishUK ( 249858 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @06:45AM (#7193711)
    This is not simply an issue of Money, as many have suggested here, as govermental office in the UK get substantial discounts on MS products (although obviously not as cheap as gettng them free). One of the real reasons for looking to open source products is the issue of control. If the tools of goverment are so complex and opaque that the goverment rely on an outside, foreign source, who really runs the country? In theory at least with an open source solution the Goverment could cut ties with the original developers and get another group to develop. ALso the goverment could employ its own developers to ensure the software is not full of "spyware" - in the original meaning of the word in this case!

    Here in the UK the goverment is seriously looking into the introduction of ID cards. The infrastructure for this would be run on computers. I for one would be very concerned if a very large, very powerful, foreign (albeit allied) company was given the tender to install such a system. He who controls the information, controls the world....

    • Also, Microsoft designed some sites for the UK Gov, these would only function with Internet Explorer. I think this is rather embarrasing for a government site, such sites should be accessible by all UK citizens.

      With open source they get a less techologically biased solution (complying with open standards is more popular in the Open Source community).
      • > Also, Microsoft designed some sites for the UK Gov

        I think you mean "some sites designed for the UK gov only worked with Microsoft browsers"

        Microsoft's influence may stretch far and wide, but it does not extend to web site design. The governement would have drawn upon the closed shop that is it's "outsourcing" of site design and build agencies.

  • Gee, I wonder how many frequent flier miles Steve Ballmer's been getting lately? Earlier this month we've been hearing South Korea [slashdot.org] shifting from MS-based products to Free Software, and now the UK Government is considering expanding the use of Free Software. Heh.

  • World Domination! ;-)
  • This is all nice and everything however I don't think for one second it will cut down the amount of red tape the british public has to go through to get anything out of the goverment/local councils

    Rus

  • Left hand doesnt know what the right hands doing (Score:3, Informative)

    by isorox ( 205688 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @08:34AM (#7193876) Homepage Journal
    It's a shame that as one part of the government expands its OSS use, another part Implements the DMCA [hmso.gov.uk]
  • What is that GNU Icon? Looks like a guy with red shoes and a blue cape, with some kind of helmet on, with a bent beak on the helmet. And he is holding his cape back with his left hand, and holding his nuts with his right hand.

    I have stared at this for over a year expecting the true shape to reveal itself to me eventually, but I can not see anything but what I described.

    Anyone care to expound on this strange icon?
  • I don't know about you, but switching everything around for non-crafty-tech-folk isn't the best way of doing a transition. I found out that that could only make things worse, as they get pretty much confused, and demand their old configuration back.

    so if I where an admin there, I'd do the trasition in several steps, slowly under a longer period of time (like 1-2 years...but it all depends on what level the users are on..):
    1. start reclaping their Office-suite out with an open one;like OpenOffice (still runn
    • You forgot MS Outlook, which is a part of MS Office. So, what would you suggest instead of Outlook?

      OpenOffice can substitute Word+Excel+Powerpoint. But there is no groupware application in OpenOffice.

      Mozilla Browser typically substitutes IE. Mozilla Mail can get all email and some contact management functions from Outlook. But Mozilla Calendar is far from being capable to substitute Outlooks's Tasks and Meetings, first of all as Mozilla Calendar is a personal not-networked application. Besides, no any e

      • I can't say for certain, as I have not had cause to use it, but OpenGroupware.org looks pretty good. It can be used by a variety of clients, or from a web-front-end.

        I bet it's worse than Outlook's stuff, but I've never used that before either, so I can't say as I really know.

        It's a really young project, but seems to be coming along nicely. As you can probably tell from the name, it's designed to be part of the OpenOffice.org family of products.

        Also, if you can't figure out the URL for OpenGroupware.org,

  • Lets hope it's another Munich!

    For some reason, that line really creeps me out.

    I know, I know... off-topic.

  • A website, built by me for a member of parliament comprising a bizarre mix of Frontpage and PHP.

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