Microsoft vs. Ximian 308
Kappelmeister writes "The open source movement gets some great mainstream press today as the Washington Post reports tht Ximian's Volunteer 'Army' Fights Microsoft on Open-Source Code. It mentions Linux progress in the server market, Shared Source, and how both sides are courting Mexican President Vincente Fox for use in his 'eMexico' initiative to get 98 percent of the population online. Best of all, though, it tells a lot of people that there is a decent alternative to Microsoft software."
"Nobel laureates and the like.."? (Score:3, Informative)
Say what?!? Anyone have a more detailed explanation of this status and who the "geniuses" are who get it?
Anyway, on a less combatative note than this article, here's KDE's Konqui visiting the Ximian booth [capsi.com] at LWCE and trying out GNOME [capsi.com]. From Rob Kaper's photo gallery [capsi.com].
Linux vs Microsoft and vice versa (Score:5, Informative)
"Microsoft will support e-Mexico project" (Score:2, Informative)
But with this article about Miguel, I think it can shed a little over the "commitment" made by MS with Mexico's government.
Uatu
P.S. Originally it had two articles, but I present just one of them.
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Microsoft will support e-Mexico project
I just read some news about the interview Steve Ballmer had with Mexico's President Vicente Fox about the e-Mexico project (in few words, to deploy an internet backbone around the country and install at least kiosks in small communities. Something like that.)
Well, my worst fears are coming true. Now I say this even when I make a living developing solutions mostly on Microsoft technologies and I haven't give that much thought about what exactly would be best, but I think what my country (or any developing one) needs is
1) Try to cover the most territory/town/etc. in your project
2) Try to save the most money trying to do it. On other words, do it cheaply.
3) Not to tie your project/future in a technology that may require further payments. (.NET, license rents, etc.)
4) Use technologies that can be cheaply replicated.
And going the MS way does not cover these last 3 points and can affect the first one because the rised costs.
About other cons, we have seen something similar in UK, where the websites needs the IE browser. (I can't loacet a Register article about it.)
I think that to deply an all-Linux solution needs more people, more training, etc. Also, I don't know what company would recommend an all-open-source solution (any ideas here?), but maybe we can do something "quick" giving some concesions, like maybe clients with Windows machines but the applications being made with open source tools (Apache, PHP, Java, etc.) so that the applications and the future of the project don't be tied to a company's (specially THIS company) whims.
Why not do something like China for that matter, who appears to be using Linux ?
On the other hand, it's better to wait until senator Helms retires, before he label Mexico as a communist country if we do that.
About the article, when you read it it sounds as if they'll actually spend those 60 million dollars, and when you do the math ($60,000,000 / 20,000 people == $3,000 dlls.)
I don't know what the training will cover. Anyway, in Mexico you can train someone VB, SQLServer, Access with less than that.
When I read about the "investment", I couldn't help but remember the local articles when X company makes a donation to an university and says they gave away thousand and thousand of dollars... if you use the price list that nobody pays anyway because on that scale you can use site licenses, etc.
Also, a book named "How to Lie with Statistics" comes to mind.
I know I sound "ungrateful", but I can't help it being so cynical.
Now a little "Ask Slashdot" here: What would you do if you think MS is not the best way to go. Or better: What would you do about this project.
Anyway, here are the articles and the translations.
http://www.elnorte.com/tecnologia/articulo/140950
and here (this is other paper from the same company) with small modifications
http://www.reforma.com/economiayfinanzas/articulo
Here's a translation of the article. Please note that Ballmer's comments are translated from the spanish article, so I don't know what he said exactly in english so it can (or better sai, I'm sure to) be different.
Microsoft will support e-Mexico project
Microsoft will invest on the certification of 20 thousand mexican developers who could create software technologies.
Ciudad de México, México.- Steve Ballmer, Microsoft President, announced today his company will do an investment of $58 million dollars through five years to support the Mexico's Government informatic
project e-Mexico.
Ballmer, after an interview with President Vicente Fox in the oficial house of Los Pinos, said the investment will be used to prepare 20 thousand people to develop software adequate to the mexican technological necessities . he indicated that for the company it's very important to invest in the country since it "will duplicate it's
profits in the technology industry the next years and Microsoft don't want to miss it."
Ballmer commented that the Fox's administrationalready has the necessary infrastructure to get the people of all social classes near the e-Mexico project. The project will try to extend high-level education around the people,
benefit the operation of the small and medium enterprises and to advance other aspects that favor the development of the country.
The Microsoft executive said that after his conversation with Fox his "optimism" toward the project has increased. He indicated that Microsoft's work will begin with the preparation of 3 thousand teachers, so that they could train other groups of education professionals.
Ballmer said that Mexico is a strategic market for the future of Microsoft,
especially for the development possibilities the country presents.
Microsoft began operations in Mexico 15 years ago, and is associated with Teléfonos de México, the biggest telecommunications company in the country in the portal T1msn.
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Other similar article from the same press conference:
http://servicios.t1msn.com.mx/noticias/computacio
(Yes, it's from Telmex & Microsoft's portal.)
IBM's Involvement (Score:5, Informative)
Um, wow, $1 million, I guess that shows they really care about Linux. Fortunately, it's really $1 billion :-)
Re:The place to start (Score:2, Informative)
But then again, I bet your granny couldn't install any other operating system you care to mention either.
In both cases, what happens is that someone comes to the computer, installs whatever OS they want on it plus software then leave them to it.
Also, in elementary schools, we would not be expecting topics like "And today children, we shall teach you how to grep your way around the linux cvs". What you would want is a system with nice big buttons so that kids are one click away from getting the program that they are supposed to be using, one desktop so that they don't get lost, and a couple of elementary school educational programs (there happen to be a couple, I can't remember what they are off-hand)
Perhaps, what we need is a distro which focuses on the school market. It would be minimalistic (no apache, etc.), focus on educational software, have a web browser, wordprocessor, etc and that would be it.
Even better, start up a company which sells computers with the distro preinstalled and configured, and provides support.
Re:decent alternative (Score:2, Informative)
In StarOffice, you can use the
When you go this route, it does a minimal install in the user's home dir, and each user accesses the shared program files from a central location, ie a network install
Re:The place to start (Score:2, Informative)
Reusing old hardware with the above products makes sense.
This idea is becoming more real with the Red Hat announcement [zdnet.com] last week.
Red Hat is working with the K12LTSP [k12ltsp.org] project which is designed for using Linux and Open Source software in schools.
Re:A decent alternative! (Score:2, Informative)
Configuring menus in KDE is every bit as easy as configuring the Start menu in Windows
I don't think so. My Windows Start menu is drag and drop. My KDE panel is not. In fact, adding a new application to it is tiresome and takes about 1 minute.
Address book support, etc.
While I agree the filtering is nice, the address book has problems. Namely, no LDAP. Not having a central address book can be huge for a company moving from MS Exchange.
I just migrated an 8-site corporation to Star Office from MS-Office - no complaints; its working great.
You probably didn't get any complaints because all of your mail was forwarded to /dev/null and you forgot the password to check your voicemail. You simply can not have NO COMPLAINTS. Users are lazy and do not like change. You've had complaints, you've just considered them unimportant enough. What about fonts under Star Office? What about macros?
Complaints aside, I agree, KDE is at least equal in useability with Windows 9.x, and in many places superior.