> 1. Commercial software costs a lot of money that in 90% of the cases > leaves the country as foreign currency and gives jobs to people abroad and > makes Bill Gates reacher than the State of Israel. > On the other hand open-source software is basically free, and the costs > that *are* incurred (customization, new development, support, system > administration) stay 100% in the country, and give Israeli people jobs > and advanced high-tech training. > Buy Blue and White, anyone? This is a MAJOR consideration.
Costs a lot to whom? To the goverment? I'm under a strict NDA due to my formal employement in the ministry of finance, but I can assure you that the goverment pays WAY LOWER then any commercial company in Israel. Maybe the army got the same terms, don't know, but MS software costs are very cheaply to the goverment. > 2. M.K. Eitan kept coming back to the fact that only Microsoft products > can read Microsoft formats with 100% compatibility (that's debatable too, > but never mind). SO WHAT? The Knesset has an obligation to reach everyone, > not only the majority (even if 95%) using Microsoft software. This is a > MAJOR democratic issue. M.K. Eitan is clearly preffers MS on the client side. As much as I understand from people on the goverment - all of them preffer MS on the client side. Linux on the server side is being used in many areas (cannot specify where - NDA). > 3. Microsoft vs. Open Source are NOT the only two options, which is why > Eitan's breaking up the session into two doesn't sit comfortably with > me. Commercial software from other companies is a viable option too. > These options should be discarded because of their (lack of) merit, > expensiveness and (low) percentage of Blue-and-White development - but > never because of their "this is not a Microsoft product so it is not > commonly used". If some Israeli company produced some useful, > relatively- cheap commercial software (say, a Hebrew search engine for > their site), it might be decided to buy that software, for example. One of the most heard things that I have heard from quite a lot of people in the goverment is very simple - there is no support for Linux in Israel when it comes to 24/7 support. I'll finish this email with a myth breaking: Everyone thinks that IBM is embracing Linux and open source solution - which is true. Until you get into the support area. I know that the IBM guys in Haifa and in Jerusalem knows Linux forward and backward. No questions here. But when it comes to support - then I'm sorry to say, IBM Israel support area knows Linux less so bad, that in scale of 1-10, I'll give them 4 (remember - I'm talking about the support! not R&D!) I had this friday had a talk with someone who's administrating a very large network (a commercial company) who has been asking me questions about Linux on an 8 way pentium. Imagine my surprise to hear from him that he couldn't get answers if he can run Linux on 8 way Xeon machine from IBM (the answer is: soon) and whats the name of the chipset (it's called "summit"). Hetz ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
