On Sun, Jul 14, 2002, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote about "Re: knesset meeting on open source": > > 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 >.. > > 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.
I know that. But even this "very cheaply" costs plenty of money (if I remember correctly, the Knesset discussion specified 5 million dollars, plus 4 million for the army) for Microsoft software alone, that could be spent in a different manner. Even if $3 million of that $5 million is still spent on commercial software, you could do wonders with that extra $2 million - such as hiring 20 top-notch programmers (for $100,000 a year) for writing open-source software for the government, or giving 200 people (!) a 50,000 shekel grant to work on open-source software of their preference. Another cost which is hard to enumerate, but still exists, is the huge cost of the commercial software to the Israeli economy (or the parts of it that don't illegally copy commercial software). If a person feels that he cannot switch his OS because his tax-return forms need Microsoft-Word to be filled, and is thus forced to spend several hundred dollars on Microsoft Word, all this money is just lost to the Israeli economy. > > 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). Who cares what he prefers on the client side???? The government must give its services to everyone, not just people who share their software preferences with M.K. Eitan. Everyone can install an HTML viewer or (say) a PDF viewer on their computer (assuming it is relatively modern, not a Commodore 64, sorry). But not everyone can install a Powerpoint viewer. Some can't do it because their OS (Linux, Mac, etc.) doesn't have it (or can't show the right version, or the Hebrew). Some can't do it simply because they can't afford it! By the way, Eitan seems to disagree with me on this point, and thinks that if 95% of the people can see a site, it's enough. How do I know that? Because he also says (read the transcript) it is ok if sites are Hebrew-only without Arabic (even though the Yoetz-Hamishpati Lamemshala declared otherwise). Why? Because "most" Arabic-speakers also know Hebrew. > 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. Are you kidding me? If M.K. Eitan came to you with a job offer to do Linux support for him, wouldn't you take that job? There are plenty of unemployed people, and even if none of them are Linux people (one can dream, can't he?) it's not that difficult to teach the starter of that bunch Linux and let them become Linux support people. So it's a chicken-and-egg problem: there are no Linux support people because very few people need them, so it doesn't sound like a smart career "investment" to learn Linux administration. Anyway, there are also Solaris, Digital Unix, and similar support people. I don't see how hard it would be for them to switch to becoming Linux people. -- Nadav Har'El | Sunday, Jul 14 2002, 5 Av 5762 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |A professor is one who talks in someone http://nadav.harel.org.il |else's sleep. ================================================================= 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]
