Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> ____/ peterwn on Saturday 03 November 2007 07:45 : \____
>
>> On Nov 3, 5:38 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Canadian Greens add FOSS to election platform
>>>
>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>> | Thanks to a founding member of Free Geek Vancouver, the Green Party of
>>> | Canada has quietly become the first major political party in Canada to
>>> | make support for free and open source software (FOSS) part of its election
>>> | platform.
>>
>> The New Zealnd Greens have been making similar noises.
>>
>> Neat thing the Greens will be wanting Governments to procure computers
>> that will last 10 to 20 years and not be stuck on vendor driven
>> upgrades as at present.
>
> BECTA, the BBC, and the government at large (see OP) neglect to take account of
> their own studies and _recommendations_. BECTA found that proprietary software
> is not needed, but went with Microsoft anyway. The BBC (Trust?) warned about
> corporate interests and fell victim to the very same thing it envisioned. As
> far as servers go, a study funded by the Government showed that Linux is twice
> as green as Windows, but Gordon Brown /et al/ get excited about Mirosoft
> deals, with lockins such as SharePoint. Rationale says one thing, but the
> Microsoft Money says another.
>
> BECTA and the BBC come under huge pressure at the moment. John Pugh has
> recently slammed the government as well, so non-techies start to realise
> what's going on (where their money goes).
>
The problem you get is that the proprietary software and hardware
companies have large budgets for taking senior people to dinner and more.
Open-source solutions are being integrated to a much tighter budget,
and lack the lock-in revenue streams, thus, they do not have the same
amount of cash to indulge in these things.
This means that proprietary organisations can effectively buy influence,
whereas open-source organisations struggle to do so. If they /were/ to
do so, then they would start to eat into one of their main selling
points.
The conundrum: How do you gain influence without lock-in?
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
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| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
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