Egyptian Government To Adopt Free Software On Larger Scale 57
ezabi writes "After announcing a 43 million USD license agreement with Microsoft, the Egyptian government was faced with a protest from FOSS enthusiasts staging a protest before the cabinet. Later, representatives from the community had a meeting with the minister of communications and information technology. Such a meeting led to the ministry issuing a press release (in Arabic) stating its commitment to gradually move to open source (Google Translate to English) as a strategic option for future projects. It's worth mentioning that all governmental websites used in the elections and constitution referendum were all based on open source solutions."
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Not the "freedom" thing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The last thing the Muslim Brotherhood wants is "Freedom".
The one thing that brought the Egyptian government to the free software is that Egypt is facing imminent bankruptcy.
Egyptian pounds have lost 50% of its value since the uprising, and it's poised to lose even more, thanks to the clueless Muslim Brotherhood on running anything effectively.
Right now, as we speak, Egyptians are busy changing their Egyptian pounds into foreign currencies because they know that the Egyptian pounds gonna be devalued even more !!
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I think we're all facing bankruptcy, and paying Microsoft for permission to use their operating system just speeds us down that path. How many billions have they raked in, in Bill Gates lifetime? He can buy and sell small governments. He can buy and sell a couple of larger governments. That's not counting any of the corporation's money, just Bill's money.
You would think that a government that doesn't like capitalism would work hard to avoid making rich corporations even richer.
Charlie Brooker on Windows ... (Score:5, Interesting)
"using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981" Charlie Brooker [guardian.co.uk]
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And all this time I assumed the quote was from Charlie Brown.
That kid's sure grown up!
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Please tell me what foreign currency they are changing it into because I cannot think of one that is not in danger. The best one at the moment seems to be the Yuan.
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There wasn't anyone else (Score:4, Interesting)
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How have you been voted +5 insightful if some of the easily verifiable statements in your post are complete BS. You said the Egyptian pound lost 50% of its value since the uprising and that is verifiable BS. Needless to say that the Muslim Brotherhood have only been in power for months so 1.5years after the uprising. By the way I'm not saying that your claims that the Muslim Brotherhood can't run a country are false. I'm just saying that your supporting facts are, well, not.
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50%!! may be you should educate yourself a little, and stop spreading false information. the Uprising started on the 25 of January 2011: Value of Egyptian Pound to US Dollar= 0.17002 cents.
Today 1.1.2013 Value of Egyptian Pound in US Dollars= 0.15711 cents. Drop in Value= 7.6%
source for information : Xe dot com
They're being used (Score:2)
"stating its commitment to gradually move to open source as a strategic option for future projects"
They aren't changing anything. They're going to use the Microsoft licenses they have already bought.. but on future projects, open source may get a shot, but probably not.
I'm glad these people chose to go protest over some Microsoft licenses amounting to $43m, instead of clearly less important things, like Morsi throwing their momentary democracy in trash [theglobeandmail.com].
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Upgrade their existing desktops and infrastructure to a version that will still be getting security updates in a couple of years time?
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Savages, huh? There are still savages in the world. We read about some of them in the news from time to time. I'm not even Arabic, or related to any Arabic or Egyptian people, but I can definitely recognize that Egyptians aren't savages. Syrians? They're a bit closer to savagery. You want to meet some real savages, catch a plane to Pakistan, or Somalia. Geez, Louise - some of you think that anyone who isn't American or European has to be a savage. Grow up, get an education.
Yeah... Ok... that's fine and all. (Score:4, Insightful)
Free software for people who are not free... Yeah. That's fucking hilarious.
How about adopting some free speech, equal rights? Maybe some basic human rights? Or how about just a little decency...
Thats some fine trolling there egypt.
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hey, I'll take what I can get.
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Excellent. A double portion of a free beating for you.
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Free software for people who are not free... Yeah. That's fucking hilarious.
How about adopting some free speech, equal rights? Maybe some basic human rights? Or how about just a little decency...
Thats some fine trolling there egypt.
who said we are not free? lol , at least we had a social revolution which is still going on too till now,and we had free&transparent elections since the revolution started! and until now,multinational corporations are not brain-washing us and controlling our life like the usa , so i guess judging others like this is just a symbol of jealousy maybe?
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"multinational corporations are not brain-washing us and controlling our life like the usa "
No you are being manipulated by a 6th century cult demanding your ever lasting and unquestioning obedience. The protesters and citizens of Egypt got the same screwing as the Iranian protesters did after their 1979 revolution. Evidently the people in the Mideast are experts at street protests but don't have a clue about how to organize and implement any of the changes they were standing out in the street demanding. A
And open interfaces? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hard to imagine that the Egyptian Government will be happy in the long term with software which gives the user full control over encryption and messaging. They will want a nice closed source solution with DRM right there in the kernel, firmly attached to the hardware.
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All under the watchful eye of the US government. I wonder if the Egyptian Government has access to the source code?
Open Source Software? (Score:1)
Is Egypt not in enough trouble already?
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Because any money that they would give to develop free (or not) software that would come out of this billion would be
taken out of the money that already flows out to US companies, to buy really useful stuff like guns & ammo tanks, planes and all this kind of really important stuff...
Do you really think that any US base aid is not already claimed by some powerful US based corporation ?
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Actually, the only real problem was a replacement for Exchange and Outlook, and the new release of Kolab combined with Kontact seems to cover this pretty well (I wish there was a version of Kontact for OSX, seems to be an abandoned project).
As for which desktop, well, *there* I can see some challenges. 2 years ago I would have said Ubuntu, but they screwed up badly so I think Linux Mint may be worth a shot. The fun bit is that Microsoft has just set a development budget: as long as they stay under 43 Milli
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Not sure what happened: MÃf¼nich should be Munich (left out the special character, maybe Slashdot has a problem with UTF8 :) ).
HTML, anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
the Egyptian government was faced with a protest from FOSS enthusiasts staging a stand before the cabinet http//www.egyptindependent.com/news/activists-protest-microsoft-deal
Y'know, they really should invent a way to visit links quicker than copying and pasting the text into the URL bar.
Yes we do have democracy in Egypt (Score:5, Insightful)
I find the calls for free and open software fascinating. For years the news about deals involving Millions of dollars from Mircosoft and other softwere giants with the Egyptian government were common in Egypt, where 40% of the population live on less than $2/day. But that is no surprise, I guess MS knows its way well around corrupted governments.
Now when the Muslim Brothers respond in their first months of governing to calls of turning to FOSS, they get flamed That's just beyond me.
Just because our democracy brought in power someone you dislike, does not mean it is not a democracy. Most of you know nothing about the Muslim Brothers more than their name -which is enough for some to form an opinion about them- or the biased western media coverage about them. Given, or democracy is not perfect, but we are only in its kindergarten, and may be you should ask yourselves first, how a lot of your tax-money found their way to Mubarak's bank accounts for the last 30 years.
Re:Yes we do have democracy in Egypt (Score:5, Insightful)
The Muslim Brotherhood are getting attacked because they are taking precisely the step necessary to ensure Egypt has one and only one free and fair election. Yes this move to free software is a good thing and indicates they aren't prepared to be tied to Western corporate control, but at the same time the new constitution and the resulting permanent sectarian divide it will set up is not good for Egypt. People in the West are criticising it because we have made similar mistakes in our past, and paid for them with dictatorships.
Because they are absolutely broke (Score:2)
Egypt has zero money. They have enough currency on hand to buy food for the next 3 months. And that's it. If I were them I'd double down on Microsoft and dare Redmond to try to collect.