Croatian Party Advocates Government Adoption of Open Source 29
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, Croatian political party Sustainable Development of Croatia (ORaH) published a new policy that encourages the government to pursue open source solutions, addresses the dangers of vendor lock-in, and insists on open document standards. Best of all, they did it the open source way. In this article on Opensource.com, Croatian startup founder Josip Almasi highlights some of the policy's implications, as well as why it could matter in the upcoming election.
distrowatch.com (Score:1)
Flight to quality. Common sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Flight to quality. Common sense.
Ahh Distrowatch. Probably my inner geek showing, but I just love that place.
Re:They have no money (Score:4, Funny)
You're one of those people who'd watch Jesus walk over water and go "Some messiah he is, can't even swim".
Re: (Score:2)
And you're the guy who explains that horses violate health codes when the "a horse walks into a bar" joke is being told.
Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)
For that computer.
But hell, for open source software, and for the programs that most people use - I gotta tell ya. Libre is actually better than MS office.
I have several computers, all running Libre office. Macs, PC's, and Linux. No lock in.
And it is compatible no matter the platform. I can take a file between the Mac and the PC and the Linux machine, it it's the same. Microsoft Office can't even go between Windows and OS X without glitches. And no Linux at all. Pah - it's the outlier now. The biggest thing MS Office has going for it is it's feature bloat.
Open source as being cheaper? Hell I use a lot of that stuff because its better.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course with open source you still may need to spend money on consultants that adapt the source to your need. But that's what really saves money because with closed source you are often stuck with default functionality.
Truly the smart guy or gal that has this stuff all figured out will always be needed.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd say the biggest improvement over MS Office is the LACK of the ribbon.
It's fundamentally a bad interface,
Ribbon is completely weird. After I ended up needing some bit of proficiency in both at work, and with a year to get up to speed, the old school interface was faster. So certainly for me, not having that ribbon interface is a big plus.
I use Open Office myself, but I find it infinitely preferable to MS Office.
This is the point where someone chimes in with some obscure function that MS office has that the open source ones don't have.
But MS fanbois, rejoice in my torture - I use Maya.
Simple Economic Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
With the huge negative impact imports have on an economy, it makes simple economic sense to avoid them where ever possible and to actively strive to promote local industry. Using free open source software makes sense. Creating government policy to make use of government university to administer, host and contribute to free open source software also makes sense. Ensuring that all business and people have equal access to government means ensuring no single corporation can dominate, control of suspend that access.
This especially in light of Windows 10 where M$ has made a huge grab for power over countries computer infrastructure, a ludicrously over the top grab for power, although it seems like they really do not realise how far they have stepped over the line. Imagine Windows 10 in your governments administrative offices, imagine windows 10 in your hospitals, imagine windows 10 in your children's school, always watching, always collecting data, logging keystrokes, recording conversations, accessing files. It almost seems like a subconscious act of corporate suicide.
If Trump gets elected (Score:2)
Those filthy commies, stealing the bread from the mouths of our American corporations! Nuke them immediately!
Croatia's the one next to France, right?
Sustainable Government (Score:2, Interesting)
Unencumbered open source software is the key building block of a sustainable government.
Twice nothing is still nothing. (Score:5, Insightful)
The party was formed in 2013. Its leader is a former Minister of Environmental Protection and Nature and Social Democratic Party MP Mirela Holy. She won the seat in the Sabor as a member of Social Democratic Party from which she left after some disagreements over party leadership. On 23 July 2015 it was announced that an independent MP Mladen Novak is joining ORaH. He is a former Croatian Labourists --- Labour Party member who left the party after it started negotiating to join Kukuriku coalition.
Sustainable Development of Croatia [wikipedia.org]
Between January 1990, when political parties were legalized in Croatia, and March 2015, 264 political parties were registered, out of which 118 have since been struck from the register.
Social Democrats 61 seats. [Center-left]
Croatian Democratic Union 44 seats. [Center-right]
Croatian Labourists - Labour 6 seats.
List of political parties in Croatia [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
"Leader of the populistic party Orah is known for asking Croatian parliament to have an official stance about chemtrails."
Well, if it indeed was such a hot topic in Croatia, why not?
"You are nuts" would be good enough for an answer.
Re: (Score:2)
For those of us not intimately acquainted with Croatian politics, a citation is much more useful than an AC's "is known for". Cheers.
Microsoft pays Serbia to invade (Score:2)
After all, business is business
Re: (Score:2)
No, they'll send mercenaries from around the globe, much as they funded delegats for the ISO voting on OOXML.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/co... [linuxjournal.com]
The resulting political abuse of the ISO standards resulted in an ISO standard for a Microsoft specific technology that even Microsoft does not and cannot follow due to its inconsistencies and unresolved problems.
Re: (Score:2)
It's true, my colleague in Zagreb has only a very primitive computer at home. It has only 128 cores and only half a TB RAM.
It is their process that is interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The main point of the article is not about using open source, it is about HOW they created such a policy.
From the article:
First, it was published on the party's website so that everyone could read and comment on it by email. It's common practice for the party: publish, discuss, and acknowledge comments as accepted, rejected, or just as comments. In one year ORaH published more than 30 policies that way.
EU Green parties are all on point with this (Score:1)