Open-Source Software Becomes a Standard In Dortmund, Germany (documentfoundation.org) 42
The Council of the German city of Dortmund has announced that it's embracing free and open-source software, wherever possible. The Document Foundation reports: The Dortmund Council has declared digitalisation to be a political leadership task in its Memorandum 2020 to 2025. In the course of this, two central resolutions for free software were passed on February 11, 2021, for which the minutes were published on March 30:
- "Use of open source software where possible."
- "Software developed by the administration or commissioned for development is made available to the general public."
With this resolution, city policy takes on the shaping of municipal digital sovereignty and digital participation. The resolution means a reversal of the burden of proof in favor of open source software -- and at the expense of proprietary software. In the future, the administration will have to justify why open source software cannot be used for every proprietary software application. Based on the report of the Dortmund city administration on the investigation of the potentials of free software and open standards, open source software is understood in the sense of free software.
- "Use of open source software where possible."
- "Software developed by the administration or commissioned for development is made available to the general public."
With this resolution, city policy takes on the shaping of municipal digital sovereignty and digital participation. The resolution means a reversal of the burden of proof in favor of open source software -- and at the expense of proprietary software. In the future, the administration will have to justify why open source software cannot be used for every proprietary software application. Based on the report of the Dortmund city administration on the investigation of the potentials of free software and open standards, open source software is understood in the sense of free software.
News for nerds? (Score:1)
What news?
FFS.
The problem with FOSS in government (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that governments often love open source because it's "cheap," but they don't want to budget anything to provide financial support for it. Think anyone is going to tell Dortmund's government that if they adopt LibreOffice they should set aside at least ten euros per user per year to send to the Document Foundation to help pay costs? Unlikely.
Re: The problem with FOSS in government (Score:2)
Didn't a major German city play this game - albeit more aggressively - and after a few years, when no one was looking, went back to Microsoft windows?
The much-touted savings rarely materialize, and the effort at the local level to integrate disparate software packages is typically much more complex that the average "open source" advocate would like to admit. As an example, Windows offers a fantastic management tool to manage thousands of desktops/users and resources called Active Directory - there is no "op
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You do realize that Germany is a democracy, right?
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Germany is a democracy,
The people of Venezuela also voted for communism.
The "it's a democracy" argument does not mean it's a good decision. Also, Germany is the type of democracy where you vote for a party, not for individual representatives such as in the U.S. Not all democracies function in the same manner.
Re: The problem with FOSS in government (Score:3)
4. Shit fails
That wasn't reason they went back. They did so because administration changed, and the new administration was a lot more susceptible to Microsoft lobbying efforts (to put it mildly; it was actually upfront corruption).
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The incoming administration preferred a solution from one vendor rather than having to employ developers and consultants every time they needed new things done.
My company uses Windows and still employs developers and consultants every time they need new things done. I'm pretty sure that MS would not want to do some of this stuff themselves, but would contract it out, taking a fat middle-man fee. There would be two layers of contracting out at that point, or even more. But isn't that a service Red Hat would do for Linux in a similar way?
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That wasn't reason they went back. They did so because administration changed, and the new administration was a lot more susceptible to Microsoft lobbying efforts (to put it mildly; it was actually upfront corruption).
That's what Microsoft haters like to say. And you know what? I thought likewise in the early and mid-2000s. To me, Microsoft was the most evil corporation out there, and Bill Gates was the devil himself.
However, I have since had to adjust my opinion. We're in 2021, and Linux on the desktop is still hell for ordinary users.
Sure, anyone who can write | sed -e 's/this/that/g' in an xterm will be more than happy to run Linux on their desktop. But Susie the admin in accounting? Nope. Ain't happening.
The on
Re: The problem with FOSS in government (Score:2)
Susy in accounting is put off by a new winows shell, aswell (e.g. by the "new" windows 10).
People moaned and comained for years - they still do, plenty of windows 7/8 installations out there for specifically this reason.
Susy in Munich didn't complain about "sed", she complained - rightfully - because her software ecosystem was stuck whereever. But since there's no "Microsoft Munich-Administration Suite 1.0" product, she'll keep complaining anyway. All MS can give her is essentially Office and Outlook, and t
Re: The problem with FOSS in government (Score:2)
Linux is awesome, and I've been running it since 1997. But, not as a desktop OS. Just like Windows sucks as a server OS.
Oh, and about that: you've talking out of your ass and have never been responsible for a corporate network, apparently.
Desktop: insert a Linux Mint flashdrive and put a coffee mug on your ENETR key, and you're very likely to have a readily available Linux desktop with office, email, web, bluetooth, wlan etc before the coffee gets cold. On essentially any recent hardware, even top of the line Lenovo/Dell/HP laptops that came out last month. The only way somebody isn't able to install a usable Linux desktop i
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Oh, and about that: you've talking out of your ass and have never been responsible for a corporate network, apparently.
I have. And in the late 90s I even boldly attempted to replace Novell Netware servers with Linux+Samba. Futile attempt.
Desktop: insert a Linux Mint flashdrive and put a coffee mug on your ENETR key, and you're very likely to have a readily available Linux desktop with office, email, web, bluetooth, wlan etc before the coffee gets cold. On essentially any recent hardware, even top of the line Lenovo/Dell/HP laptops that came out last month. The only way somebody isn't able to install a usable Linux desktop is if they're a dyslexic parrot with bad vision and a crippled wing.
Now you're the one talking out of your ass. I have never, ever, never ever, experienced a working out-of-the-box Linux that did everything I needed it to (on the desktop, that is). Now, in all honesty, my experiences are limited to Red Hat and Ubuntu when it comes to Linux. I've also been running FreeBSD for years, including on the desktop at an MS hating workplace.
But, yeah, your flashd
Re: The problem with FOSS in government (Score:2)
But, yeah, your flashdrive is all cool and nice for the most basic of basic things. Until Susy comes back with an Excel spreadsheet which is all deformed in your LibreOffice (or whatever they call the politically correct version of OpenOffce this week) application. Or that .docx file that renders with a different font because your Mint flashdrive didn't have the correct ones installed.
Susy is not pissed because "Linux", she's pissed because Limux is nit Windows. And in this particular case, she has a document in a wrong format. How is that specifically a Linux problem?
If I give Susy a .beancount file, and she can't open it for accounting, is that a Windows problem, or is that, magically, *also* a Linux problem?! (...because I say it's neither.)
I don't know about RedHat. Ubuntu should work, Debian works all the time for me, and recently Fedora does a good job. Dunno what you're doing wron
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Oh, and about that: you've talking out of your ass and have never been responsible for a corporate network, apparently.
Yes most users haven’t been responsible for a corporate network, that’s a job for the IT department.
It’s been trivial for users to use Linux on their PCs for around 2 decades and with Live CD/USBs they can even try it without installing it. But why would they? What programs can they run on Linux that they can’t run on Windows or macOS?
Re: The problem with FOSS in government (Score:2)
Free (as in speech) programs, top to bottom, left to right, six ways from Sunday.
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Free (as in speech) programs, top to bottom, left to right, six ways from Sunday.
I mean specifically what programs do users want to run on their computers that they can't run on Windows or macOS?
Re: The problem with FOSS in government (Score:2)
That's the wrong question.
You don't opt for free software and open standards because you have specific programs or features. You do it because they're open and free (as in speech).
There are specific programs that you don't have on a typical windows OS (although most, being free, have a windows port, or a more or less comolicated way of making them work there) and there are tools that are windows-only (although most run well under wine or have a free replacement). But again, that's not any of the reasons why
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That's the wrong question.
No it isn't and claiming that it is is why the desktop Linux community continues to fail to understand the average user. It's reason why there's hundreds of desktop Linux distributions and not one has gotten even remotely close to mass adoption.
You don't opt for free software and open standards because you have specific programs or features. You do it because they're open and free (as in speech).
Don't pretend to know me. I use Blender for its specific features, I would use it if it were non-free in the same way I use Maya.
There are specific programs that you don't have on a typical windows OS
And what exactly are these that are compelling to users that would cause them to switch operating systems to Linux?
Perhaps helpful to expl
Re: The problem with FOSS in government (Score:2)
I'm not sure whether you're really dense, or have an agenda.
"You" didn't mean you specifically, it was a rhetorical "you", as in " one should use Linux if...".
To quench yiur curiosity, here some examples from my life: MacOS doesn't play nice with focus-follows-mouse, Windows doesn't play nice with Python development, or standard unix tools like awk/sed (they work, but require jumping through extra hoops, e.g. installing cyhwin). Also, making an image of a disk in Windows requires jumping through hoops, whil
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"You" didn't mean you specifically, it was a rhetorical "you", as in " one should use Linux if...".
I am one who uses free software and as I explained it is because of its features and functionality, I would use it if it were non-free software as well. I'm saying there is some free software that stands on it's merits of being good software and not just used because it's free.
THIS ISN'T WHAT FREE SOFTWSRE IS ABOUT.
You're confused, I never made any claims about what Free Software is about. That's a far too broad discussion that really depends on your personal point of view especially when discussing the intricacies of various different restricti
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I'm saying there is some free software that stands on it's merits of being good software and not just used because it's free.
While this is true, it's a dangerous position to take in an argument about Linux vs Windows. This is because this argument only holds as long as Free Software is truly technically superior. But the core value of Free Software is not in its technical superiority (this is, for example, what ESR and his bazaar-paper focuses on), but in its freedom. Free Software would still be the better path even if the software itself were technically inferior.
But once you've argued with technical superiority, it becomes muc
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While this is true, it's a dangerous position to take in an argument about Linux vs Windows. This is because this argument only holds as long as Free Software is truly technically superior.
But it should be technically superior.
But the core value of Free Software is not in its technical superiority (this is, for example, what ESR and his bazaar-paper focuses on), but in its freedom. Free Software would still be the better path even if the software itself were technically inferior.
Well you have to define "better", if you're interested in software freedom to the exclusion of all else then yes, but the overwhelming majority of people use a computer as a tool to do a job and if a particular piece of software can't do the job then it won't be used. I could be wrong but I very much doubt there are many people that use exclusively completely open source hardware devoid of proprietary microcode and firmware. I'd be curious to know what your hardware (wh
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I do not think this is a fair characterization of what happened.
Background info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Windows offers a fantastic management tool to manage thousands of desktops/users and resources called Active Directory - there is no "open source" alternative
That's a pretty weird thing to say given that Active Directory is basically an interface and some protocol extensions on top of LDAP.
Want Linux to authenticate against an AD server? I've done it, not hard. Apache even supports it for websites (used it), or you can do LD in the actual web site logic (used that too). You can even use Linux as an AD controller.
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Windows offers a fantastic management tool to manage thousands of desktops/users and resources called Active Directory - there is no "open source" alternative
That's a pretty weird thing to say given that Active Directory is basically an interface and some protocol extensions on top of LDAP.
Want Linux to authenticate against an AD server? I've done it, not hard. Apache even supports it for websites (used it), or you can do LD in the actual web site logic (used that too). You can even use Linux as an AD controller.
Your argument centers around authentication, and you're right - there are LDAP implementations that handle authentication pretty easily.
That's not all Active Directory is, though. Group Policy is a big one - one place to create very granular system behavior permissions, user permissions, and unattended installation of software. Linux does this somehow, some way, I'm sure, but it's nowhere near as consistent or simple (feel free to point me to such a solution, I'm genuinely curious about one). One pretty hel
Samba is the whole suite too. Still ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Samba does all the same stuff too. But that's a bit of a red herring. That's presuming that you're going to run with all your computers running the proprietary Microsoft operating system, Microsoft's proprietary office applications, etc and manage them with the open source management system. Which frankly doesn't make much sense. If you're going to run 3,000 Microsoft Windows computers and use Microsoft O365 for your email and Azure for your servers, it would probably make sense to use Microsoft's management tool, Active Directory. Samba isn't quite as good *at being Microsoft* as Microsoft is.
If you're going to use all Microsoft products, then yeah Microsoft makes the best system for managing their OS
Samba can do it all, but why?
On the other hand, Active Directory really, really sucks at managing your Yum repos. As in it's completely incapable of even trying. AD has no ideas what a Kubernetes cluster is. AD managing your MySQL? Nope.
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Think anyone is going to tell Dortmund's government that if they adopt LibreOffice they should set aside at least ten euros per user per year to send to the Document Foundation to help pay costs? Unlikely.
Worse. You think anyone in Dortmund will actually fund some even basic training on how to use software that isn't the software that everyone grew up with? Sure you can figure it out, but "free" is often quite costly.
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Think anyone is going to tell Dortmund's government that if they adopt LibreOffice they should set aside at least ten euros per user per year to send to the Document Foundation to help pay costs? Unlikely.
But that’s how it should start, rather than ideological statements like “everything must be open source” I would much rather governments choose the right tool for the job. So absolutely they should try to replace MS Office with LibreOffice, contribute to the open document foundation and go through the process of contributing to the project when it lacks something they need.
Once they’ve proven they can do that they can then do the same thing with other software components in their inf
"No suitable open source alternative exists" (Score:2)
"Use of open source software where possible."
This sounds great, but how much software, beyond basic office productivity applications, that a municipal government needs to manage a city is available as open source? Sure, over time some "run the municipal water supply" or "manage the police department" and maybe even a "municipal tax collection" application will be written by altruistic open-source advocates, donating their time to help cities save on software expenses, but right now this is almost meaningless posturing.
The resolution means a reversal of the burden of proof in favor of open source software -- and at the expense of proprietary software. In the future, the administration will have to justify why open source software cannot be used for every proprietary software application.
Wow, that bold interpretation of
How long before ... (Score:2)
Microsoft announces some big new office in Dortmund and the Council cancels its FLOSS plans? Something like that happened in Munich.
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My thought exactly. Tested and proven technique for getting a certain new large employer in town.
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When selecting a software today (commercial, not custom made), open source to a large extent compete against cloud based offerings where there are no servers to be installed, no software to be installed, no patching. New functionality is added transparently.
Microsoft does not have to do anything in Dortmund. They just present the complete Microsoft365 package and let the good people at Dortmund try to find or configure something even close in fu
Open source vs. the cloud. (Score:2)
That means the customer can start using it NOW, not when servers have been purchased, network configured and software installed, admins trained and everything tested and secured.
Yes, I know there are many things to be said about cloud and security etc.., but from a management standpoint, it offers a pretty much unbeatable package.
One example would of course be Microsoft365,
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nerds? (Score:1)
Doing the same thing over... (Score:2)