- public software - Comments

Snuffed by Patents

garym — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 14:28:31 -0400

City of Munich Freezes Its Linux Migration (Slashdot) -

Jan0815 writes “Yesterday I received disturbing news from the CTO of Munich, Wilhelm Hoegner. As previously mentioned, there is a rising concern that software patents could stifle development of open source worldwide. FFII has complete coverage of what is going on in Europe.” (FFII stands for Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure.) Reader jmt™ writes “The call for bids was supposed to be published in late July, but the Munich Green Party had pointed out about 50 possible patent conflicts which the city wants to evaluate before moving on."

[Yahoo! OS Canada]

O/S Addiction Research Foundation

garym — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 14:04:20 -0400

Hmmm ... that's really quite apropos the more I think of it: Nobody defends an addictive substance as much as those either addicted to it, or those addicted to the cashflow it brings them, and the more highly addictive, the more paralyzingly total and frightening the prospects of breaking the vicious cycles, the more vehemenently the addict will defend and protest those who would detox them.

Sadly, though, as we all know, it only takes one psychiatrist to change ta light bulb, but the light bulb has to _want_ to change, and it likewise doesn't occur to most addicts there is even a problem, whether of substances, of destructive behaviours and beliefs, or the deadly combination of the two that we see in ICT vendor-addictions. It's not until, as happened with France, as happened with the agencies in nearly all these spectacular switch-over stories, it isn't until they hit the wall, until they bottom out, until they nearly suffocate and have no where else to go, and _that's_ when we can finally talk to them about IT freedom.

Kind-a sad, true, but the way of the world nonetheless; the alternative is kidnapping CIOs for rigourous forced detox cult-deprogramming, and I don't see much chance of that happening :)

Still, maybe there's an opportunity in here for a new slogan for GNU ...

bq. Switch to GNU: The _Apomorphine_ of Operating Systems

About time...

Wed, 19 May 2004 02:01:48 -0400

They started getting the kids off drugs!

BC
Edmonton
Calgary
Regina
AB

Munich Gets IT

garym — Sat, 31 May 2003 13:49:37 -0400

Indeed it is! Shockin' awesome.

MUNICH, May 28 (Reuters) - The city of Munich said on Wednesday it would switch 14,000 computers from Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people) Windows operating system to rival Linux in a deal estimated to be worth tens of millions of euros.

Pop the corks

billy — Wed, 28 May 2003 14:57:18 -0400

It’s a done deal.