Submitted by Taiwan’s parliament has voted to end its dependence on Microsoft software, demanding that the government reduce purchases from the software giant by 25 percent this year. The resolution, passed on Friday, is an attempt by the island’s law-making body to end the near monopoly Microsoft has with local government offices, a legislative aide said.
Yes! And may this keep happening. Maybe in 5 or ten years, Microsoft will only be popular in the US and US allies. Now, if only countries start taking full economic sanctions against the US, until it gets rid of crap like DRM, DMCA, Patriot Act, Software patents, reduces copyright periods, then we’ll be really getting somewhere!
Dave
Why should anyone force you to *not* use Microsoft software? Isn’t that as bad as forcing someone to use it?
I thought it was all about choice. Perhaps it is more about a political agenda than anything else, which means the agenda will fail in the long run. This must be why the Marxists and communists hate MS so much. They really want to take down the free market.
The choice argument is still very much alive. The Taiwanese Parliament *chose* not to be dependent on Microsoft.
It was their *choice* to reduce purchases from the software company by 25 percent this year. Nobody made them do it; they’re the highest authority in the nation: they *chose* to do it.
Therefore, the choice argument is still very much alive and kickin’.
Is it really choice when someone makes it on your behalf without your permission? Sounds draconian to me (harsh, cruel and oppressive)…
I’m sorry, but I failed to notice where it said that normal citizens would be required to use X or Y. It did, however, say that *governmental* purchases from Microsoft will be reduced, and that, presumably, to limit the influence of Microsoft on their decision-making.
You know, governments make decisions based on popular sovereignty. They were voted in to make decisions they think will benefit the society, and they’re making them. One of those is to limit purchases from Microsoft. Wether the copy-guy working on government building #3 *chose* to run X instead of Y, is irrelevant.
No company I’ve ever worked for asked *me* what system *I* wanted to run. They gave me a PC with Win2000 and that was all. Where’s the choice in that?
No company I’ve ever worked for asked *me* what system *I* wanted to run. They gave me a PC with Win2000 and that was all. Where’s the choice in that?
if you want to keep you job. if yes, use it, if not, well hire a person who will. there you got your choice.
The entire idea of a democracy is that all choices made were with the citizens permission, whether given explicitly or not.
More to the point, though, this was a government choosing to buy less from MS. How is that any different than my employer choosing to buy more from MS this year? It’s not like we can force everyone (or anyone) else in the world to follow our example, but my employer has a right to spend money on whatever they want to. If they want to spend more on MS or less on MS, who are you to tell them they can’t do what they want to?
A little off topic but if you want to be take seriously in a debate such as this you really should have a name that will give you some credibility. Your name almost certainly makes you biased against Linux so saying that a government is bad because it’s biased agaist Microsoft doesn’t make a lot of sense coming from you.
Is it my choice that I am forced to use MS Windows at work – no! Oh isn’t it going to be so “draconian to me (harsh, cruel and oppressive)…” when all those Taiwanese civil servants are forced to stop using Windows which I am sure they love so much (/sarcasm) to use Linux instead.
Don’t be so stupid LinuxH8r and stop trolling.
why would you put prisoners in jail? and take away their freedom;
Why should government let you decide what you eat then? You should only be allowed to eat shit produced by the ministers, right?
“Why should anyone force you to *not* use Microsoft software? Isn’t that as bad as forcing someone to use it? “
Choice is very much alive still. That decisions is for the Government offices, and NOT the residents of the country. As with any Government or Corporation, they make the choices what employees use for day to day tasks. So they are choosing for thier employees to reduce the use of Microsoft products. That does not affect what the average person chooses to use at home. People all over are “forced”, as you put it, to use Microsoft all the time depending on what the job funtion is within a company. There is no company I know of in which the employee decides what OS they use to accomplish thier tasks, but rather what the company, in this case the Taiwan Government, decides which software thier employees use.
The resolution, passed on Friday, is an attempt by the island’s law-making body to end the near monopoly Microsoft has with local government offices, a legislative aide said.
Choice argument? If you worked for the government (“ours” or “theirs”, either one) you could just choose to use whatever OS you wanted without regard to policies? I haven’t heard of that argument. Now maybe that’s because I just made it up in response to your comment, or maybe it’s because that argument wouldn’t survive even the slightest analysis.
Do you get to use MacOS at work if the company doesn’t support it?
I thought it was all about choice.
That depends on what “it” is I guess. Does Taiwan get to choose what software it’s government offices use?
This must be why the Marxists and communists hate MS so much. They really want to take down the free market.
Perhaps you haven’t been reading the news for the last 15 years or so. The large Marxist/Communist states have either failed and converted to other political systems or introduced free markets within their systems. And lest there be some negative implication Taiwan isn’t a Communist or Marxist state.
However, all is not lost! You can now officially (and possibly for the first time correctly) use the term Linux Commies. According to Sys-Con Belgium Red Flag Linux has joined OSDL.
No link to the Sys-Con Belgium article will be provided by me and I found no mention of it at OSDL.org. But here is the Ars link:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060114-5981.html
YHMV (Your Hatred May Vary)
Choice? Choice? How dare you friggen mention choice. Where’s my choice of using QuickTime on Linux? eh? Where’s my choice of being able to legally play mp3s on my Linux system, or legally play encrypted DVDS on it, without being presumed to be a criminal that only wants to rip the DVDs and pirate them?
Don’t talk to me about choice.
Dave
PS I think usernames such as yours should be banned.
Choice? Choice? How dare you friggen mention choice. Where’s my choice of using QuickTime on Linux? eh? Where’s my choice of being able to legally play mp3s on my Linux system, or legally play encrypted DVDS on it, without being presumed to be a criminal that only wants to rip the DVDs and pirate them?
The Quicktime issue comes down to Apple deciding to license to the platform or create a compatible player, so that’s out of your hands. The mp3 and DVD issues, however, stem from your choice of distro or whether to buy third-party software. There are Linux distros (Linspire for example) whose purchase price includes paying necessary license fees for legal playback of DVD, mp3, and other formats.
Necessary legal fees? You have got to be kidding me, right? Sorry, I don’t buy it. I bought the damn DVD, I paid a license fee for the DVD technology when I bought the damn DVD, I have *every* single right to play it when, where and how I like. Governments need to grow backbones and stand up to the MPAA and tell them to piss off. As it stands, consumers are getting screwed, because the MPAA is greedy and wants it’s cake AND wants to eat it as well, and the current US regime bends over backwards to accommodate them (and also the RIAA). Don’t even try and make out that I’m a criminal – my reply will be rather rude and crude.
As to QuickTime, of course Apple won’t do it, because it wants to be a monopoly! There are more Linux users in the world than Apple users, and Apple is afraid of losing customers, so it’s holding onto every single proprietary piece that it can to leverage itself in the operating system market. No one can deny that Linux is a major operating system these days, so, one would expect things like QuickTime to be ported to a major operating system, no? That sounds quite reasonable to me.
As to mp3s, the fraunhofer institute sat on mp3s for a LONG time, only when it became a popular, established medium did they start demanding license fees. It’s what you call an extortionate patent, and it’s why software patents should be banned. Totally and utterly banned.
Dave
Necessary legal fees? You have got to be kidding me, right? Sorry, I don’t buy it. I bought the damn DVD, I paid a license fee for the DVD technology when I bought the damn DVD.
You didn’t pay the license fee when you bought the DVD. You pay the license fee (or rather it’s passed on to you from the vendor that paid for it) when you buy a codec, either in the form of a standalone player or a software codec.
Where’s my choice of being able to legally play mp3s on my Linux system
http://www.fluendo.com/
“Why should anyone force you to *not* use Microsoft software? Isn’t that as bad as forcing someone to use it? ”
There’s no choice when it comes to such monopolies as Microsoft, McDonald, and CocaCola :]
[DISGUST]
Marx believed that comunism would be self run and would eventually absolutely turn into independence and anarchy.[/DISGUST]
ofcourse he was wrong communism hasnt happened on a large scale. on a world power as it were. But it did happen durring the sixties in Israel, in the Kibutzim. It also happens in columbia, peru, and mexico(guerilla terrorists).
Dont ever use communism to mean “a lack of choice”. MS isnt(and has never been) about free market. Otherwise it would run openGL properly in Aero and JAVA would have lost their law suit. MS has one goal and that is too have the only answer. There is no choice in that. When there are no dvd players or game consoles only Xbox’s then this goal will be achieved. When The only operating system in all existence is windows then MS will be quite litterally the personification of choice because they’ll be the only one.
Lastly, and this pisses me off so often but I wont be brutal and use small words. The concept of GNU/linux has nothing to do with communism or marxism. It is entirely an Anarchic revolution. There is no money. There are no rules. There is no end goal. There is only trust. Trust that people like you brake every day. If you dont understand the idea of freedom, then no one can help you. Only you can figure it out on your own. other wise you wouldnt have the choice to accept freedom or not. Cause some like slavery and *really slow computers*……
here’s an article on the slaughter of openGL:
<a href=”http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/cgi_directory/ultimatebb.cg…
A government in capitalistic country atleast is basicly like a company. And like a company can chose to not buy MS software anymore government can do the same. They only decided to change INTERNAL stuff. They don’t ORDER anyone outside of their own administration to NOT use MS.
No company in Taiwan is forced to stop using MS products and services. THAT would be enforcing. What they do is simply a tactical descision.
Think before you speak.
Ehr… I agree to what you wrote as a general rule. Except for the fact that a country is never “like a company” (either basically or to the fullest extent, either capitalistic or socialist).
Picturing a country (or a Government) “basically as a company” is a bad metaphor, argument from worst Capitalistic propaganda, as if it was like that, for example, eldest people (since they aren’t unable to contribute to “company’s” grow) should just be “terminated”. Thank God, instead, those grannies can spend their lifetime bringing kids to school and getting sweet pies ready for us to eat, and that’s because a country is not like a company.
A suggestion: never use that metaphor again. It’s bad.
I agree 100% with you about the general meaning of your post 😉 No offence. I just didn’t like that metaphor.
Well yes there’s a slight difference. There’s the humanity factor (this highly depends on who rules) and then the “next votes” popularity factor. But both these apply to companies too.
They would throw grannies and grandpas to the ice if they weren’t dependent on public view and their own humanitarian constraints.
Same goes for any company. Many companies tolerate alot. Mostly because one of these reasons.
I understand your arguments but I’m just depicting the ugly face of this world
The Us govt should be making decisions along the same lines. They should use as little of ms as possible.
They are wasting taxpayers money trying to keep desktops free from viri adware malware worms trojans etc. etc.
And rediculous ms licensing fees.
it has everything to do with bargaining leverage during there next licensing negotiations
A very true statement. It amounts to nothing more than an improved position at the table with the sales folks.
Looking at this from another angle, in the US government this would go something like:
“This year, we will reduce purchases of MS software by 25%. And we be purchasing all of that recovered 25% with Redhat, Sun, and other (established mainstream expensive) vendors. Now, we do realise that support agreements with those vendors will cost about as much. We’ll also have to retrain and/or hire a ton of new IT staff so they know how to work with all this. Also, all our existing external contractors like EDS and IBM GS are useless on this stuff, they’ll need new contracts. Err, and much of this does not meet our C2 security requirements, so that’s gonna be tricky. Eh, and we can’t have any products or support with non-US vendors due to DOD/GOV rules, so that leaves out most Linux distros. Hmm, gotta retrain the staff too (tenured government desk drones just barely figured out Outlook, now they have to start over). Oh, and all our Windows apps need to be recoded, as virtualizing 98% of your software is retarded. So, this is going to end up costing around 2000% more than usual. Oh well, not our money”.
Ask IBM how this all went for them. They’re a company of engineers that sells, contributes to, and supports Linux and they’ve basically given up trying to convert to it.
Actually, no, you do pay a inbuilt fee when you buy a DVD player, for the decss codec. Other fees are built into the price of DVDs etc. The MPAA and RIAA would like you to let them double, triple and quadruple dip etc. I’d prefer to keep the bastards honest.
Dave
If i was a corporation switching from ms i would go with debian with a hardened kernel and app armor.
All for free. Yes they may have to have staff retrained or aquire new staff. But this new staff will be far superior to the old point and click windows andmins who can only do what windows allows them(what theres no button for that?). And they will be far more secure as a result.Freedom Free software Great staff its a win win situation.