Linspire chief executive Michael Robertson and president Kevin Carmony are trying to earn the right to pitch Linspire desktops to the Dutch government. Microsoft’s proposal, they say, is about 150 million euros more for a product that is very similar functionally. More here and, of course, from Linspire.
Linspire Seeks Dutch Contract
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What does “get the facts” say about this?
The dutch government would be just fine with Firefox, Lsongs and Abiword. No need for more lockins with proprietary “standards”.
abiword?? uuuh maybe open office is a better idea.
anyway, the problem is that they run 100s of different win32 apps that rely on M$ techniques, like active-x that won’t work on non-windows operating systems.
They “should” rewrite their apps to webbased applications where possible and port other applications to Linux.
then they could use a linux distro (where linspire is theoretically a possibility)
Migrate all servers to BSD or linux and convert there ms office macro’s and integrated word apps and switch to open office, gimp, some email solution that offers encryption.
linux has all the possibilities, apps, security, networking, sharing etc. etc.
so the only reason not to switch is:
– port or rewrite all apps will cost much
– train all users to work with linux will cost as well
– fear
Right now, the Netherlands is in an interesting position. After criticizing France and Germany for going over the EU’s 3% of GDP budget deficit cap, they are staring a 3.25% budget deficit in the face for 2004. Given their GDP, they need to cut about €1.1bn from their budget to stay under the gap. With those numbers, a savings of €150m amounts to about 15% of what they need, which is something to consider.
If a Linux company can undercut MS and provide service that is just as good it will be very interesting to see what MS will do to counter!
Lower prices or start sueing companies!
The Dutch government would be just fine with Firefox, Lsongs and Abiword. No need for more lockins with proprietary “standards”.
How the hell do you know what the Dutch government needs? It always amazes me when OSS proponents tell everyone what they need all the while spouting some other crap about how people should be free to choose. Yeah, right, free to choose as long as you choose what I want you to choose. Mod me down if you want but you know I’m right.
We mean free to use when you don’t BLOW 150 million euro just because Microsofts name is on it!
I would be happy to see them use Apple, Sun, IBM or someone else as long at the COST is low and the quality is good!
Something Microsoft knows nothing about.
the dutch governement is about to switch to winXP/server 2k3 next year… the project meant to do that has been running for 2 yrs together with microsoft.. currently most of it uses nt4
I highly doubt they are going to use this offer because so far making changes and preparing all other software for XP has cost millions already.. they arent just gonna throw that all away… currently even openoffice on a machine is a disaster already.. if anyone does that.. he/she is in real trouble.. so forget about it..
“It always amazes me when OSS proponents tell everyone what they need all the while spouting some other crap about how people should be free to choose.”
WTF are you talking about? He never said, they HAVE to choose this. He was offering suggestions as to what they could use to replace the standard MS fare.
It’s a pretty safe bet that they will need a web browser. What better web browser than Firefox for the job?
THey will most likely need a word processor. While I myself would suggest OpenOffice, he suggests Abiword. Abiword is a good program.
Nowhere in his post does he say, “The Dutch govt NEEDS to use Abiword and Firefox.”
Oh no, they won’t blow 150 million euro by deciding to switch to something else. They blow MORE when they START doing the switch.
I doubt that Michael Robertson really thinks that the Dutch will go with his idea. I think is idea was to get his company attention and also bring attention to the amount of money companies and governments waste.
First of all, let me say I am a big Linux supported. I use Linux whenever I can and I install and recommend different Linux flavours to colleagues, friends and relatives. Linspire use to be one of them.
But … how Linspire pretend to provide an Enterprise solution for all those desktops? Anyone who is working on IT knows that the OS installed in the PC is last thing you have to concern about. You have to have a good way to deploy all those clients, you have to have a good way to keep them up and running with latest patches and security fixes; you have to use a method to deploy software packages across your enterprise without having to visit every desktop and you have to keep control over all those actions. In one word, you need _management_
The cost to install Linspire and not Windows on those PCs would be cheaper, of course, but what about the cost of maintaining the entire infrastructure? I am not talking about “windows is easier than Linux” thing, just talking about controlling “the thing”
Microsoft could be evil but Active Directory is a great management tool. It has been thought with business in mind and provides all you need for installation, securization, deployment and control from one central point.
I see other companies on that niche, like Novell Linux with his eDirectory, now Linux-compatible; but Linspire? Sorry Michael I do not see your business on that journey yet.
David
So why could you not take another 20 million of your savings and buy eDirectory and Zen Works. You can use Linspire with that. Just takes configuration.
You could still save 110 million euros or so!
Come on!
Right now, the Netherlands is in an interesting position. After criticizing France and Germany for going over the EU’s 3% of GDP budget deficit cap, they are staring a 3.25% budget deficit in the face for 2004. Given their GDP, they need to cut about €1.1bn from their budget to stay under the gap. With those numbers, a savings of €150m amounts to about 15% of what they need, which is something to consider.
And that’s exactly why massive cuts have already been made. We’re gonna stay under those 3%, Microsoft or not.
Again people here seem to forget that the purchase price of the software ain’t all. The gov’ workers probably rely on a whole crapload of Windows apps, probably niche applications that do not have Windows counterparts– maybe even apps that stem form the DOS era. Like the registers at the place where I work– all DOS stuff.
There’s more to this. Costs of training, migration etc. are massive, even when only upgrading to a newer version of the same OS, let alone a completely different OS.
Well, in fact you are wrong. It has nothing to do with OSS proponents, but it DOES have to do with choice. Look at all the companies people have put money into and have gone under. When you are bound by one company, if something happens to that company, you are SOL.
The whole thing about opensource is that you have the CHOICE to pick your vender. If something were to happen to Linspire, worse case, change your sources file, and run debian, or migrate to a different vender. Heck, you could even go to Microsoft and use oss programs. The same can’t be said the other way round. I have yet to see Word support openoffice.org’s file format(maybe they do now, though i didn’t think they did), nor does Microsoft recognise that Linux exists(other then to bash it). Now im not saying they should support it, hell, that would be suicide for any company to endourse the rival companies or programs, but by not supporting anything but lockin formats, they only hurt theirown customers.
If everyone used open standards everyone wins. A company or country(as the case may be) would pick Microsoft, Red Hat, Apple, Linspire, etc because OF the company and the value of the product, not from fear of incompatibilies or because of some FUD document.
Well, thats my thoughts on it anyways, comments always welcome
There’s more to this. Costs of training, migration etc. are massive, even when only upgrading to a newer version of the same OS, let alone a completely different OS.
In this case the cost is gonna be 50 times as much to stay with Microsoft. You are paying MS $150 Million that does not include training, rewriting and migrating apps etc. So in reality in the end you are closer to spending between $175 and $200 million.
So what if you spend 6 million on software and support, add Novell Suse Enterprise on the backend and add $25 million for that and I will go big and add $50 million for training and software migration. Hummmm in the end you would STILL save close to $100 Million.
You could use that for schools and health care etc. Doubt that would happen, but it would be a savings!
The Dutch government has recognised open standards are better than proprietary ones and have stated to use open standards as much as possible, starting from 2006. So unless they want to waste even more money than they do already, they have no choice but to migrate to something with open standards.
This does not mean, however, that they will use Linux no matter what. They’ll most likely switch to firefox and maybe OO.o, but remain on the Windows platform, unless of course Linspire will be able to make the deal somehow.
anyway, the problem is that they run 100s of different win32 apps that rely on M$ techniques, like active-x that won’t work on non-windows operating systems.
Actually, there’s a plugin for that for Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox. Google for it. I haven’t seen an analysis which supports your reasoning btw. I’d love to read the government’s research on this subject.
Anyway, once again, the Dutch government are a bunch of hypocrits, and i’ll evade the whole patent debacle (implictly or explicitly redrawal of NON-democratic vote in parlement) for the sake of brevity.
1) In 2002, a motion started by the Greens (Vendrik) to support and migrate to open standards, open source and not being dependant on one supplier was granted, unanonymous; IIRC only the VVD (Liberals) didn’t support that motion. They do the exact opposite here, supporting a convicted monopolist.
2) It seems other alternatives for Microsoft-whatever are not evaluated. Webwereld.nl contacted Sun Microsystems, Novell among others who all were able to define a much lower price than the Microsoft solution.
3) The role of VNG here is very debatable…
Again people here seem to forget that the purchase price of the software ain’t all. The gov’ workers probably rely on a whole crapload of Windows apps, probably niche applications that do not have Windows counterparts– maybe even apps that stem form the DOS era. Like the registers at the place where I work– all DOS stuff.
1) There are very good MSDOS emulators and you don’t need Windows XP or what is the latest called to run MSDOS applications. We’re talking about a 5 year upgrade here.
2) The costs saved by an alternative ISV, which might even be played out against each other for the best quality for the best price (hurray what an invention!) might get it even lower.
3) You don’t know what software is Windows-only, what software can be ported, what software can be used in an emulation, what software is already cloned or otherwise compatible, what software is multi-platform already, but 150 million EUR is quite something, isn’t it? If they play quite or better by driving the alternative path, they should IMO drive it given point #1. Besides, it seems this just hasn’t been analyzed…
4) Ultimately, its not ‘all or nothing’ and we’re not discussing one type of deployment here either.
Here is the protest letter from several corporations and NGOs http://www.bof.nl/microsoft/
Oh, please…
NEVER say something like “THE Dutch are”, “THE French are”, “THE Americans are” etc.
THE Dutch did not vote for the patents; their government did. And don’t say: But THE Dutch elected that government. A narrow majority voted for the government, but almost half the people in the Netherlands didn’t, and most of the people who did propably did not think about software patents.
Politicians are retards, they only listen to you (and saying nice stuff people like to hear), but after they have reached there goal. They simple ignore you and they are driven by company lobbys. Either you are in .FR/.NL/.USA or what so ever the story remains the same.
What you are saying reminds me that Linspire is *not* an enterprise desktop.
Don’t take me wrong, I believe that Linspire is great as an easy home desktop OS.
But for the enterprise? CNR the apps you need in over 260,000 workstations and servers? That sounds to me like a sys administrator worst nightmare come true.
Unless of course they make a special (and very different) edition for the Dutch Government.
What you are saying reminds me that Linspire is *not* an enterprise desktop.
Don’t take me wrong, I believe that Linspire is great as an easy home desktop OS.
But for the enterprise? CNR the apps you need in over 260,000 workstations and servers? That sounds to me like a sys administrator worst nightmare come true.
Unless of course they make a special (and very different) edition for the Dutch Government.
You mean downloading DEB packages? Apt-proxy. But a better solution in a sheer volume such as this, is to build an image or autoinstaller specifying what has to be installed. Use Norton Ghost, or a clone (good FOSS clone is called Partimage IIRC) and use that to put it on the mass desktops. Or simply ask them for delivering HDDs which have it preinstalled, perhaps together with a hardware upgrade.
Unless Linspire doesn’t know how to handle this situation, this is a redundant remark although i concede that RedHat, Novell, Sun have a remarkable better portfolio for this
.
Welp, I happen to work for said dutch government. As a systems administrator, even. Everyone who thinks open source software currently even stands a chance of penetrating the microsoft hegemony on the dutch government’s desktops needs a serious reality check. The cost of converting the custom applications written in various languages, using various techniques, standards and backends into something which can be ported across platforms will be immense. The pipe dream of converting everything to web based applications will never happen. Have you ever actually *used* a web based application? They’re horrid. No, Java is more of a contender in this field, maybe .NET/Mono someday…but only if Oracle ports its forms and reports runtime to it. But all that takes time, and a helluva lot more than the 5 years this new contract will run. And it will also cost a helluva lot more that the 156M to keep the legacy running on a platform which basically supports everything without change.
And then I haven’t even touched the management aspects of things. Desktop management under any OS but Microsoft OSes basically doesn’t exist. Someone has to jump into this gap very fast, but even then, it’ll take a fair while for anything to become usable. Will Novell be able to take this opportunity? Who knows, but we need something working *now*, not something which might work in an $undef future.
Face it, Microsoft delivers. Do their products have flaws? Sure, everything has flaws. But currently there’s simply no alternative for this kind of deployment.
Linspire….bwaaahahaha! If Windows XP is a toy OS, Linspire is the equivalent of duplo.
“Like the registers at the place where I work– all DOS stuff.”
DOSemu / freedos is a heck of a lot better than wine, actually. I’d be surprised if they had trouble running legacy DOS apps on Linux (after all, it’s not like Windows runs DOS apps natively any more either – the ‘DOS’ in NT-series OSes is entirely emulated). Windows apps would be much more of a problem.
………. is the fact that Mandrake didn’t get a real lookin in Paris either as the froggies are continuing with MS too.
The TCO for the Dutch Government to convert to any flavour of Linux is around ONE Billion Euro. This ofcourse is working on the assumption that all their apps and data bases can be transferred seamlessly into the Linux OS without any real problems.
Much of their ancillary hardware has to be replaced as there are no drivers avaliable for them for Linux, which includes most of their onroad police systems.
And Michael Robertson is fully aware of these issues and is just taking the usual opportunity to sling mud at MS customers again.
The TCO for the Dutch Government to convert to any flavour of Linux is around ONE Billion Euro.
—
where the hell did such stupid claims come from?. source?
On a side note, a commitee has decided to cancel the idea of granting the 156M contract to Microsoft.
Apparently there were some questions asked by the parliament about how all this came to be.
I don’t know yet if this is good news or bad, as it means all the Microsoft driven departments (i.e. all of them) have to negotiate support contracts themselves, which is insanely more expensive. The alternative is to run without support, and buy licenses on a need to have basis…which is also insanely expensive on both accounts. You simply can’t do without the support. Oh well, tax money is there to be spent.
I don’t know if you guys already know, but SERPRO (the federal company that makes software for the federal government) is already going Linux – 60% of the pc stations will be on Linux by the end of this year.
Victor.
This is definately good news. Even if you didn’t choose Linux this time you will start to look at OSS more closely and will migrate easier in a few years time. You will also get a nice discount of MS, in Sweden it’s called “Linux rabatt”. It’s when you are going public that you’re evaluating Linux and MS will cut the prices 70%.
The TCO for the Dutch Government to convert to any flavour of Linux is around ONE Billion Euro.
Please don’t pluck TCO figures out of the air – Microsoft does, and they mean nothing. I’d love to know where you get this from. The overall cost of rolling out Windows, consultancy, support and the additional software they’ll have to buy will push the cost of this well beyond 1 billion euros – just ask the NHS in the UK, which is that organisation supposed to provide healthcare
.
When you’re talking about lock-in and dependance on one platform on the desktop for a lot of things, initial effort is always going to be required, but ironically, in doing this it is the long-term TCO savings you want to make. Getting off the upgrade treadmill, lowering your security costs etc. etc. I just wonder if this 150 million factors in the costs of additional software like anti-virus, or Microsoft Partner Services because Windows doesn’t do something out of the box. I’m guessing not.
The real point of these deals that Microsoft are making with governments is that they are having to make them. Unfortunately for Microsoft, they can’t keep on doing it forever. What happened was that Microsoft got hold of a few dutch officials who make decisions and gave them some nice back-handers and free holidays. That’s how the u-turn can be accounted for and how this was rushed through at such breakneck speed without even their own parliament knowing.
In the end, I hope the public outcry, the questions by the parliament and the cancellation might lead to a more open portfolio of software and services for the dutch government.
But I agree with what some here said, now might not be the time for the switch, but now IS the time fo a shift in the way of thinking. It would be ok to go with non-open solutions, as long as everyone is aware of the alternative and is not going to get locked in during the next 5 years and perhaps even use these 5 years to port legacy stuff to more open-software-compatible versions, so that in the future, this same choice will not be dependant on legacy/compatibility and lock-in, but be strictly a business proposition: who’s best for the least amount of money.
Why can’t Linspire offer same deal to Americans? I am sure Linspire will get 200,000 new American users very, very fast if it starts offering Americans Linspire+CNR for $5/year instead of its advertized price of $50/year.
Why does American company overcharges American users? If a deal offered to the Dutch is market price, the market in USA should expect the same price. After all, salaries and cost of life in these two countries are not that different, and USA could be actually behind the Dutch.
Meaning that Linspire OS, if honestly priced, should cost even less for Americans.
Michael, give America what it deserves: CNR for $5/year!
I’m pretty sure if American wanted 200,000 desktops, they would get it at $5/year too.