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I’ve always dreamt of at least the EU and China (yes I know of Kylin) mandating libre software for governmental use. Could you imagine the gigantic amount of f

by jorvi 3y ago

I’ve always dreamt of at least the EU and China (yes I know of Kylin) mandating libre software for governmental use. Could you imagine the gigantic amount of flow of money that goes into Microsoft enterprise and Office support instead flowing into open source? And the amount of bug that amount of eyeballs would catch. Both the Linux desktop and things like LibreOffice would see meteoric improvements within the year. Right now there is already some chances budding (in Spain’s regional governments, Munich, France’s military), it just needs to be pulled together into a comprehensive plan and get a good push.

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
It's an idealism, for sure; but after reading about experiments like Hamburg's maybe we'll get there eventually. But what's far more important (and practical) than mandating libre software is mandating libre file formats, and this is what we've seen happen somewhat successfully around the world: governments requiring official documents to be primarily available in PDF/A and/or OpenDocument (c.f. OpenOfficeOrg/LibreOffice) instead of (say) MSFT's Office OOXML formats.
em-bee 3y ago
china is actually trying, but it is not easy to get every governmental employee to listen and enforce such a change. in europe on the other hand the issue is entirely political. a city switches to linux. when the leading party changes it switches back because microsoft promises some benefits like jobs or worse kickbacks, or the new leader is simply ignorant and actually believes that windows is better.
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
Germany offered the UK a "test and trace" app during the corona virus pandemic. The UK government of course refused, because producing an app was an opportunity to divert £37 Billion (!) from taxes to their associates. The delay in not taking the completed app also would have cost thousands of lives. In short, the first thing you need is people who care about their countrymen. People often propose ideas that start from an assumption that politicians want to make the World better, but the ones in power in the UK at least are more motivated by other things: greed for example.

by jorvi 3y ago

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago

It's an idealism, for sure; but after reading about experiments like Hamburg's maybe we'll get there eventually. But what's far more important (and practical) than mandating libre software is mandating libre file formats, and this is what we've seen happen somewhat successfully around the world: governments requiring official documents to be primarily available in PDF/A and/or OpenDocument (c.f. OpenOfficeOrg/LibreOffice) instead of (say) MSFT's Office OOXML formats.

em-bee 3y ago

china is actually trying, but it is not easy to get every governmental employee to listen and enforce such a change. in europe on the other hand the issue is entirely political. a city switches to linux. when the leading party changes it switches back because microsoft promises some benefits like jobs or worse kickbacks, or the new leader is simply ignorant and actually believes that windows is better.

pbhjpbhj 3y ago

Germany offered the UK a "test and trace" app during the corona virus pandemic. The UK government of course refused, because producing an app was an opportunity to divert £37 Billion (!) from taxes to their associates. The delay in not taking the completed app also would have cost thousands of lives. In short, the first thing you need is people who care about their countrymen. People often propose ideas that start from an assumption that politicians want to make the World better, but the ones in power in the UK at least are more motivated by other things: greed for example.