Speak Up For An Open German Parliament

ofels writes: "In the discussion of replacing the outdated Windows NT machines in the german Bundestag with open source based software, the german social democratic party (SPD), currently in charge of government, has opened up an online discussion channel for opinions on working with open source and Linux. Make sure you walk by and make your voice heard."

Rigging polls

[Rentar]

Ok, I'm not really serious on this one ...

quick cut and paste from the qmail mailing list

[DrSkwid]

From: Felix von Leitner

they say they switched to a qmail on
Linux that handled all the load they had coming at them with ease, and
they are pretty happy with it and think the government should prefer
open source over commercial software for the adminitration.

From: "Marc Hoffmann"

Message was signed by unknown key ID E90CD6EE
wird die Bundesregierung u.a.
aufgefordert, Open - Source- Software zu fördern und alle
.
Als Webserver wurde zunächst der NCSA- Webserver genutzt, der später
gegen Apache ausgetauscht wurde.
The firewall in use is running under linux. their old ncsa webserver
has been changed and now the apache is running.

einzusetzen. , eingesetzt.
ldap is used as the central email adressbook the software is also
open source, openLDAP.

sorry for my really bad translation but i tried my best :-)

German Linux Advocacy

[VP]

Very interesting reading, unfortunately my German is too rusty to transalate some of the better discussions in reasonalble time... One thing I must say though - the level of Linux advocacy is much higher than I have seen on English speaking forums... It is mostly the MS-apologists who quickly run out of arguments and start mindless bickering...

Re:German Linux Advocacy

[caesarsgarten]

In germany we have a complicated procedure for government institutions for buying products and services. So it is quite normal that all reasonable vendors are taken into consideration. The fear of hidden spyware seems not to be the most important issue in the current discaussion, since MS offered code-insight to tghe german goverment. Cost-efficiency is, they have calculated an enourmous number for the cost of software licences (note the applications like Office also need to be replaced) and additional training. Anyway, IMHO Linux seems not to be the right choice for goverment institutions. Windows has become a defacto-standard for desktop-applications and I belioeve it will prove to be a nuisance for all people collaborating with the government to work with less well-spread software and document-formats than those used by Microsoft products. I view this discussion as clever strategy to negotiate cheaper contracts with MS...

Security

[man_ls]

It's an open system. There are some thing that I do not believe should be run on an open system. The government is one. The military is another.

A closed system such as MS Windows/Windows NT means that only one company has the potential to put spyware into your computer tracking everything you do at OS level from the time the package is installed.

An open system such as Linux, while infinately less expensive, more reliable when properly configured, isn't secure at the source level. What's to stop Linus, Alan Cox, RMS, or whoever else has a hand in Kernel development to stick in a few mines of undocumented code that log and e-mail input? Hypothetically.

If Linux was a beer, it'd be shipped in open barrels for everyone to have a chance to piss in before it was drunk. Not that everyone *Would* piss in it, but if you were serving that beer to say, the President, wouldn't you rather know that the beer was not contaminated and pay more for it, then take the chance with the free beer?

Linux has it's place - but I, personally, do not believe that that place is in government or the military. Maybe busineses. Corporate espionage is sort of interesting.