Skip to main content

Open source victories that can make it mainstream...

With examples of the UK government choosing the ODF standard, or Geneva bringing open source software to their schools, are victories that help open source advocates to make the case for wider adoption of open source software and open standards.

In both cases, shows how the benefits are to many to ignore and are quite enough incentive to make the move. The savings on the money that has to be paid in royalties, and for the right to upgrade are considerable. Not only that, at UK case it means that people can access government information without any cost imposed to them just to look said information because they can access it from any suite they choose.

As this article at cnet.com about LibreOffice points out, now people don't have to pay Microsoft for their office suite to be able to access public documents. Whats best, there are several other office suites that can be used to access public documents saved on the ODF format, while being able to handle old Microsoft's formats with ease.

What important about the UK government's decision, is that it frees their documents from a possible lock in to a single vendor office suite. This allows information to flow, independently of what office suite each user uses to access the documents.

For the Geneva school system, it means having software that is easier to maintain and far more stable. What's most important, Ubuntu is proving easier to use for everyone involved.

For me, the best part is that the children using the computers are going to be exposed to using free software from an early age. This means that they are going to grow up without the false ideas that free software is hard to use, or at least as capable as any proprietary software. Which means, that they wont learn skills that lock them to a certain software from a single company.

There are several other examples, like Munich ditching Windows and Office for good, give the open source community at large the legitimacy it deserves. Not only that, it makes it easier to advocate to more cities and companies to make the move and follow suit.

In more than ways, open source can use them as examples that it works and it's can be the tool that people need to move forward.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Machenike and Linux Mint: quite a nice combo.

I've been using a Machenike L16A  with Linux Mint  as my daily driver for four months now, and I must admit that I'm impressed with how good the experience has been so far. The Machenike was recommended to me by a close friend about six months ago, since I told him that I was looking for a new laptop. He had bought one a while ago, and said that it was a solid machine. Not only that, Machenike laptops were quite a great value for the money since they are significantly cheaper than comparable laptops from the competitions. And to be honest, when I got my laptop i expected to be so, but not to the extent it has been so far. After four months, my laptop feels really snappy and the performance is just great. And since I upgraded to Linux Mint 22 Wilma, it only has gotten better. One of the areas where I see most improvement, in on the Bluetooth connectivity. It connects more consistently with the three Bluetooth headphone I use, and now I can see how much battery the headphones I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Machenike L16A: a great value for the money.

I recently got a Machenike L16A to replace the HP laptop I've been using for about 4 years now, and it has been quite a good upgrade. The value for the price has been excellent, it has really felt like an upgrade. Specially going from 8Gb of RAM to 16Gb. I specially notice the better performance when at work, since I use a remote desktop. I simply don't see as much slowdowns on the same use. Most of the time, at work I've the remote desktop app, Firefox , Thunderbird , Spotify , or sometimes Rhythmbox , open at the same time and having 16Gb of RAM gives the performance I need since at time around 6-7Gb are used. I also feel the AMD Ryzen CPU has been quite an upgrade, since it has more cores and threads than the Intel CPU my HP laptop has. That makes for a better user experience. But, where I see the better user experience is on the keyboard, and display side of things. The keyboard keys got stuck often, making the track pad unusable and characters to repeat themselves. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Linux Mint going for the long-term support model was the right choice.

Ever since I stared using  Linux Mint  with the long-term support mantra with the version 19 Tara release, I've come to prefer Linux distros  that use development model rather than distros that release updates more often with shorter support windows. Even though I upgrade to the new Linux Mint release as soon it becomes available, knowing that I don't have to rush it and that the testing to make sure nothing is broken with the new release is a bit more intense, gives me feel a bit safer about thing will continue working as I used to and expect them to. Besides, all the apps I use are updated as continuously. As such, I don't need to worry using versions of those apps that fall behind. Not only the that, with updates to Linux Mint come as needed and the point releases keep bring the big releases that weren't included at the original release of the OS. For my needs, Linux Mint cover them all, and it gets better with time. With each release, Linux Mint keeps feeling like ...
Post a Comment
Read more