Brilliant and well-written email, Lars! It made my day.
-Ben
On Mar 13, 2009, at 10:44 AM, Lars Noodén wrote:
John McCreesh wrote:
I hope this doesn't sound too racist - I am a closet Francophile ;-)
Not really, given that French is a nationality rather than an race(*).
However, as a US citizen I do take issue with the slur that MS is
somehow representative of the US or in any way 'American' except for
the
postal address. It certainly doesn't represent any of the pre-Bush
ideals, rightly or wrongly, presented as 'American', at least not the
dogma we got in school regarding hard work, honesty, ingenuity and
independence. ;) From what I recall, it doesn't even pay its fair
share of taxes, and one wonders if the amount that is paid even
offsets
the economic damage from its malware or the -20% efficiency found in
MS
shops. These problems do bear a not insignificant role in having made
the economic situation worse that it would have been.
Freedom. In contrast to the top-down, hierarchical, centrally
controlled, command economy represented by MS, the freedom brought by
open source and open standards do, appear to represent very much the
ideals(**) of democracy and independence as described by the Founding
Fathers. To bring it back on topic, the ideals of these political
philosophers and or business men were brought to realization only with
the help of the French back towards the end of the 1700's
Anyway, I applaud the Gendarmerie's initiative and steadfastness.
That
the move has been well-documented and analyzed helps others very much.
The results can now be applied in the US. With the economy the way it
is in the US now (the really bad news doesn't filter overseas yet)
major
deployments of new versions of MS products will likely have to be
financed by firing staff. So it could be once again, 233 years later,
the French military assisting the US out of a bad spot.
We could extrapolate the cost savings from the Gendarmerie for a
national deployment for OOo for the whole US, based on the estimated
current number of MSO seats, and announce it as an economic stimulus
package: OOo gives $X billion USD worth of software to US to stimulate
economic growth.
-Lars
(stepping back down from the soap box)
(*) Further, population geneticists like Luigi Cavalli-Sforza seem to
take issue with the assertion that there is such a thing as race.
Following the frequency distributions of alleles, a strong case can be
made that there is no such thing. Sorry, I used genetic maps to
support
archeological and historical data regarding viking trade routes. Must
be a flashback. ;)
(**) Shared by many nations.
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Benjamin Horst
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