On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Shlomi Loubaton wrote:
>
> Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Shlomi Loubaton wrote:
> > > > For sure, part of the remarks are true, but DebianInstaller is
> > > > becoming really more friendlier....so newbies are a target....
> > > >
> > > > Remember also that several institutions have chosen Debian as a basis
> > > > for custom distribution, for instance in educative environments (see
> > > > the SkoleLinux project, some french projects and the spanish region of
> > > > Estramadure general project of deploying Linux stations nearly
> > > > everywhere).
> > >
> > > Well, in Israel, right now, the government and educational system are
> > > only using linux and openoffice to get better dealsfrom M$ and that gets
> > > me very pissed off
> > > =\
> >
> > Why should it? If Microsoft lowers its price, it would be good for the
> > customers, who can get the software at a sane price. And it would be good
> > for us
>
> Don't get me wrong , I agree that the process of lowering M$'s prices is "good
> for the Jews" (actually good for everyone:) )
Right.
And hey if we translate this sentence let's keep the original colour.
"Good for everyone" ("tov lekulam") sounds too casual and unsexy, even in
Hebrew. Good for the Jews, OTOH, is much better. Of course, maybe in
English the corresponding idiom is Good for the people. That was a moment
of etymology, brought to you by Shlomi Fish.
> but I'd like to see the the
> government do more. Sometimes I find projects on the web that get support
> from Germany gov. and I wish we had the same thing in here. In my point of
> view it looks like the Israeli authorities act just like in the image of the
> "Israeli HUTZPA" constantly seeking for a "COMBINA", constantly exploiting
> every method in the book =( and I try to convince myself it's not a typical
> Israeli behavior but a way of doing business... and it still gets me pissed
> off.
>
Well, I'm hazy on Government support of free software. For once, I am a
supporter of Laissez-Faire Capitalism (let's not start another flamewar on
this), and think a government has no place to intervene with the market.
(and open source is better off without government support). On the other
hand, I do think that translating things lke Linux, KDE, GNOME, etc. would
be a desirable thing to be sponsored by the government.
The Treasury already sponsored the localization of OpenOffice to Hebrew,
and may do even more. I will fully support them on this, because I think
such actions are beneficial and am willing that my tax-payers money will
go towards it. (because it eventually means less people will buy software
from MS and they will be richer as a result).
> Also ,whenever someone uses that trick, they immediately release it to the
> press and you see an article on ynet. Then after a while you realize they
> chose to use M$ and only used Open source products to lower the costs.
> Eventually I think this gives bad reputation for open source software.
> However, in the current state, even bad publicity is "good"... I guess.
>
Well, this is not particularly limited to Israel alone. Recently a
district in England heavily considered using open-source software, and
ended up choosing Microsoft software, at a bargain price. I'm not sure if
it's bad publicity, because people are aware that there's a good
competition to Microsoft products at this point.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Writing a BitKeeper replacement is probably easier at this point than getting
its license changed.
Matt Mackall on OFTC.net #offtopic.
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