Governments using Free Software (was: Re: [ox-en] Where / who is the enemy?)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:44:44 +0100
Hi Graham!
Nice to read you :-) .
5 days ago graham wrote:
Stefan Merten wrote:
If we think that peer production is subversive to capitalism then who
is protecting capitalism? Classicaly this was a task for the state.
However, nowadays at least in the EU the states are quite in favor of
Free Software and things like OpenAccess.
This seems a very unreal statement to me. The state is in favour of Free
Software in roughly the same way it is in favour of direct democracy: it
would be a nice idea in theory, and we must say we like it, but in
practice it must not be used.
Well, in Germany (most of) the state is against direct democracy...
As far as I know there is no German government department which has
switched to use of free software (I believe there are some French ones
which encourage use of Openoffice, but no more).
Indeed there are a few. From my memory: The Bundesverwaltung switched
to Free Software - though I think at the moment the enemy gains ground
again. Munich switched. Smaller communities like Schwäbisch Hall(?)
switched years ago. There is an official general policy for the German
government that Free Software is to be used if possible - though it is
implemented to various degrees (that is why simple people like me can
try to make a difference ;-) ).
I guess this policy is from the KBSt_ which also has `English pages`_.
See `list of OSS projects`_ for at the moment 102 OSS projects.
.. _KBSt: http://www.kbst.bund.de/
.. _English pages: http://www.kbst.bund.de/cln_028/nn_836802/Content/Service/English/english__dokuments.html__nnn=true
.. _list of OSS projects: http://www.kbst.bund.de/cln_028/nn_836802/Content/Software/OSS__Kompetenzzentrum/oss.html__nnn=true
The EU favors Free Software because the EU doesn't like to be the
appendix of an US monopolist. And also because the EU government sees
business chances for EU companies around Free Software.
I do not believe any
government in the world makes use of Linux internally apart from Venezuela.
I guess you are wrong.
Grüße
Stefan
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