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Socitm president rethinks open-source 'lag' comment
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| Mark Taylor, chief executive officer of open-source vendor Sirius, rejected
| Steel's appraisal. "The reality is that open source reduces costs by giving
| greater flexibility of licensing, while up-and-coming open-source
| technologies are well ahead of proprietary software," he told ZDNet UK.
|
| Taylor said that browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox contain features that
| still have not been incorporated into proprietary browsers.
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http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39619903,00.htm
Recent:
This isn't “Open Source”
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| The piece is entitle “Open Sauce”, but it ought really be called “”Open
| Source””, since its author, Richard Steel, the CIO of Newham, seems to have
| such distaste for the concept that he can't bring himself even to write the
| words without sanitising them between the quotation marks.
|
| He is reacting to the UK Government's Action Plan on open source, and I'd
| like to react to those reactions.
|
| Mr Steel writes:
|
| I don’t like the term “Open Source”. It’s misleading; what many people mean
| is “anything but Microsoft”; few businesses actually use open source
| directly – they buy software derived from open source that has been
| commercially packaged and sold with support, which, in practice, is little
| different to licensed software.
|
| Well, no: there's nothing misleading in the term. It's tightly defined by the
| rigorous and well-understood Open Source Definition, which has nothing
| whatsoever to do with “anything but Microsoft”; indeed, Microsoft actually
| has some OSD-approved licences – the Microsoft Public License and Microsoft
| Reciprocal License: so does this mean that Microsoft is pushing “anything but
| Microsoft” too?
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http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1923&blogid=14
Related:
Promoting Microsoft...
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| This is the same man who originated the term "doing a Newham" - ie the
| process of feigning interest in Linux to get, ahem, 'preferential
| arrangements' with Microsoft.
|
| This is the same man who, in line with Newhams MoU with Microsoft, starred in
| Microsoft's "Get the Facts" roadshow.
|
| As Dr John Pugh MP has stated, "Microsoft is *very* close to the UK
| Government, and they intend to stay there".
|
| Richard Steel's appointment as President of Socitm is a very canny play from
| the multiply-convicted monopolist.
|
| Of course the contractual obligation to promote Microsoft in the UK Public
| Sector will not affect either his credibility, or his bias-free ability to
| perform this new role, nobody could possibly think that, could they?
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http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/0,1000001161,39408136-39001084c-20093563o,00.htm
ID Cards: Scandalous as Well as Idiotic
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| In other words, the UK government is trying to use a kind of financial
| blackmail to keep its idiotic projects going: continue or cough up. And to
| add insult to injury, it cloaks its activities in secrecy. What a morally
| corrupt bunch.
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http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/05/id-cards-scandalous-as-well-as-idiotic.html
If a Linux interoperability deal is done in a forest, and no one is around to
witness it, does it really exist?
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| During a visit to the KommITS conference in Sweden, Richard discovered the
| following information: “I note that Novell has a local arrangement with
| Microsoft, which resells its version of Suse Linux to enable Linux
| exploitation on a Windows platform!” The exclamation mark is his own, and
| suggests genuine surprise at hearing the news of Microsoft and Novell’s
| entanglement.
|
| It would be easy to suggest that any CIO must have had their head in the sand
| not to have been aware of a small agreement that Microsoft and Novell entered
| into a little while ago, but also I think one also has to accept that for a
| great number of senior IT executives this sort of information just isn’t as
| fascinating as open source followers think it is.
|
| [...]
|
| Conspiracy theory alert: Newham is one of Microsoft’s flagship local
| government accounts in the UK following its controversial decision to sign a
| ten-year agreement with Microsoft after ditching plans to move to an open
| source environment. Clearly, Newham has less reason then to be interested in
| Linux and Microsoft’s relationship with Novell than other organizations (it
| also explains why Microsoft’s SLES voucher-wielding sales team hasn’t been
| breaking down the door).
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http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/05/12/if-a-linux-interoperability-deal-is-done-in-a-forest/
Newham has a cow over Microsoft MOU
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| However, Newham has supplied the INQUIRER with internal studies that it says
| do demonstrate that its decision to commit to Microsoft was justified. The
| studies were performed by Socitm, a private public sector consulting firm of
| which Newham COI Steele is a vice president. the INQUIRER will report on
| these findings in due course.
|
| Meanwhile, the original MOU is enlightening. As well as claiming the deal
| would enable Newham to achieve high rankings in Audit Commission assessments,
| it committed Newham to moving all "competitive technology" to Microsoft,
| regardless of the feasibility of such a move.
|
| It also required Steele to promote Microsoft software.
|
| See attached file: Memorandum of Understanding.doc
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http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/21/microsoft-newham-council-goes
Is This the Season of Porcine Aerobatics?
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| Two of the darkest moments for open source in the UK involved the loss of
| major public projects. The first was Newham Borough Council, which ran a
| high-profile trial of open source only to ditch it at the last moment, after
| magically receiving an offer it couldn't refuse from Microsoft – which cynics
| suggested was the main motivation for the open source exercise in the first
| place.
|
| This was bad news for free software, because it enabled Microsoft to do two
| things. First, it could claim that an independent body had tried open source
| and found it wanting, and secondly, it was able to use Newham as a showcase
| for its public sector technology.
|
| In some ways, the second defeat was even worse. It involved a massive
| contract with the NHS that was far-reaching in scope...
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http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?blogid=14&entryid=728
War of words breaks out over Microsoft MOU
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| The salutary lesson to draw from our dealings, Richard, is not whether you
| can trust the press. It is rather a lesson in managing expectations, a
| process every CIO should know well.
|
| The expectations you invested in your 2004 deal with Microsoft, as enshrined
| in the memorandum of understanding, were also unrealistic.
|
| To recap, the original MOU said the use of Microsoft software would "improve
| Common Performance Assessment results and Star Ratings" measured by the Audit
| Commission.
|
| The analysis presented in the INQUIRER on Friday demonstrated that this
| expectation had not been met.
|
| When we asked you about this on Friday you told us there was a new MOU. Now
| you accuse us of twisting your words.
|
| How would you prefer to describe what happened to the original agreement? If
| it has not been scrapped, perhaps it has been decommissioned, recycled, sold
| on eBay?
|
| Having been told you had drawn up a second MOU with Microsoft, we were
| clearly interested to learn what new terms you had agreed in the public
| interest. You said it was confidential. But the first MOU was deemed fit for
| publication under FOI rules.
|
| You also said the first MOU was only ever a three year deal. But the document
| was accepted by a Council vote as part of a 10-year deal.
|
| Now four years since you signed the original agreement it is proper for us to
| ask how well the public money you are giving Microsoft is spent.
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http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/23/scrapped-microsoft-mou
British Tech Execs Ignore Vista
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| Steel, who was criticized by open source proponents for selecting Microsoft
| over open source, said there is still an anti-Microsoft feeling among local
| authority CIOs. As Socitm president he said he saw little adoption of the new
| operating system. Recently analysts have come out in support of Vista,
| claiming organizations could miss out on important business benefits if they
| delay adoption. "One of the things that I am finding more and more is that
| the anti-Microsoft camp is growing," he said.
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,146531-pg,1/article.html
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