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New approach sought with open source desktops
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| Horizons Regional Council "would be remiss
| not to investigate alternatives" to
| Microsoft on the desktop, as it has a
| responsibility to the ratepayers that fund
| it to spend their money wisely, says
| William Gordon, IT team leader at the
| council.
|
| Horizons, covering a large area of the mid-
| North Island, has agreed to participate in
| the Public Sector Remix project, devised by
| the NZ Open Source Society.
|
| âWeâll be trialling the Ubuntu-based
| desktop devised for the Remix project,
| initially on six to eight PCs,â Gordon
| says.
|
| The council expects to start the trial
| within the next two months. There is no
| firm plan for project duration, but it will
| probably last between four and six weeks,
| he says. Horizons wants to have a month-end
| included in the test, to test the open
| source systemsâ ability to handle regular
| peaks in workload.
|
| The main driver for Horizons to consider
| open source was the failure of the
| governmentâs G2009 negotiations for bulk
| purchase of Microsoft software last year.
|
| âThat caused us to realise that we should
| be investigating alternatives for the next
| three-year cycle.â
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http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/technology/New-approach-sought-with-open-source-desktops
Open source means freedom from 'anti-features'
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| Proprietary vendors are using "anti-
| features", features that no user would ever
| want, to protect intellectual property,
| Benjamin âMakoâ Hill, from the
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told
| the linux.conf.au open source conference
| last month.
|
| But IP protection is only one of several
| reasons vendors introduce such features
| into their products.
|
| An anti-feature serves the interests of the
| vendor, he says, not the user. A typical
| example is the set of limitations placed on
| the Home Basic version of Microsoftâs Vista
| operating system; these restricted memory
| and disk-storage support and limited the
| user to at most three concurrent
| applications using the graphical user
| interface, Hill says.
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http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/development/8FC32A7B611E877ACC2576C30068FAA9
Recent:
NZ Post to Try Linux Desktop
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| The New Zealand Post is one of three
| government agencies looking to rip out their
| Windows desktops and replace them with Linux
| and open source applications.
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http://blackberry.sys-con.com/node/1265693/print
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