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May 2004 Archives January February March April May June July August September October November December RMS talk in Trinity Posted By Proinnsias Breathnach - 12:35, 18 May 2004 Edited by Proinnsias Breathnach - 12:35, 18 May 2004 Richard Stallman will give a talk on Monday the 24th of May, at 19:30 in Trinity College's MacNeill theatre. The topic will be "The Dangers of Software Patents" OceanFree connection scripts updated Posted By Ken Guest - 10:41, 12 May 2004 The connection scripts section for OceanFree has been updated. Letter To The Editor Computers In Business Posted By Paul O'Malley - 23:51, 7 May 2004 Edited by Ken Guest - 23:51, 7 May 2004 To: The Editor of Computers In Business, Mr Adrian Weckler, As PRO of the Irish Linux Users' Group http://www.linux.ie, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you and your team on well balanced and objective articles on Linux in your recent "Computers in Business" supplement. however, I would also like to point out a few minor misgivings with some of the comments in the 'Why Microsoft Wins' article (which, I appreciate, was written by a Microsoft employee). Firstly, we in the ILUG welcome the mention of 'Open Standards' based software. Unfortunately some of the standards currently in use are anything but open, in fact they serve as de-facto standards locking users to a particular platform and application suite. 'Open Standards' can only truly be open if they are published and available to all. This would mean that in twenty years time, applications could be written so that they would be able to make use of documents written and stored today. As an example, anyone who has an MS Word 1.0 document stored in some off site backup, would do well to be able to retrieve any useful information from it today. Most applications (including the current generation office suites) have difficulty opening this format, as it is completely undocumented outside of Microsoft. To say that "Linux is a kernel and Windows is a platform" is a game of semantics. The term "Linux" is more frequently used as a shorthand for the term "Linux distribution", which is a platform. In fact, most Linux distributions provide some level of compatibility with a number of platforms including those from Microsoft. Three of the most popular Linux distribution companies MandrakeSoft, RedHat and SuSE, have a corporate presence in Ireland. All of these companies produce boxed set distributions which can be purchased in many computer stores, at prices comparable to, (or below,) the equivalent Microsoft offering. The argument on TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is a contentious one. It seems that every other study finds that product A is cheaper than product B. One should look at the relationship between the independent adviser and the sponsor of the study, and ensure that like is compared with like. There is no panacea, only solutions that fit specific circumstances. The TCO argument falls short for business by leaving out such items as "systems effectiveness", "business efficiency", and "business effectiveness", as defined in this interesting on-line article: http://www.cio.com/archive/030104/realvalue.html Regards, Paul O'Malley PRO, Irish Linux Users' Group, http://www.linux.ie Minister gets reply from OpenIreland Posted By Paul O'Malley - 21:13, 5 May 2004 Edited by Paul O'Malley - 21:13, 5 May 2004 After the reported comments by Minister Hanafin at the ISA conference a lot of comments have been made in the Irish FOSS arena. OpenIreland have issued a response through their chair Mel McIntyre. The letter a PDF can be found here: OpenIreland Letter To Minister |
