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Unterliegendem Seiten (Brief) sind in Deutsch - Underlying
letters mostly German only.
Munich city council are dumping Microsoft from their 14,000
PCs, & going Linux (project "LiMux").
I wrote a letter to the council to tell them BSD exists, (Linux
is big in Germany, bur BSD not well known outside high
competence technological circles).
The top half of this page is related to the letter sent (in
German), the latter half of the page is other related &
subsequent info & references.
Das Brief (The Letter - In German only)
Antworten (Answers - In German only)
-
(An answer from the SPD party 24th June, I've seen an
earlier reply from the Greens too I think.)
- Ascii Text with
Umlauts 4K.
This text was extracted from the nasty .doc (below)
using Antiword, one of the
8633 (@ June 2003) ported packages that run on FreeBSD and other Free operating systems
- LinuxVariante_A.doc: Microsoft Format .Doc 24K.
Original (nasty proprietary Microsoft Format) the SPD
sent BCC'd to unknown Recipients. Well, SPD will wean
themselves off MS.doc soon enough now
- Original Email
36K
-
A 2nd answer from the SPD party 30th June, Re. Support
- English language newspaper article. More info than I've
seen in the German articles (more time passed for info to
leak out ? ). USA
Today
- August 2005, Someone at BIM Stammtisch told me
Stadt Muenchen have seen the light, & are switching to
Debian from SUSE. (I haven't had time to confirm this)
References
-
Gleiche Reihenfolge wie im Brief
(Same order as in letter (as not click-able in letter
formats))
-
Andere (Other) Links / URLs / See Also / Siehe
Auch
- Try the word "Limux" with a search engine
- http://www.muenchen.de/linux
=
- LiMux,
Munich / Muenchen project.
- http://www.wien.gv.at/ma14/wienux.html
- Vienna Austria
-
Sueddeutsche Zeitung Artikel 04.04.2003, Titel: "Absage
an Microsoft?" inc.: "Die Firma Unilog Integrata, die
den Zuschlag erhielt, kommt nun nach umfangreichen
Prüfungen zu dem Schluss, dass es für die Stadt
am wirtschaftlichsten wäre, sich ganz von Microsoft
zu verabschieden."
-
CT Mag. - Includes Names of officials who may be
receptive to change ?, EG
- Gerd Baumann, Leiter der IT-Abteilung der
Landesversicherungsanstalt Oberbayern.
- Vertreter des staedtischen Amts fuer
Informations- und Datenverarbeitung, Helmut
Hoefer.
- Web fais 2017-08-11
Unilog Integrata -
The company that did the report. Whether they or StadtMuenchen have the
report on the net I don't know, if it is mail me a web
reference please.
SUSE & Muenchen
- A
Presentation On Free Software given in Munich
- Software Um Sonst (Unix For
Free) - In English.
- Mexico city (pop. 18 million was headed for total
Linux by 2003 said osé Barberán reported here by VT
Mag
Copyright CDROM Images
-
Innocents Assume ...
Innocents tend to assume, just because they receive, or can
can download a Linux CDROM image from the net & burn
it, that it's `Free' - Often Not So - look at the copyright
licence ! CDROMs from commercial Linux companies are
usually copyright that company. Most of the content may be
FSF'd GNU Linux based, but
not all (X etc), &
an aggregation copyright may well pertain to CDROM images,
as well as extra copyrights to install tools etc. Look
carefully at your own CDROMs to ascertain detail.
-
Personal Use Only ?
Many companies take some sort of mid course between Free
& Commercial they often allow personal & or time
limited use, but require payment for commercial use. Of
course they'd like you to first get to know Linux, &
their version in particular, & if you later decide you
like it & then want to clone a few hundred CDROMs to
convert your company, & only then realise you can't
just do that free of charge, but must likely buy copies or
negotiate a bulk licence, well, they'll be happy to accept
money.
-
Un-bundling
Un-bundling is a computer industry trick: Removing
facilities to make EG a reduced `Personal' or `User'
version from a full `Professional', `Server', or
`Development' version. One PC Unix company now in the Linux
business used to cripple its base by un-bundling, which
increased 3rd party support & development costs. Check
if your `free' version include all the standard Unix tools
your technical colleagues will expect to be present to
provide proper service - is it a stripped version ? The
commercial temptation to unbundle remains, probably mainly
held in check only while average user remain aware that
full functionality remains available from the non
commercial organisations, replete with developers, who
don't want to unbundle.
-
A Cautious Manager
Considering cost savings for his/her company or
organisation may prefer to start with a CDROM where if
sampled, liked, & man hours invested in adopting that
version, you know you Can clone the CDROM a few hundred or
thousand times free if need be, & not trapped to pay
licences & be dependent on remote commercial Linux
CDROM companies. Really Free CDROMs tend to come from the
non profit organisations EG Debian FreeBSD NetBSD OpenBSD,
rather than the commercial companies. (OK, the non profit
organisations also often encourage you to buy from the
commercial suppliers who sponsor them, but there's not an
obligation usually).
-
Roll Your Own
Rolling your own special operating system version or CDROM
version is possible, &/or installing & using net
servers for remote net installs, but it involves technical,
management & copyright etc issues beyond the scope of
this web page. (VSL offers customised BSD
CDROMs & Unix server configuration).
Specific Instances Re. Copyright
A couple of examples limiting use of CDROM images are appended,
feel free to mail me additions &/or
corrections etc. I don't have much time to monitor Linux
companies' latest offerings. I prefer BSD ! Provide me exact references to specific
CDROM Image Copyright limitations, & I'll include them in
this list:
-
Caldera Open Linux
eServer 2.3
- On printed label:
C. 2000, Caldera System, Inc. All Rights Reserved
- On CDROM: Massive Ascii license text, poorly
formatted, which discourages reading. Not a company to
allow mass copying & commercial use of their CDROMs,
free.
-
Dead link mandrakelinux.com Mandrake
- Mandrake90-cd1-inst.i586.iso
didn't seem to have mandatory legal restrictions I could
notice, but did include ...
- Dead Link ftp. leo.
org/pub/comp/os/unix/linux/Mandrake/Mandrake/iso/README
ftp'able README Re. money: Before downloading our
products, we ask for your support by joining the Dead
Link http://mandrakelinux.com/en/club/ Mandrake Linux
Users Club
-
SUSE
Linux 7.0 Personal
- CDROM#1 /COPYRIGHT.yast
It is forbidden to reproduce or distribute data carriers
which have been reproduced without authorisation for
payment without the prior written consent of SuSE GmbH or
SuSE Linux. Distribution of the YaST programme, its
sources, whether amended or un amended in full or in part
thereof, and the works derived thereof for a charge
require the prior written consent of SuSE GmbH.
-
- Investigate & mail me specific
quotes & references if you want.
What is BSD ? - Only heard of Linux before ?
-
What BSD is
-
German Linux History
In Germany while youngster were making pin money, selling
sets of Linux floppies in CT & other magazines, older
professional programmers in real jobs, also interested in
free (often BSD) Unix, were at
work on better paid projects, & wouldn't distract to
earn less selling BSD floppy sets.
Then CDROMs became popular, the Linux floppy sets expanded
to CDROMs, & the Linux market boomed, user recommending
to new user. Little did we BSD people realise how those
first Linux floppies would seed a new market, which
commercial companies would later build on !
-
Commercial CDROMs
There are no commercial firms advertising & pushing
their own particular variant of any of the BSDs, bundled on
CDROM, instead BSD CDROMS firms sell the generic; but with
less to distinguish their offering from another similar
generic, there is less incentive to risk advertising
budget. There are companies spending heavily on advertising
`their' Linux. No surprise the name Linux is heard more !
But think why they're advertising & promoting their
version: they want to hook you on their particular
extensions to the generic Linux kernel +FSF tool set.
-
Technical Merits
The technical merits of Linux & BSD are not
proportional to percentage of users or `market share', but
related to history & marketing etc. Both Linux &
BSD are very attractive compared to (proprietary, binary
only etc) Microsoft, & BSD & Linux can be made to
appear identical to most normal end users. The relative
merits of Linuxes & BSDs varies with time & user
requirements etc. It's best to be cautious receiving
opinions comparing Linux & BSD, as there are certainly
more people willing to express an opinion, than are
qualified, competent, & currently informed to do so.
It's extremely difficult if not impossible to remain
current on all the BSDs & Linuxes, & many
productive programmers in Linux & BSD prefer to spend
time developing public code for whichever Unix they happen
to prefer, & adopting code from other public Unixes
where it helps, rather than spend too much time making
negative comparisons that rapidly become obsolete as all
the Linuxes & BSDs continue to improve.
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