CanOpenER

Quebec broke law in buying Microsoft software

Quebec's government broke the law by buying software from Microsoft without considering offers from other vendors, the province's Superior Court has ruled. The decision was in regards to a suit filed in March 2008 by Savoir Faire Linux, a small Montreal-based firm that deals in open-source software. Read the full thing at http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/06/03/quebec-microsoft-lawsuit.html Nice...

A Linux consulting company is suing the Gouvernement du Qu�bec

First of all sorry, but most of the information is in french. So to make it quick, the R�gie des Rentes du Qu�bec (Social insurance program) migrated all of their workstation from Windows XP to Vista and upgraded Microsoft Office to 2007. Savoir-faire Linux, a Montreal based compay specializes in free software services. Savoir-faire Linux has made several requests to the R�gie des rentes du Qu�bec but the organisation is maintaining its decision to renew their software without launching a call for tenders. Savoir-faire Linux is now calling upon the courts to declare that the R�gie cannot proceed in this manner and that it must give all suppliers, including free software suppliers, the chance to bid. Read the full thing at http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/bbwf0/a_linux_consulting_company_is_suing_the/

Changing IT in Education

For years education has been using what everyone uses for IT, that other OS on thick clients. It doesn't work for education because IT is seen as an expense to be minimized rather than a means to generate revenue. Education can use IT to do the things that are best done with IT:

find
create
change
present

information. We can do it with Free Software. It allows us to maximize the effectiveness of the funds we do spend on hardware. Further, by using thin clients with GNU/Linux we can get twice as many computer seats in our schools for the same money and cut on-going maintenance costs.

Read "Why When and How We Must Change IT in Education"

Response to the GC RFI on "No Charge Licence Software"

Response to the Government of Canada's RFI - NO CHARGE LICENSED SOFTWAREResponse to the Government of Canada's RFI - NO CHARGE LICENSED SOFTWARERobert Pogson2009-2-7Abstract: In response to this RFI, it is proposed to deal with �NO CHARGELICENSED SOFTWARE� in two streams:

� Free Software which the government is free to use, examinesource code, modify source code and to distribute changes includingsource code

� Non-Free Software which may have a no-cost licence butwhich does not allow copying, examination of source code or distribution.

Free and Non-Free Software have different technological risks, levelsof reliability and flexibility. The Government should respect thesedifferences to make the best use of information technology.

Q1 In the Overview, the Crown provided a definition for No ChargeLicensed Software. Is this an appropriate definition?�No Charge Licensed Software means Licensed Software that is availableat no charge for the Licensed Software and is typically made availableas a free download from the Internet. No Charge Licensed Softwaremay also have No Charge Software Support Services (NCSSS) availableat no charge from the Internet.

No Charge Licensed Software categories would include software categoriessuch as Operating Systems, Office Automation Office Suites, Internetbrowsers, Application servers, development tools and utilities.�

This definition is appropriate but vague in view of the myriad differentlicences in existence. The government should add clarity to its definitionby discriminating between two major categories:

Free Software[GPL] which includes the permission given inthe lic ence to use, examine source code, modify source code andto distribute changes. This greatly reduces technological risks associatedwith software because the government would acquire a degree of independencefrom the supplier and assurance that the software could be fixed ifissues arise.
Non-Free Software which does not include all of those rights withthe licence. This software has great risks similar to �proprietary�software obtained by paid licences. The supplier can force, or deny,upgrades causing the software to become less useful or more expensivewith time. This closed software may also contain hidden legal risksof patent or copyright violation.

The Government of Canada is not like many ordinary businesses becauseof its size. Free Software has special advantages for such a largeorganization because the government can actually afford to acquireand to maintain source code for software more cheaply than it canpay commercial licences for some software. For example, OpenOffice.orgproduces an office suite that is Free Software but it's entire budgetis much less than the government pays each year in licence fees foroffice suites if they use Microsoft Office. Sun Microsystems boughtStar Office, lock, stock and barrel[Sun], which evolved intoOpenOffice.org, for less than it would have cost them for one roundof licence fees to Microsoft. For this reason, the government shoulddefinitely treat Free Software as a special category and, indeed,prefer it, especially for commodity, widely used and tested Free Software.

The government should also consider, in lieu of paying for licencesfor Free Software, to make a contribution to organizations producingFree Software or employing software/documentation developers who wouldwork for these organizations. This would employ Canadians and givethe government a means of customizing, debugging, and fixing softwarerather then depending on outside organizations with their own agendas.

Q2. What are reasonable criteria that the Crown should consider ina decision process for acquiring No Charge Licensed Software? Arethere circumstances in which the acquisition of No Charge LicensedSoftware would not be advisable?

After the normal �Does it work?� kinds of criteria that shouldbe applied to all information technology systems and software, allsoftware used or considered for use by the government should be categorizedinto FREE and NON-Free Software and preference given to Free Softwarebecause of the unique benefits to the government. In particular, widleyused Free Software should be considered suitable for a fast-trackin acquisitions because millions of installations may already be testedand performing well. Examples of Free Software that should be considereda commodity like sheets of paper or pens:

OpenOffice.org[OO] office suite which has more than 100 millioninstallations
Apache[Apache] web server which runs about 2/3 ofthe Internet
MySQL[MySQL] database which is widely used with PHP to providedynamic web sites
PHP scripts which run on Apache web servers to provide instant commodity/genericsocial networking sites
language processors such as C, C+, PHP, Perl and Python
GNU/Linux operating system which runs most of the web and is usedon about 10% of desktop computers

Statistics on the presence of PHP on server sites is available inthe form of a MySQL database[PHP]. The results for .ca websitesgives:

mysql> select libelle,nombre,pourcentage from statswhere type='canada' and date like '2008-11-04%';

+��+��+��+

| libelle | nombre | pourcentage

| +��+��+��+

| .ab.ca | 716 | 29.404517453 |

| .bc.ca | 1819 | 37.343461301 |

| .gc.ca | 72 | 7.392197125 |

| .mb.ca | 371 | 28.148710166 |

| .nb.ca | 140 | 32.786885245 |

| .nf.ca | 39 | 11.079545454 |

| .ns.ca | 524 | 41.853035143 |

| .nt.ca | 7 | 7.291666666 |

| .nu.ca | 11 | 47.826086956 |

| .on.ca | 2265 | 30.921501706 |

| .pe.ca | 44 | 24.858757062 |

| .qc.ca | 3333 | 28.922249219 |

| .sk.ca | 195 | 26.970954356 |

| .yk.ca | 28 | 20.289855072 |

+��+��+��+

14 rows in set (0.01 sec)

Thus, we see that the government is using PHP much less than mostwebsites in Canada on average. PHP is extremely useful for rapidlydeveloping interactive websites so this may be because the governmentrarely changes their sites or it may be that the government feelsthey should use more expensive technology.

If a Free Software package is widely used and known to work and hasa published buglist, there are no reasons the government should notpromptly approve it for use. The only instance where such Free Softwareshould not be used is where a migration would be too costly or diruptiveto existing systems. This is a feature of existing systems, not anegative for Free Software. Likely, the government uses closed/proprietaryfile formats and protocols. That is a mistake of the past and shouldnot be repeated by continuing to acquire closed systems. There isno security through obscurity and often very little efficiency. Opensystems, following publicly developed open standards are the way informationtechnology should be done and preference should be given to Free Softwarebecause it usually follows open standards.

Q3. What factors other than price should be considered as part ofan evaluation guideline for No Charge Licensed Software? Are thereother factors beyond those outlined in Appendix A & B that the Crownshould consider?

Widespread use, published bug lists[bugs] and open source codeshould be the minimum standards by which No Charge Licensed Softwareshould be considered. Closed source code and no published bug listsshould count against any software, not only No Charge Licensed Software.

Q4. How should existing Government Furnished Equipment, Services,Service Level Agreements and internal resources be considered whenevaluating the usage of No Charge Licensed Software?

Any equipment, service, agreement or resource that is in any way incompatiblewith Free Software should be modified/replaced. The purpose of informationtechnology is to use computers, networks and storage to create, modify,find and present information in the fastest and most efficient mannerpossible. Free Software often is the best way to do any of these thingsand any system that excludes Free Software in its file format, protocol,licence or the skill sets of staff should be considered an indicationthat the information technology system is far from optimal and shouldbe changed. When Free Software was not well known and certain suppliershad a monopoly on information technology, many mistakes were madelocking-in the monopolistic practices leading to inefficiency, highprices and inflexibility. The sooner these mistakes are correctedby converting all systems to open standards and Free Software, thebetter. The cost of monopoly is large and on-going[mono]. Thecost of changing a system to use Free Software is mostly a singlecharge and manageable for commodity systems.

Q5. How practical is No Charge Licensed Software? Are there hiddencosts that need to be considered as part of the process of evaluatingthe alternatives available?

I use Free Software in education and it does everything the studentsneed done and 90% of what the teachers need to do because the employeris locked into some proprietary databases that do not use a web interfacebut must install a client application on the proprietary operatingsystem on a commodity PC. There is no technical reason that Free Softwarecould not be used for everything in education or government if thereis the will to change and to make the best use of information technologyin the future.

There are those who spread fear about Free Software claiming thatit is more expensive to manage than proprietary software but thatis only true if one keeps the lock-in provided by purveyors of proprietarysoftware and the Free Software must be given complex configurationto comply with deliberately obscure protocols. That can easily beseen in the two open standards for office file formats. ODF was definedin less than 1000 pages and is widely supported. Microsoft promotedOOXML in 6000 pages and no one, not even Microsoft can comply withit[iso].

Consider commodity desktop systems. The most common model is one desktop/onelicence/one hard drive costing thousands of dollars to install andto maintain each year. A promising model is the thin client/terminalserver where the client PC has no hard drive, no installed software,no fans, is tiny, and shows the pictures and receives the clicks fora powerful server. With Free Software, one system administrator canmanage thousands of desktops and rarely has to visit the PC. WithMicrosoft Windows XP, one system administrator can barely keep upwith the maintenance on a few hundred machines because the disks fail,the hard drives fail, the machines pick up malware, and if the serverkeeps the user's files, the network gets congested. One can use thinclients with Windows but Microsoft charges a huge licence fee forthe server and another fee for each PC connected, nullifying muchof the capital cost savings. In addition, Windows does not used sharedmemory so a terminal server can only run half the users that a terminalserver running GNU/Linux can. Thus, for 80% or even more of desktopPCs, it makes no sense in terms of cost of acquisition or operationto use Windows but many do because they are locked-in. The governmentshould fight this. It is difficult but the annual savings foreverafterward are much larger than the short-term costs[largo].

Q6. What are the general financial, technical and security risksassociated with acquiring and using No Charge Licensed Software?

Closed software whether the licence is paid or not is inherently risky.The maker has no need to make the software secure if the customerwill buy it whether it is secure or not. Free Software, on the otherhand, is open to inspection and the world can examine it in detailfor flaws and report them in public forums. Serious flaws can be fixedin days with Free Software software because there is no restrictionon changing the source code. Non-Free Software changes have only onesource and the end-user has to wait until the developer gets aroundto it. For example, when Microsoft released its latest operating system,Vista, it was discovered that a feature, deliberately introduced 15years earlier was a serious security flaw[wmf]. Recently,the beta of their next operating system was found to have a securityfeature which could be trivially turned off by malware[uac].I have used Free Software for eight years and never seen malware onit. I see malware on Windows weekly. The risks the government shouldbe examining should include non-Free Software. There are far morerisks to using that.

Q7. How do Open Standards and interoperability factor into evaluationconsiderations?

No software that uses closed standards should be considered for usein governmental systems. The purpose of government is to serve itspeople not the monopolistic purposes of corporations. Closed software/closedstandards serve others purposes and unless the government is privyto the purposes and methods it is foolish to depend on them. Closedsystems could involve espionage, sabotage, hidden faults or anti-competitivemeasures[IE]. The government should avoid all closed systems.

Q8. How does the technology factor into the evaluation consideration,such as ability to maintain and evergreen?

Free Software is obviously maintainable by an organization the sizeof the government and fits well into these factors. Closed standards,and non-Free Software, whether with paid licence or not interferewith maintenance. For example, I worked at a place where we had ane-mail system that had worked well for many years. The latest versionof the software had a feature the employer wanted so we looked intoupgrading to the newest version. If we wanted to keep our data, theaccumulated e-mail of five years, we had to pay for and install eachversion of the software between our old version and the new one. Thesupplier held our e-mail for ransome so we paid about ten times morefor the software than a new installation of the current version andit cost half a day of labour. That does not happen with Free Softwarebecause there is no motivation to change file formats with each release.Software with annual licences can just expire and data can be lost.The government should not use any closed systems.

Q9. How does the Crown evaluate the flexibility of the licensingmodels for No Charge Licensed Software?

It would save many difficulties with licences to use a standard softwarelicence like the GNU GPL for Free Software. It is obviously possibleto do this but some change of suppliers would be needed. The governmentshould set a target date for converting all software to Free Software.Paid licence software should offer the four freedoms of Free Softwareor be excluded from consideration. In systems that have a common licencethere is never a legal worry about installing one more system, makingchanges or combining software in any combination, things that areoften forbidden by other licences. The Product User Riights of Microsoftis so restrictive it takes 94 pages[EULA]. The GPL takes only12 pages for Version 3 because it gives rights, and does not takerights away except for violations of a few simple principles. Thegovernment should look at licensing Free Software as a huge simplificationof the legal structure of the government's IT system.

Q10. What impact will No Charge Licensed Software have on GovernmentLicensed End-User Networks?

If the government switch to widespread use of thin client with GNU/Linux,network traffic would fall because data will largely be off most ofthe network leaving only key clicks and screen updates. Except forfull-screen video which is not a part of many roles in government,the end-result is a much more responsive network. For example, inmy school, machines running Windows XP Pro, take 45s to give a log-inscreen and another 90s to give a usable desktop because the machinestransfer many user files over the network. With a GNU/Linux terminalserver, those files stay on the server and do not traverse the network.The difference is remarkable. My GNU/Linux clients take 45s to bootand from log-in to usable desktop is 2s. Loading my largest applicationtakes 1.5s because the files are already in the shared memory of theGNU/Linux terminal server and little disk access is needed to openthe application.

If the government uses network standards that are open, Free Softwarewill give the best performance at lowest cost. Any supplier of networkingwho insists on non-Free Software being used should be excluded fromconsideration.

Conclusion

It is good to see the Government of Canada taking FLOSS seriously.It is about time. GNU/Linux has been very usable for more than tenyears. The cost of IT being more than twice as much using Windowsas GNU/Linux, that has been a huge waste. There is still a problemwith this initiative. It appears that the government is consideringtreating FLOSS as a risky venture with limited utility. The oppositeshould be true. Non-Free Software should be considered as a huge riskto security and our viability as a nation. Microsoft, in particular,should not be allowed to provide software to the government. The WindowsEULA prevents the Government of Canada from fulfilling its duty toprovide services to Canadians reliably and at lowest cost. In education,I have installed whole-school systems that run trouble-free for yearsat half the cost of using Windows. There is no justification for thewidespread use of Windows in education or government.

Further, the government should note that in countries where FLOSSis promoted, BRIC countries, IT is growing at a great rate while inNorth America many technology firms are laying off thousands of employees.[BRIC]

This document was produced entirely with Free Software: FireFox webbrowser, Lyx type-setter, pdf utilities and Debian GNU/Linux.

References[GPL]The GNU organization formed in 1984 to promoteFree Software. see http://www.gnu.org/[Sun]�The number one reason why Sun bought StarDivision in 1999 was because, at the time, Sun had something approachingforty-two thousand employees. Pretty much every one of them had tohave both a Unix workstation and a Windows laptop. And it was cheaperto go buy a company that could make a Solar is and Linux desktop productivitysuite than it was to buy forty-two thousand licenses from Microsoft.�http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice#History[OO] OpenOffice.org is a Free Software office suiteoriginally designed to be equivalent capability to Microsoft Officebut it uses open standard file formats as well as closed, can producePDF. It has had more than 100 million downloads and is included inmany GNU/Linux distributions of software running on many millionsof PCs. It is available for several operating systems. see http://OpenOffice.org[Apache] The Netcraft Survey shows Apache runs 52%of all websites but only half of all websites are active. Many areplace-holders. 50% of the top performers are Apache while only 15%are Windows. see http://news.Netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.htmlhttp://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/Hosters?tn=january_2009[MySQL] MySQL is database widely used by itself andas part of the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL ans PHP/Perl/Python).[PHP]see http://www.mysql.com/why-mysql/marketshare/and http://www.nexen.net/images/stories/stats.200810.sql.bz2[bugs]Sales agents for non-Free Software rarely publishtheir bugs. Free Software organizations have different motivation,to produce the best software. see http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical[mono]�CyberInsecurity: , The Cost of Monopoly�see http://www.ccianet.org/papers/cyberinsecurity.pdf[iso] �Google's Position on OOXML as a ProposedISO Standard ... If ISO were to give OOXML with its 6546 pages thesame level of review that other standards have seen, it would take18 years (6576 days for 6546 pages) to achieve comparable levels ofreview to the existing ODF standard (871 days for 867 pages) whichachieves the same purpose and is thus a good comparison. Consideringthat OOXML has only received about 5.5% of the review that comparablestandards have undergone, reports about inconsistencies, contradictionsand missing information are hardly surprising. see http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/Google%20OOXML%20Q%20%20A.pdf[largo] �We noted on our last Largo visit, andnote once again, that these are the least harassed, least worried,calmest sysadmins we have ever met. They have one of the smallestand least-worked help desks we have ever seen � five people who support450+ client units and over 800 users, and it is all done without anyfuss, muss or hurry. The desktop units, remember, have no moving partsor applications software on them. They rarely break, and if they doit is only a moment's work to swap one out. Monitors eventually getold and dim, but they have a stack of $150 Compaq 17" monitorsready to go, plenty of spare keyboards and mice, and lots of CAT-5cable. Everything in the server room is backed up and redundant (andneat, with all cables marked) so maintenance there is as under controland worry-free as it is on the client side of things. ... Harold,Mike, and Dave all note that when they go to technical conferencesand other sysadmin get-togethers, they are usually the only ones inthe place who are not getting a steady stream of frantic interruptions.... So what do they do with their time? They research, plan, and thinkof yet more ways to save Largo taxpayers money on IT while makingthe city's IT services more efficient and useful.� see http://www.linux.com/articles/26827[wmf]�Windows Metafiles are extensively supportedby all versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. All versionsfrom Windows 3.0 to the latest Windows Server 2003 R2 contain thissecurity flaw. However, versions from Windows XP onwards are moreseverely affected than earlier versions, since they have a handlerand reader for the WMF file in their default installation.� seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Metafile_vulnerability[uac]�malware authors can exploit the fact thatrundll32.exe is allowed to automatically elevate by separating theirmalware into two pieces ? a proxy application and a payload (in theform of a library). The proxy application?s job is to invoke rundll32.exe,with the payload library as a parameter in a way that ?requests? elevation.Windows will intercept the request and automatically elevate the processto High Mandatory Level, executing your payload wearing an administrativehat.� see http://www.withinwindows.com/2009/02/04/windows-7-auto-elevation-mistake-lets-malware-elevate-freely-easily/[IE]�Nevertheless, Microsoft tied the two together,refusing to sell Windows 95 or Windows 98 without Microsoft's browseror to permit OEMs to remove the browser before selling their PCs loadedwith Windows. With Windows 98, Microsoft also unnecessarily "welded"the browser to the operating system, so that using another browserwould be a "jarring experience," further excludingrival browser suppliers. � see http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f2600/2613overview.pdf[EULA]see http://www.google.com/url?q=http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/e/9/be9929eb-298e-4636-907c-70216f5f6f90/MicrosoftProductUseRights(Worldwide)(English)(January2008)(CR).doc&ei=3hCOSdmwHpLQsAP3ztj-CA&sa=X&oi=spellmeleon_result&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&usg=AFQjCNFMdSdCtr2olJWfXGceGDK8BhVRMw[BRIC]�A deep global recession and a radical industrytransformation are at the core of IDC's predictions for the IT industryin 2009. With economists forecasting dramatically slowing global GDPgrowth, IDC predicts that global IT spending growth will slow by halfor more, effectively stripping more than $35 billion of potentialrevenue out of the market. To survive, it will be critically importantfor vendors to reorient their businesses and offerings toward marketsegments with above average growth. The latter will continue to includeemerging markets, such as the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India,and China), as well as the small and medium-sized business (SMB) sector.Although spending will slow significantly in these markets, it willoutperform the overall market. In addition, government initiativesto spur economic growth and financial stability will include outlaysfor new technology, making this an important market sector for thefirst time in many years.� see http://idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS21556508&pageType=PRINTFRIENDLY

This document was translated from LATEX byHEVEA.

No news is good news

The site is still alive, but not much is going on. Eventually, I'll get around to migrating the site to something new - possibly dokuwiki...

AliXe 0.11b -- Linux Bilingue Qu�becois

Over the past year or two I’ve been drifting away from Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mandriva towards distros derived from Slackware for desktop use. The reason is simple: these distributions tend to have the best performance I’ve found, particularly on older or limited hardware. Slackware itself lacks some graphical tools and user friendly features that more popular distros have but is outstanding in terms of stability and reliability. A number of Slackware derived distros retain those benefits while offering the ease of use many of us have come to expect. AliXe is such a distro, albeit one designed to be small and compact, making it particularly suitable for older hardware. True to it’s Canadian heritage, AliXe also offers full support for both French and English despite it’s small size.

Read the full thing at http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2008/01/alixe_011b_linux_bilingue_qube.html

Canadian banks put the brakes on open source

From itbusiness.ca:

Linux-based and Unix-based apps are becoming commonplace in the enterprise, but some sectors are still holding out. IDC and Info-Tech explain why our financial institutions are reluctant to take the plunge. Also: a consultant tells us where they could be missing out

Read the full thing at http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=44233

Overwhelming opposition to adoption of OOXML as standard, Canada wants ODF

From LXer:

The Standards Council of Canada is seeking comments on a proposal to adopt Office Open XML (Open XML or OOXML) as an international standard. So far there are over 130 comments to this proposal and the message is clear. People don't want OOXML.

Read the full thing at http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/87536/index.html Jump straight to the proposal at https://forums.scc.ca/forums/scc/dispatch.cgi/public/docProfile/100009/6415621

The open source attitude

From ITBusiness.ca:

Open source has always been the underdog on the software scene, but it continues to draw intense interest from users and vendors alike in North America. Users want to avoid vendor lock-in and are attracted to potential cost savings. And vendors and value-added resellers see opportunities for innovation in the software market

Read the full thing at http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=42726

Saskatchewan to provide free wireless Internet access

Residents and visitors to the downtown business districts and post-secondary institutions of Saskatchewan’s four largest centres will soon be able to access the country’s largest wireless Internet network, free-of-charge. Premier Lorne Calvert and Minister responsible for Information Technology Andrew Thomson made the announcement today in Saskatoon.

Read the full thing at http://www.gov.sk.ca/news?newsId=71f283b3-f8f8-44c4-b0d6-693921262e29 The Information Technology Office, SaskTel and other partners are working on implementing this.