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French Revolution
Let’s be honest, it’s not exactly the storming of the Bastille. But it caused global headlines all the same: the French parliament is dumping Windows on its desktops and is replacing it by Linux and other open source components. We’re talking here about eleven hundred workstations affected, which probably explains one of the comments on the Internet: “this must be a .00000000000000000001% hit on Windows”. And come to think of it, there’s some resemblance to what happened on that revolutionary 14th of July, 1789 after all. No less important in the history of France, the glorious image of courageous French patriots that stormed a towering fortress to free hundreds of oppressed peasants was in practice a bit more prosaic. Actually, there were only seven inmates held in jail at the Bastille (including two madmen) and the defending garrison consisted of eighty invalides: old soldiers that were no longer capable of service in the field.
We should not get caught up in discussing what exactly could be a metaphor for what. Unfortunately.
Suffice to say that little events can turn out to be historic occurrences. Or they just may prove to be, well, little events. It’s tempting to say that only the hard, tangible business case matters: "… open-source software will offer functionality adapted to the needs of the members of parliament and will allow us to make substantial savings despite the associated migration and training costs…". In practice, that won’t only pertain to a migration from Windows XP to Linux, but even so to upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista. The real significance may be in choosing software that – according to local Open Source supporters – provides the French parliament with greater control over its information technology while not depending on any vendor and making better use of public money. In that context, it is hardly surprising that the shift to open source was already pioneered by the Ministry of Culture.
Contemplate that.
It’s up to us, and history, to determine what is true and what is relevant. For now, we don’t see shouting crowds and guillotines move in on Windows yet. Then again, I guess Louis XVI didn’t see much coming either.
Posted by Ron Tolido on November 27, 2006 in
Open Source
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Comments
# on November 28, 2006 11:17 AM, Brian Murray said:
I loved the analogy and wish I could spend time volunteering a few more historic metaphors.
I think there are two pertinent points that tend to be glossed over which, personally, I consider absolutely key in this context:
Firstly, I wonder how much of the debate is actually more around the choice of software (e.g. MS Office v OpenOffice in this case) rather than the OS. Wouldn't the industry be so much the healthier if MS Windows and MS Office were seperate companies! I actually think MS itself may benefit from this.
Secondly, as implied by the comment around asserting vendor independent control, if we did have an appropriate software base without OS-dependence would the same question arise. For example, would Linux even have appeared in the traditional Windows-v-UNIX debate?
Perhaps a more relevant under-current here is how we view the bigger picture architects involved (e.g. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116459728069433263-3hIIN4LVG991KJP_6zFPfCjKecs_20061226.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top). For example, particularly in the 'Green IT' sense, if we could provide complete desktop functionality regardless of the OS platform, would we need non-mobile fat clients at all?
Although a drop in the internet ocean, the French have made a strong statement. In the meantime the UK strategy continues to be ruled by our accountants. As the comments to a recent article reflect (http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39164304,00.htm), when will we take into account broader architectural considerations and recognise potential false economies in the long term? Who knows.
# on November 28, 2006 5:04 PM, Martijn Walvis said:
Dag,
Op dit moment is Magnus Management Consultants bezig met een onderzoek onder corporate blogs in Nederland. Hiervoor zouden we u een survey willen sturen, zou ik uw email adres mogen ontvangen om de link naar onze survey te kunnen sturen?
Met vriendelijke groet,
Martijn Walvis (m.walvis at magnus.nl)
Magnus Management Consultants
# on December 7, 2006 1:05 PM, Tom Ward said:
Taking out windows emmm... The French revolution is an interesting analogy. When will we get a similar gesture for the all pervasive SAP. Maybe we could use a more recent historic event for the analogy - Fall of Berlin. The need for an open and competitive software market is critical to our industry yet we continually lock ourselves into single vendor products. The IBM mainframe of the past was another good example……. The challenge is to gain real open interoperability at all layers of the software stack which plug and play with minimum effort. Yes it’s a Nirvana but maybe we will get there sometime. Great Blog Andy
# on December 10, 2006 6:23 PM, Vijeesh Papulli said:
Very Interesting Analogy!
Well Open Source movement is quiet a revolution I am sure everyone agrees. But I guess as any revolution its impact is something we are not able to visualise completely currently as we are seeing it as it unfolds.
Like Microsoft every software vendor will face the pressure of open source movement and its remains to be seen how these vendors actually respond to this. Especially in the Enterprise Applications space. CRM seems one area where there seems to lot of traction from the open source movement. The likes of Sugar CRM seems to well taken by the market. With amount of consolidation happening in this market it remains to be seen what the approach of Oracle and SAP would be to the open source movement. Can they keep comparing Open source movement to socialism as Shai Agassi did recently or communism as Bill Gates said sometime back?