Vietnamese government mandates Open Source
THE VIETNAM Ministry of Information and Communications has ordered all governmental bodies to migrate to using 100 per cent Open Source software products.
Vietnamese organisations subject to the ministry's directive include the IT departments of all ministries and government agencies as well as the provincial and municipal organisations.
All central government agencies must complete their migrations by June 30th, 2009, while ministries and local governments must be 70 per cent converted by December 31st, 2009.
The ministry directed all government bodies to complete their migrations to using 100 per cent Open Source software by December 31st, 2010.
This decision means that the entire country will move to installing Linux operating systems instead of the Vole's OS and server products. The open sauce applications that the ministry has named include the Open Office suite, the Mozilla Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client, plus the Vietnamese language keyboarding software Unikey.
The directive also sets interim benchmarks for staff training and proficiency in using Open Source applications.
This marks about the 17th country worldwide to formally adopt the Open Document Format standard in rejection of Microsoft's opaque and self-serving OOXML scheme. It also can't have escaped the Vietnamese government ministry's notice that the vast majority of security vulnerabilities and malware attacks afflict Microsoft software rather than Linux and Open Source applications.
As Slashdot has noted, "Vietnam has a population of 86 million, four million larger than that of Germany, and is one of the world's fastest-growing economies."
The decision was evidently driven by pragmatism rather than ideology, as the ministry also urged the country's governmental bodies to cease and desist from using "cracked" copies of proprietary software products. µ
L'Inq
Vietnam Net
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Why should people stick with Microsoft at all.
Unless you are a gamer there is no reason at all.
Linux is mostly far better to use then Windows...but like I said unless you are a games.
Governments are normally not the gaming people...
I agree that this is a good thing. After all, why should any government trust their sensitive data to a closed-source *black-box system* of code that they are told is *none of their business*. That would seem like betraying citizens' trust.
The entire school district where I live in Canada switched to Linux for all school computers years ago, saved a bundle in software and security/ administration costs (AND taught students how to use Linux).
For security reasons alone, I hope more governments (and more people) follow the lead of Vietnam (particularly in this time where economic savings are so important).
It's a pity the Vietnamese government doesn't believe in Open Source Government! ... [rolleyes]
There is more to windows than just games, try finding "quality" video DVD creation software, 1 step PSP/MP4 conversion apps, custom MP3 and DJ software, Children's education software (not that BS crap they call tux alphabet). Openoffice is nice, but Office 2007 is much, much better.
I tried Ubuntu and after a few months hated it. It "got in my way" and made it hard to manage my files they way "I" wanted it too. (I hate having to elevate permissions to get into a simple system folder) Also if the latest greatest apps wasnt in the respository, prepare to build it yourself and watch your system puke.
Also linux absolutely SUCKS with regards to managing multimedia codecs. I actually went out and paid for Vista. Now I have all the same opensource apps in windows as there are in linux, some better like Paint.net. And I can play the latest games too while I'm at it.
If you have simple needs and no "real"
gaming, fine use Linux/Ubuntu. But don't bash the rest of us that enjoy Vista, we're busy getting things done and enjoying our games too.
Ever since Bill and Microsoft made such an easy "deal" (read blackmail) with the Federal Government on appeal after losing their court case in the U.S. I do not trust the security of a PC running Windows. I don't have anything of interest on my machines but I'm sure any Government does.
How can 8 Millions (populationof Vietnam) be 4 times larger than 120 Million (population of Germany)? Just a random question