They have a great website too – http://opensourceforamerica.org/ (I do think they missed a trick though, I’d have gone for “opensourceforus”, much more fun)

Obviously the UK are correspondingly on the ball (!). For information regarding open source in relation to the “Digital Britain” report you’ll need to download the PDF, you’ll find open source mentioned under chapter 8, section 19. However if you can’t be bothered (which of course you can’t, who would) here’s the extensive and inspiring text (yawn) >

“The CIO Council has also been laying the foundations for Digital Public Services by standardising on the desktop computer designs and approaches; the use of openstandards and reuse – ensuring all parties reuse the IP created by the Public Sector; the green ICT Strategy to drive sustainability as well as efficient and effective infrastructures”.

How many computers do you think run Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc (MS Office, basically) at what – around £50-£100/$50-$100 a pop with discount & volume licencing? Now imagine how many billions could be saved globally if nobody had to pay licence fees for their Office Software Suite, that’s at least 90% of all computers in the world (and which is why Microsoft are so rich). Here’s a thought, Firefox is already established to let’s switch to Open Office, one stage at a time, we can easily migrate the operating system to Ubuntu later.

Convinced yet? Back at OSFA, they have a superb 4 Point “Benefits of Open Source Software” page which highlights the advantages in a single concise hit, and as they say –


Open Source? There’s no reason not to.

The major mental hurdle for any business assessing open source options is invariably that of support -  migration support (impact on existing business), user support (familiarity training) and on going support (upgrades/roadmap etc). Such concerns can and do offset the most substantial of cost savings, but what’s the actual situation?

Microsoft obviously factors into the mindset, with a 90%+ market share support is obviously more than available with tried and tested products offering guaranteed cross platform interoperability and familiarity, so much is true however it all comes at a price. I’m not here to knock Microsoft solutions, there are a multitude of reasons they presently run the business enterprise however it would be incredibly short sighted given the present global economic climate for any savvy I.T manager to not at least cast an inquiring eye over cost effective alternatives from the perceived “other side”.

Microsoft support skills are ten a penny and the sector is saturated with MSCE’s of varying levels, both experienced and “paper” (non-experienced) however the majority of todays business I.T departments rather than offering a broad range of computing knowledge and experience provide no more than blinkered “Microsoft Support Services”. A computer is actually quite a capable box of tricks if you don’t choke it with bloated software and there is indeed a whole lot more to the world of computing than the ubiquitous .DOC format (Word). Over the years there’s been a distinct dumbing down of in-house I.T skills, or should I say a tunneling into the “Microsoft way”. However Microsoft isn’t I.T, it’s Microsoft, just one option among many (the most well known “second” being Apple of course).

To highlight the situation take your mid-level car mechanic, he’s well versed and well experienced with vehicular concepts and corresponding fault finding solutions he can apply across the board from a mid 70’s Austin Mini to the latest space-age people carrier. Until electric cars become the norm we will still run combustion engines with pistons, cooling & fuel systems, gearboxes and all the surrounding and supporting gadgetry and electronics, even with hydrogen power cells we’re still going to need wheels and brakes (let’s go electric first before we get on to flying cars, one step at a time). A seasoned I.T professional operates on a similar level, more than capable of cross platform support whilst a “seasoned” I.T department should be even more so and comprehensively rounded enough to allay any fears and concerns around support of non-MS solutions whilst performing relevant R&D to offer them for consideration to non-technical budget holders.

Aside from lack of confidence with in-house expertise people get jittery around Linux due to misconceptions relating to it’s source and development. “Open source” conjours up images of community nerds with beards working away in bedrooms across disparate sections of hashed up code to produce Frankenstein-esque applications looking like something from the late 80’s, there’s no doubt such fractions do exist however in 2010 the professional world of open source solutions (aside from product cost) is actually not too dissimilar from it’s corporate flip-side with certain providers actually providing a more extensive support framework and product roadmap. Let’s take a look at two such big players – SUSE and Ubuntu.

SUSE are owned by super cool legacy networking giants Novell and offer various enterprise level alternatives to Microsoft at a cumulative 10% of relative cost for a three year investment.

Moving over to product roadmap and version support Ubuntu from Canonical take things a notch further to offer their operating system not only for free but on a regular 6 monthly release cycle with a 2 year window for their LTS products (Long Term Support – 3 years on the desktop & 5 years for server), they too provide a range of paid support subscription options alongside an extensive free on-line Wiki & technical documentation portal. When the operating system is free it certainly opens up options for paid support (should you feel the need).

Vendor support is obviously reassuring and as shown if you choose your version intelligently from one of the big players the ROI can be rather lucrative, however as discussed if you have the right blend of seasoned staff should you need it? After all how many I.T departments hold paid subscriptions for telephone support from Microsoft? Hardly any, I know as I managed corporate I.T for many years and am more than aware how it works  – you need an answer? Google it or work it out, and if you can’t do either then what are you doing working in I.T, or mores the question, who employed you?

If you’re unsure about Open Source and would like to find out more about solutions on offer TooMuchGreen offer free consultancy and would be more than happy to come and visit you to assess and discuss your requirements, feel free to zip us a request off via the contact page. As you can see, saving money is actually just a part of it (I.T).

The first ever Linux Con was held this week in Oregon, USA. I would have loved to attend however due to financial constraints and logistics (I’m presently in Berlin) it wasn’t going to happen, so, I bit the bullet and subscribed to the $99 three day streaming & archive package from Linux Pro magazine.

Admittedly I did have doubts, $99 for a few streaming conference videos? And look, half of them are free anyway? However, after the opening speech by Bob Sutor from IBM I felt I’d already got my money’s worth, straight up.

Aside from the presentation format & quality (which was superb, a credit to the Linux Pro techies) it was incredibly refreshing just to be in the presence (albeit virtually) of such like minds from such reputable sources speaking with such passion about an area which is predominantly my whole life at the moment. I’ve been bashing away at open source awareness myself for a good while now through TooMuchGreen and I must admit there are days when you feel up against it and wonder if anyone out there is taking the blindest bit of notice. The presentations I caught boosted my moral no end and thoroughly reinforced my belief in what I’m doing and why, I knew the community was out there from the forums we all visit daily but seeing and hearing *them* in person (so to speak) was literally something else, I would strongly recommend the service to anyone and I’d have no hesitation whatsoever in signing up for future events, especially Linux Con.

My time here in Berlin is coming to an end and although I’ll thoroughly miss the place (it’s a wonderful city), thanks to Linux Pro and The Linux Foundation I’m returning to the UK with inspiration on full charge (SUPER-charge when Linux Pro publish the on-line archive and I get to watch the sessions I missed, inspiring as it was an 8 hour time difference is still an 8 hour time difference).

This next year really is going to be quite something. I’ll be ensconced in NTI from October 2nd in Leeds City centre, feel free to Tweet me and drop in for a coffee.

Email is officially yesterdays technology. Previously groundbreaking as the quickest form of communication it now lags on the periphery of snail mail terminology due to the instant zip of new alternatives such as Twitter.

Of course collaboratively it’s still the de facto standard for business interaction, but that’s only because Google Wave hasn’t been released and adopted yet. Google Wave? Indeed. After being shipped off to Google’s Sydney office to develop the product in secret the Wave team presented their two year project at the recent Google IO developers conference, I went through the presentation and really didn’t expect to be so impressed. So, what IS the Wave?

Take all the annoyances and shortfalls of bulk project emailing and streamline them, re-invent some old concepts (Operational Transformation), pull in some new ones, add something really cool and re-package it all for delivery through a browser. Print some t-shirts, preview it to a bunch of whooping developers (quite literally) and release it to them as open source, welcome to the Wave.

Obviously that’s selling it way short  and in all honesty you’d do far better to watch the (80 minute) presentation than try to glean the enormity of it’s potential from this meager blog entry, however I’ll try to expand the concept sufficiently to do it justice and push you toward the YouTube Video.

A Wave is a packaged communication module for recorded group collaboration, it runs in a slick browser based GUI environment and consists of messages and related updates through videos, links, text or any other form of digital media you wish to include, it’s member manageable and stunningly instant. You know those awful disjointed long email trails which just grow and grow and become even more disjointed and harder to decipher and confusing to follow as extra information gets added by others reading them at different stages and adding their own opinions before checking amendments they can’t  actually get to anyway because someone forgot to Reply to All somewhere back down the line (BREATHE..!!), exactly, but not an issue with a Wave, you just add your *bit* where applicable and it’s all recorded for staged playback. It’s genius in it’s simplicity – group email with extras and a time-line, expandable and flowing, one instance, one place.

I thought Twitter was  a revelation (and it was/is) but the Wave can streamline connected productivity even more, how about instant real time language translation for a start, and we’re not just talking Babelfish here, it’s contextually intelligent. Previous experience with Maps showed the enormous potential for rapid expansion by opening up a product for 3rd party API development and Google are most wisely doing the same with the Wave codebase. They also need the quickest route for adoption if they’re going to succeed by replacing project email as we know it to become the new global standard for group collaboration, obviously no small undertaking…but…remember, this is GOOGLE.

Aside from envisioned real-time interaction the fact Wave is delivered solely through a browser (ANY browser) could seal the fate of the desktop operating system and the in-box for good (hello Google Chrome OS ?). As you can run the Wave GUI through Firefox on any platform for free with no need for MS Exchange and Outlook Microsoft should (quite rightly) be most concerned, and although they do still have Active Directory it now seems only a matter of time before the centralised security of Linux based desktop virtualisation comes knocking there too, Ubuntu Server is by nature already a hypervisor and KVM support (Kernel based Virtual Machine) has been offered since version 8.10.

Times they are a changing, cloud cover is coming and the surf is rising, looks like it’s time time to wax up the longboard and ride the Wave.

Open Source? Many people may have no idea what it means, to some it’s a descriptive tag for certain platforms of community developed free software, to others it’s “lab” computing for geeks, at the far end it’s a comprehensive lifestyle ethos and to a select Facebook few on the flip side of phonetics it’s a bottle of HP with the lid off waiting to be plopped onto their soggy fish & chips. What’s obvious is that the term “Open Source” applies to more than a single area or product, however there is a constant and if we dig down we’re going to end up somewhere around root “collaboration”.

The word collaboration is invariably linked to production of an end result and is further described as being inherently positive (except, interestingly, during wartime), its corroborated companion, “cooperation”, is apparently always positive and the staunch anti-thesis of both comes to us as the dark deceitful back-door concept of “collusion”.

A perceptually large amount of the Open Source community relish the apparent notion we may indeed be at war, a war (for them) against a certain monolithic software giant (who shall remain nameless) and I must admit it does feel like that at times, although in war don’t you have to have two sides fighting each other? If not I believe there’s an escalating scale of aptly applicable descriptions for such systems one could pull on, leading up to virtual despotism! But hey, let’s not get too extreme here, after all we’re the ones sporting beards and sandals remember (or is that just me?) and that’s most definitely not what Too Much Green is about, life is a choice and it’s all about options, ideally

What’s more important in life to you? Security? Purpose? Status? Family? Can they be separated? I don’t think they either can or should, for if you factor in our flair for social interaction you complete the full package for endorsed happiness, with life, as a result, becoming substantially more than the sum of it’s contributed parts thanks to increased benefits attained through a collaboration of needs.

Positive energy flows from collaboration and through open collaboration it flows even freer, you know how nice it is when someone helps you out purely because they want to? Indeed, aside from being the basis for friendship it could even be the crux of potentiality for a truly evolved future of our species (we really have to stop trying to blow each other up). There’s no doubt the production of anything is instilled with a certain something extra if it’s been created from passion and goodwill rather than on the back of a single focused drive to capitalise and make money (remind you of anyone we know? I could pick several examples but if we stick with computers I think you get the picture).

So, where is this going and what does it mean to your daily email and web surfing? Well, maybe you should tell me, all I’m saying is that Open Source software is so much more than just a great way of saving money.

Our choices in life define who we are.

The world according to Google isn’t a bad thing from where I come in, it’s all very well and good me sat here relentlessly crusading for Linux through Too Much Green but hard as I try I’m obviously never going to attain anywhere near the exposure and reputation of the Google God (unless something really bizarre happens), as such I was (am) more than excited at the prospect of a Linux OS being instantly catapulted into the mainstream Google *globe* and the repercussions it’s going to have for Open Source Solutions and those who offer them (Too Much Green – obviously), which is more than can be said for Microsoft, yes indeed, the dance for the desktop has a new contender and they’re not afraid to stand on a few toes, even if they are attached to the feet of a corporate giant.

Whether or not Microsoft can dance doesn’t really come into it, they may indeed be too big to don a tuxedo and glide elegantly across the sprung floor under a slowly rotating glitterball of end user applications but their size provides a hefty advantage in other areas, they can (and do) fight and in this case instantly responded with a sharp uppercut to Google Docs in the shape of a free online offering for their ubiquitous Office suite (albeit a trimmed down and ad-supported version), nice shot, above the belt too (just), however online is still online and although an internet perma-connection you’d think was a statutory modern day daily service what with the always connected iPhone culture it’s also a modern day delusion, iPhone’s don’t use their Wi-Fi for permanent web linkage, they use a mobile telephone network, so, what happens to your online docs when you’re not….online….well, unless you use a mobile dongle on your laptop (and are able to catch a signal)….they just sit there, and so do you.

Do yourself a favour, don’t believe the hype, Open Office is free to download, use and distribute, with no internet connection required once it’s installed.

It’s incredibly reassuring and inspiring to come across like minds, especially when they’re based in ones home country (& county) and especially when they’re on such a professional level. I’ve recently linked up with Open Source For Business (OS4B) based in Leeds (West Yorkshire, UK) who are just this, and more, to quote…

“Open Source for Business (OS4B) is the exciting joint venture from Yorkshire Forward and nti Leeds, designed to help regional businesses make the most of open source technology to benefit from cost effective and flexible open source IT solutions”

…sound familiar? I was most gratified when they listed Too Much Green on their providers page, a fresh link up for increasing exposed visibility of our combined cause is a real plus to start any day with.

I was recently put the question “What does Open Source mean?”, obviously it’s a big subject and the term can mean different things in different areas and correspondingly to different people from different professions, however for me, even in it’s predominantly perceived area of I.T, it means so much more than just free software. Aside from a presently unrealised global financial safety net for the underpinning business technology of enterprise I.T the whole movement reflects the positive advantages which open collaboration can bring to our battered world, it’s ‘hope’ (I know, I sound like Obama…!), seriously though it really is, the underlying energy flow is literally the flip side of what’s being destroying society for many years. The human race can and does work well together, and when it does so by choice and with passion the results are even more amazing, most anything is possible, even free software.

So, you’ve registered your domain and have your Linux VS ready to roll, what’s next? Well, rather than wrestle with the bottomless world of hardcore geekdom at the convoluted CLI you could do a lot worse than install the ECHP domain management tool.

EHCP is open source and thus free to download and use, it comes very well supported and the website supplies what could be THE all time best procedural “How To” for installation I have ever come across (if you excuse the ‘interesting’ english) with clickable “Yes/No” confirmation checks and resulting problem resolves after each stage (admittedly the ‘concept’ sections aren’t as yet fully complete). Install is as follows..

sudo apt-get install wget
wget www.ehcp.net/download
tar -zxvf ehcp_latest.tgz
cd ehcp
./install.sh
#

..it’s an incredibly long old install (seemingly at least three to four times longer than a base server install alone) and you’re asked various bits and bobs along the way so pay attention (MySQL passwords etc), however it’s all nothing too major and to be honest if you’re at a stage of wanting to manage your own domain hosting you’ll more than likely be at an easy level of suitable technical knowledge to cope with both the install and later domain import and configuration, if not you’ll work it out.

Once installed you access the admin interface through http://”your IP number“/ (if you haven’t fully configured base domain & DNS access it will tell you and either click through or use http://”your IP number“/vhost/ehcp/ then once in resolve things alongside the main domain config), username is “admin” and the password will be one you created during the setup.

An interesting point of note which could speed things along during later LAMP installs is that EHCP installs phpMyAdmin for you, which is useful, useful also are the included modules for eMail, FTP & MySQL services & config, however it’s the “Easy Add”, “Bulk Add” and “DNS Only” domain click throughs which are the bread and butter, or there again, you could always wrestle with the command line for days on end (personally I’d rather use the time more productively to drink beer and watch TV).

Due to an increase in project work lately I’ve had to review and produce various bits of documentation sent to me in MS Word format, and nice as iWork 09 is (and it IS nice) you have to face it that the two still aren’t 100% compatible regarding the finer points of formatting (very close, but just not 100%), so, last week I gave the groovy little MacBook Air the shock of it’s iLife by by installing MS Word on it just to see how it compared to the open source offerings, I should have known better, from the *word* go it just didn’t feel right.

Firstly you’ve got the general size of the app itself, bloated is an understatement, not only that but after install it decides it wants to update it’s updater (?) then proceeds to hog all your bandwidth by downloading the actual SP update itself, which at 180mb is certainly some service pack (indeed, and some).

Anyhow, I installed it and despatched the documentation off in both Word and PDF format (I love PDF’s, but that’s another story, ask me about archive Digitisation formats sometime), and as it all went OK I decided to have a butchers around Entourage too, just out of curiosity, and just to see how the other half lives (as you do), I fired up the .DMG and tried to add it to the installed packages, but it didn’t want to know, nope, not playing at all. It seems if you do a selective install of only certain packages and upgrade to the latest service pack you’re snookered for adding the remainder as they’re seen to be from an older version of Office (which I suppose they now are of course), there’s no way round it other than to de-install, sift through and manually remove all the operating system and preference entries (a laboriously challenging job in itself) and run through the whole process again (complete with huge service pack download to update), hmm….no, I don’t think so, Neo Office it is then.

Neo Office is an evolved version of the superb open source office suite “Open Office“, it’s ported and tuned for the Macs (OSX), is free to download and drops in substantially smaller than the service pack alone for Mac Office 2008. It offers true and seamless cross compatibility and if you don’t use it you honestly must be some sort of retard, seriously, why on earth anyone would shell out $250+ on a piece of software which does exactly the same as a similar application which you can download for free is beyond me (I’ve even seen Mac Office 2008 listed at $499, come on now, you really HAVE to be kidding here people).

Once again it’s merely down to monopolistic marketing and fear of the unknown, imagine the cost savings gained throughout all our schools and hospitals if each computer ran an Ubuntu desktop operating system with an accompanying open source office suite, even with *educational discount* you’re negating license costs of at least $200 per unit, money which could be re-purposed into infrastructure and service upgrades rather than lining the pockets of a presently self perpetuating monster who seems aggressively intent on extending its global dominance through forced software upgrades and extortionately priced software, software which as oppose to being intuitive is convoluted to use and without adequate patching (at further cost) is no more than a frustratingly unstable and dangerous security risk rather than the enabler it professes to be.

There shouldn’t even be a considered choice here for anyone with at least half a brain. Ubuntu is a free and uber stable operating system for your computer, Mozilla offer their Firefox web browser and superb Thunderbird e-mail client also for free, couple both with the free Open Office suite and you have a robust, scalable and inherently secure platform for any and all variations of enterprise I.T, and all for nothing.

This was mentioned briefly in the Linux section however it’s such an incredibly cool and inspiring story I felt it most definitely warranted further expansion with a dedicated post.

I was highlighting cost savings in relation to software licensing against an open standards platform as adopted by the French ‘Gendarmarie Nationale‘ (National Police Force) over the past few years, the results are literally amazing.

The Gendarmarie accountant was becoming somewhat ‘ennuyé’ at continually having to shell out for MS Office licenses so decided to give Open Office a spin, he liked what he found and it all started there. Open Office was rolled out first followed by planned migration of the desktop OS from XP to Ubuntu. Combined inception of a web based core system meant local platform specifics at workstation level were opened up to anything with a browser and of course they chose Firefox, matched with Thunderbird e-mail (obviously) for their IMAP mail platform, ideal. To date only 5,000 of the Gendarmaries 90,000 computers have been ‘open sourced’ with an estimated 15,000 tagged for migration by the end of this year, even so since 2004 they’ve racked up savings of  around €50 MILLION from previously expansive licensing and support costs, project that onto the full 90,000 units and  it’s quite something n’est-ce pas?

Lieutenant-Colonel Xavier Guimard (cool name) of the Gendarmarie recently presented a keynote speach at the annual  NOiV conference for open source standards in Utrecht, amongst an extensive breakdown of decisions for (and roadmap to) their adoption of open standards are some classic no brainers for anyone contemplating a similar strategy. Reassuring and obvious comments (aside from the quite staggering cost savings) which should prompt anyone not to look too deeply into technicalities, sometimes the most simple observations are the most poignant, in the words of Xavier himself -

“Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority.”

“Previously, one of us would be travelling all year just to install a new version of some anti virus application on the desktops in the Gendarmerie’s outposts on the islands in French Polynesia. A similar operation now is finished within two weeks and does not require travelling.”

“This year the IT budget will be reduced by 70 percent. This will not affect our IT systems.”

“Users need no training to use a web browser.”

Classic lines. In the evolving world of browser based application delivery from the cloud Linux is the cost effective King and a decision to adopt it will without a doubt reduce your IT expenditure, the bigger you are the more you’ll save, it’s a no brainer. Amidst the financial chaos of 2009 everyone is looking for ways to save money which is why examples like this are welcome, reassuring, inspiring and why I write about them.

*LINK* – For anyone fluent in French the man Xavier’s full report is viewable in PDF format HERE.

*LINK* – Story as reported by OSOR.EU HERE.