18/07/2006
Politicians may forget, we don’t
Mr. Christos Berelis, a minister in the previous Government wrote an article in a newspaper criticizing the current Government over it’s agreement-contract with Microsoft and for it’s lack of open-source use inside the Government. The article (in Greek) is called “On Microsoft’s Tank” (my own translation), and it’s posted here Berelis’ article.
Mr. Berelis probably “forgets” what the government signed with microsoft when HE was a minister. Did he write any articles back then criticizing that agreement? Of course not! Here’s the agreement: Greek Government Announces Strategic Cooperation with Microsoft for the Security of IT systems. What’s even worse is that the agreement of Mr. Berelis’ Government regards Security. An IT section where microsoft has admitted is way behind it’s competitors.
Enough with lies. Face the reality and admit your mistakes. If you want to criticize the current government you MUST first criticize yours and accept your mistakes and apologize for them. Until then you are just trying to harvest some lazy voters Mr. Berelis. ENOUGH.
Old post about this: Linux in Europe vs Greece
Filed by kargig at 18:17 under General,Linux
6 Comments | 9,912 views
Politicians don’t forget, they pretend.
The press release “Greek Government Announces Strategic Cooperation with Microsoft for the Security of IT systems”,
http://www.pressi.com/int/release/77719.html
talks about joining a special program that would allow the government access to the source code of Microsoft software.
For more about the GSP program see
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Licensing/GSP.mspx
The GSP program is not related to buying software, so the comparison is invalid.
It is beneficial to be members of the GSP program though I doubt it has much benefit in terms of security evaluation; you cannot analyse much the source code if you are only allowed to view it through a web-based application.
Quote from the announcement made my Mr. Skandalidis:
Do you notice the words “cooperation” and “future” ? This agreement between Mr. Skandalidis (previous government) with Microsoft was just a preparation of the agreement between Mr. Alogoskoufis (current government) and Microsoft that followed.
Quote from the announcement made by Mr. Jean-Phillipe Courtois, CEO of Microsoft EMEA:
Would you trust an E-government suite created by Microsoft for the Greek government ? I certainly wouldn’t. The GSP is a step for Microsoft’s “intrusion” inside the Greek Government. If the Greek government has signed an agreement with microsoft in order to be able to view the source code of windows related products, isn’t it just a step to making a further agreement in the future in order to buy more software from that company ? Why sign an agreement to “examine” the source code of windows when you can freely see the source code in open source programs ? And as I’ve said in my previous post about this…who will examine the code ? We know how these things work in Greece…don’t we ? Agreement = Money…don’t forget that.
The GSP agreement doesn’t “buy” software, but it points a finger at which software to buy in the future since you “can see the code of it”.
Politicians are not naive, and we shouldn’t be either.
The press release (http://www.pressi.com/int/release/77719.html) is a press release by Microsoft, therefore, Microsoft can write what they want about their “vision”.
What is see here is that you use cirmustantial evidence to write a very aggressive post. If you have the evidence, by all means present them.
What you are doing here is that with no evidence you rubbish the efforts of a politician to help the Greek economy. Creating enemies everywhere does not necessarily help the FLOSS movement.
If you feel that your post should be ammended, please do so.
It seems that you ignored Mr. Skandalidis’ quote. I wouldn’t like to think that this press release was written by an MS employee without the knowledge of the greek government. If this is the case and these quotes of Mr. Skandalidis were not said by Mr. Skandalidis…then we face a very different type of problem.
Evidence of what? I don’t really understand what you want evidence about. These are my personal thoughts on a press release by Microsoft, with quotes from a former Greek minister of the previous government (the one Mr. Berelis was a member). In my opinion this specific agreement is the basis of what would follow by the current government, the agreement that Mr. Alogoskoufis made.
I don’t remember Mr. Berelis (or any other member of the previous government) making any quotes on open-source while they were government. Did the “open source ideas” hit them now, after 2 years that they are no longer government ? We know there are elections coming in a few months, and we know the previous government is doing anything it can to undermine the current one, even though they have both made the same “mistakes”. I would sponsor Mr. Berelis ideas if he had said the same stuff about open source when his party was the running government. But he didn’t, as far as I know.
I know PASOK’s “youth” is making some efforts into helping the open-source movement and translating open source programs in some cases, but is that enough to erase our memory of their past? Why didn’t they help when they were government and they had the infinite power/money/resources to do so?
I personally don’t trust them. They will have to show a LOT more effort into the open source movement before I believe what they are doing is not just for the undermining of the current government. They were government for almost 2 decades. Why didn’t they “save” the Greek economy back then by sponsoring open source? Why now ?
Why should I believe what they say now ? 2 years after 20 years of inactivity….
Actually, this is the first time that the opposition is doing that bad on pools since ages. This circumstance is not the only one that PASOK act’s like that. No one believe in their speeches. I think that it’s the worst opposition I’ve ever seen in my youth life.
Talking about Microsoft, someone would say it’s better than nothing and I’ll have to agree on that. This topic was extensively discussed on Linux Greek Users Mailing List.
You might read some interesting arguments about why choosing Microsoft is not bad at all from people that you wouldn’t expect to. There are posts like this were arguments that most of never thought.
I don’t know if you can exchange Microsoft’s software with open and free software, for me as a citizen it’s more important for things to work even if the platform of choice is Mac. I would love the idea to save money doing this through open source though.