I once believed in open formats and the practicality of switching between closed and open source, but years of experience has convinced me that no two complex applications will ever really be interoperable for the long tail of complex documents that use a larger than average number of the applications' features. I waste too many hours trying to fix MS Word tables and embedded grapics so that they will render correctly in LibreOffice, too many nightmare experiences jumping between video editors, and vector graphics apps, etc. Programs like MS Office are so complex that only a Singularity-level AI will ever fix them.
City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
#42So what will be the cost of deploying Linux, retraining on Linux, and then going back to Windows? These people can afford to make stupid decisions because it's not their own money they are wasting. The only reason this is happening is crony capitalism: they want to do a favour to the local open source businesses (there are a few of them) which are friendly to the local government. They will get lots of support contra…
Actually a sizeable percentage of the public do support it because it has much better support for their native tongue.
Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
People in universities (both staff and students) are always left-leaning; the mindshare of Linux in universities has always been big everywhere, it's not really a Catalan thing. Because of that, I'm not surprised they are enthusiastic about the Catalan language either, but that's not the case anywhere else, where people usually run their software and enjoy their entertainment in Spanish without making a big deal abou…
Are you equating support for open source with left-leaningness?
Yes, I am. That's what matches my personal experience.
Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
#44I'm Catalan. Catalonia has always been big on open source, and if anything I'm surprised this took so long to happen. The mindshare in universities and such is particularly high, and this isn't limited to computer science (my background). Even my high school did at the very least run a Linux server (running at least samba and squid) and had a few Linux workstations. This was 20 years ago. Back when I lived there, I w…
Well, I'm Estonian living in Barcelona. A lot of things never bother to add Estonian support because we're such a tiny nation (like iOS, for example) which means our English is rather good. Good English is not something I've encountered much in Catalonia, so while yes I agree that having your country's technology work in your language is a must, it's also in my opinion a double-edged sword making more and more local…
I understand what you're saying but keep in mind that when Catalan is not available, the language that tends to be used isn't English, but Spanish.
Knowledge of Spanish in Catalonia is not by any metric bad.
Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
#45Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
#46I'm Catalan. Catalonia has always been big on open source, and if anything I'm surprised this took so long to happen. The mindshare in universities and such is particularly high, and this isn't limited to computer science (my background). Even my high school did at the very least run a Linux server (running at least samba and squid) and had a few Linux workstations. This was 20 years ago. Back when I lived there, I w…
Well, I'm Estonian living in Barcelona. A lot of things never bother to add Estonian support because we're such a tiny nation (like iOS, for example) which means our English is rather good. Good English is not something I've encountered much in Catalonia, so while yes I agree that having your country's technology work in your language is a must, it's also in my opinion a double-edged sword making more and more local…
Why is that a problem though? Should people in an arbitrary country need to learn English?
Also, could you provide a source for the fact that English literacy rates are actually decreasing? I find that difficult to believe.
Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
#47Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I'm Estonian living in Barcelona. A lot of things never bother to add Estonian support because we're such a tiny nation (like iOS, for example) which means our English is rather good. Good English is not something I've encountered much in Catalonia, so while yes I agree that having your country's technology work in your language is a must, it's also in my opinion a double-edged sword making more and more local…
Why is that a problem though? Should people in an arbitrary country need to learn English? Also, could you provide a source for the fact that English literacy rates are actually decreasing? I find that difficult to believe.
I don't see where he said it's decreasing.
And as I understand it, it's improving. Catalonia's fortunate in that most people are bilingual to begin with, which is known to ease the introduction of other languages considerably.
Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you equating support for open source with left-leaningness?
Yes, I am. That's what matches my personal experience.
It does however not match mine (and I'm Catalan). We've got university professors of all walks of life with all sorts of views. However, it is true that I've yet to meet one that wasn't favorable to open source.
Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software
#50I once believed in open formats and the practicality of switching between closed and open source, but years of experience has convinced me that no two complex applications will ever really be interoperable for the long tail of complex documents that use a larger than average number of the applications' features. I waste too many hours trying to fix MS Word tables and embedded grapics so that they will render correctl…
Or legislation. Such as, say, requiring the use of OASIS standards within the administration, and for communication with the administration.
"But we don't use libreoffice" is not a valid excuse when libreoffice is free software and available in Catalan for all the major OS platforms.