We don’t often talk directly about our business activities on this blog. But once in a while something happens that rightly deserves a mention.

Our Open Source consulting business, The Open Learning Centre, has been very busy of late. We’ve been working with a household name hardware manufacturer and a very well known high-street retailer to deliver a really exciting and innovative product to the consumer market.

Say hello to the webbook (click for a very big image).

The webbook is manufactured by the UK electronics company Elonex and is being sold exclusively by The Carphone Warehouse.

The webbook is a high specification UMPC that has a 1.6Ghz Via C7 processor (x86), 512Mb of RAM and [currently] an 80G HDD. The screen has a very usable 1024×600 resolution and it has the usual assortment of USB, LAN and an SD socket, plus built in WiFi too. We have setup a blog specifically for the webbook here so users can get access to all the latest news, tips and advice. Be sure to add it to your feed reader.

The really cool thing about the webbook is the software. The webbok comes pre-loaded with Ubuntu 8.04.1, Hardy Heron, and some new software written especially for this application that delivers broadband connectivity over 3G Mobile networks.

With Ubuntu you get pretty much everything you will ever need included right out-of-the-box. You don’t need to go out and pay several hundred pounds to get legal copies of a word-processor, spreadsheet and email client. The webbook comes pre-installed with the fantastic OpenOffice.org applications suite and the Evolution mail and calendaring client. Web browsing is provided by the most excellent Firefox 3 and there are many more high quality and fully functional applications provided on the hard disk. A couple of examples are The Gimp for photo editing and Pidgin for Instant Messaging. Of course you also have access to Ubuntu’s on-line software repository where there are literally thousands of other programs and applications to choose from. And they are all free and are not “demo” or limited functionality versions either. Open Source gives you freedom, not restrictions.

The 3G communications software called Wader (GPL licensed, and funded by Elonex) was written by Warp Networks of Zaragoza, Spain. Their knowledge of this specialised area of communications technology and Python programming is superb and the chaps did a fantastic job to get the software ready for production in what were ultimately very tight time-scales. We have plenty of plans for new features and enhancements, and as the software is open source, community involvement is welcomed and encouraged. We will be communicating more on how to get involved shortly.

For anyone interested in Mobile Broadband, or just getting their mits on a webbook for that matter, the proposition from Carphone Warehouse is very attractive indeed: simply take out a contract (with Carphone Warehouse) for 3G Mobile Broadband with either Orange, T-Mobile or 3 and you get the webbook for free! Or, you can just buy the webbook outright. If you are in the UK, there’s probably a webbook near you now. They are available on-line or from their many high street shops.

Our role in this was to work with Elonex to get the right software packaged and delivered on time to Carphone Warehouse. We introduced Elonex to Canonical in London (now can you guess where I am?) who are the commercial enterprise behind the world’s most popular Open Source Operating System, Ubuntu. We orchestrated the 3G development track with Warp Networks and carried out testing as the code was being produced. And we coordinated and managed the packaging and development of the software bundle as a whole.

Here’s the other side of the webbook:

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Bob Sutor, encourages all Europeans

… who are interested in open standards and interoperability [to] look at, comment, and, if appropriate, express their support for this draft or portions thereof.

What draft is he talking about? This one. It the draft of a report by the EU’s IDABC called the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) v2.0.

They request that

Everyone who sees interoperability as an effective means to provide better pan-European eGovernment services is invited to read the draft document and to provide feedback on its content by sending comments to eifv2@ec.europa.eu by the 22nd of September 2008 at the latest.

IDABC is interested in your reactions and contributions. A summary of reactions will be published on this website and will constitute another input into the EIF elaboration.

The EIF v2.0 will take the form of an official Commission position with the publication of a Communication from the Commission to the Council and to the Parliament by the end of 2008.

Although the draft is quite long (a 3.5Mb PDF) I am going to read it over the next few weeks and will certainly be making comments. I encourage anyone who is interested in Open Standards and the ability to communicate electronically with “the state” using the tools of your choice [e.g. An ODF document, created in OpenOffice.org, running on an Open Source operating system], to do so too.

Thanks for pointing this out Bob. I briefly saw Basil from the OFE yesterday and he mentioned it was due out imminently.

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One of my favourite commentators on the Open Source phenomenon is Glyn Moody. And today he has clarified something I had been struggling with for a couple of days now.

The story in question, from The Inquirer, is basically this:

Becta refused to satisfy a Freedom of Information request made by the INQUIRER for details of the latest Microsoft schools megadeal, “after consultation with Microsoft.”

Which is pretty bad really. We are talking about Taxpayers’ (that’s you and me friend) money here. Why should we not be allowed to know what our beloved Government is spending with a US Software company on our children’s behalf? And don’t forget that it’s a company that has been convicted of monopolistic and anti-competitive practices, so it should be even more important we know what we are giving them. Shouldn’t it?

Well, on the face of it I bought the argument from Becta that goes:

If Becta, a UK government quango, published details of schools’ Microsoft spending, it “could give rise to an actionable breach of confidence by Microsoft against us,” it said. This was a “considerable risk”, it added.

And further, plausibly stated:

Becta said there could also be repercussions in disclosure for itself: “We have concluded that disclosure of any part of the MOU would prejudice the commercial interests of Becta and of schools throughout the UK because the significant savings achieved under the MOU would be put at risk,” it said. “We believe that our future negotiating position with Microsoft would be weakened and we would not be confident of our continuing ability to obtain the best deal possible for those UK schools that choose to purchase Microsoft products,” it added.

If we ignore the fact that the Microsoft products are pretty crap, and they aren’t really the right thing for education to be using in the first place, I can sort of understand the bit about their negotiating position - if they know no better.

But I wasn’t totally convinced… Something was niggling at the back of my mind as to why this is really bad…

Enter Glyn:

I do realise that it’s too much to hope that Becta will take open source seriously, but I wonder if it has ever crossed Becta’s chosen minds that putting themselves in this position of snivelling dependence on Microsoft isn’t actually the optimum way to get the best deal for UK schools – even for those benighted enough to want to bathe their charges in the delicate glow of BSODs. Has it ever occurred to them that if they started negotiating from a position of dignity and strength, rather than abject, supine servitude, they might just possibly do their job a teensy-weensy bit better?

Microsoft is scared witless by the prospect of open source getting a foothold in schools, and would agree to any deal rather than let the UK education system discover the power and value of free software. Becta is actually in an incredibly strong position, and yet somehow manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The idea that “our future negotiating position with Microsoft would be weakened” if it dared to cross Masher Microsoft, as it has claimed to The Inquirer, is simply risible, and shows how desperately out of touch it is with the realities of the marketplace. The sooner this particular quango is abolished, and decisions are made locally, the better.

Ouch!

Thanks for clearing that up Glyn

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Please welcome a new foundation to aid the cause of freedom and open standards: Digistan.

The Digital Standards Organization (Digistan) seeks to promote customer choice, vendor competition, and overall growth in the global digital economy through the understanding, development, and adoption of free and open digital standards (”open standards”).

I first came across the group via a post on Glyn Moody’s blog the other day which in turn led me to this piece written by a chap who calls himself Dennis Byron (I can only assume that he has no relation to the famous poet). To be frank, he must be either very stupid, or on the payroll of a large software company the world’s largest convicted monopolist. To make the comments he does shows such ignorance that it quite beggars belief…

Let’s start with the opening paragraph shall we? (highlight mine)

Another anti-Microsoft (MSFT) front group has emerged in favour of “free and open standards,” hyping what it calls the Hague Declaration and making some absurd connection to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The propagandists, partially funded by publicly traded companies, have a little trouble describing what that term “free and open standards” means (or even using it consistently), but the group has no trouble indicating its political stripes. Unbelievably it calls itself Digistan, apparently to identify with the fascist terrorists based in countries and regions using the Farsi-based suffix “stan.”

Honestly. Where the f*** did that come from? Stan means “place of” or “land” for pete’s sake. And “Digi”, well I’m sure you can guess. How you get from Digital Standards to Fascist Terrorists is really just too much for my simple mind to comprehend.

All of these front groups percolate around about two dozen individuals, mostly European. The vast left-wing conspiracy of George Soros works around the edges of their mostly web-site-only organizations…

So, let’s see. Dennis now draws what must be one of the world’s largest generalisations by tying all groups who support freedom and Openness to just 24 people and somehow manages to ink in George Soros and Left Wing (Socialist by inference) politics. Blimey, I must say, having read the Digistan Mission and the Hague Declaration I didn’t see any of those conspiratorial links at all! Just for the record I’m a Tory (Conservative, Capitalist) voter and supporter of free and open source software and open standards. I see no conflict there at all. And neither do the Conservative Party who are quite vocal in their support for Open Source software; unlike our current Labour (left wing) government. So how would I fit in with Byron’s analysis I wonder?

I’d also like to educate our very ignorant Mr Byron about Left Wing politics in Europe: there isn’t much of the kind he seems to imagine. Our socialist and left wing governments and opposition parties are, in the main, capitalist by nature and support free market economics: they wouldn’t get in the EU if they didn’t. This is unlike the Government of the USA for example who engage in and condone market distorting activities such as allowing convicted monopolists to go unpunished, or using embargoes and punitive import tariffs to hinder free trade with anyone who doesn’t pay the right homage to Uncle Sam.

And how did George Soros come into this absurd rant? From the Wikipedia we read:

“George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become ‘open societies,’ open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but - more important - tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.”

Ahhh now I see. Mr Byron clearly feels extremely jealous of George’s speculative skills and also seems to hate anyone who is interested in protecting or advocating freedom and openness. (Who is the terrorist now Mr Byron?)

I love this…

If only these lefties could be time warped back to the last century so that they could ‘fight the right’ in Spain (or sit in the Les Deux Maggot and talk about fighting the right in Spain). Then the rest of us could avoid having our tax dollars wasted and our share values diminished.

I wonder if Mr Byron has ever been to Spain? Do you think he might like to ask some of it’s inhabitants about General Franco and whether they prefer fascist dictatorships to democracy, freedom and membership of the world’s largest free trading community? I like the “Les Deux Maggot” reference but can only guess as to what he really knows about it.

And why has Digistan got anything to do Mr Byron’s Tax Dollars? As for his portfolio, rather than bleating on about his dwindling share value in a tired and very last-millennia software company monopoly that is finally getting some serious competitive pressure from the left-field that is really hard to attack (since it is free), he’d be much better dumping his M$ stock and looking for the “new money”, especially in some of the highly successful and rapidly growing Open Source software companies.

The rest of his rant continues in much the same vein. No research or facts to support his claims and little argument that makes any sense anyway.

But, having said all the above, I must thank you Mr Byron for introducing me to Digistan. I signed the declaration immediately after reading it and will now be contacting Digistan to see how my company can help to support and grow their campaign to fight for freedom and open standards.

If I were you Mr Byron, I think you probably need to retire to the golf course…

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I went to a party this Saturday evening for a friend’s 40th birthday.

Nothing remotely interesting about that in itself, but I was rather struck yesterday whilst remembering some of the conversations I’d had the previous night…

There were many people who I did not know at all or as only a “face” from the school run and such like. And it was a typical party with a wide mixture of individuals and couples from all sorts of backgrounds [i.e, NOT all in IT], and quite a few were from Australia. When the conversation turned to “what do you then?” and I told them, almost everyone of the replies included a comment along the lines of “Oh, you mean like Open Office?”.

I was questioned in-depth about Open Source in general, the business model(s) that surround and support it and on how one should go about getting or using it.

Another common thread to our chats was the: “There’s no reason to go out and spend hundreds of pounds of Microsoft’s Office. OpenOffice does more than enough and is free”.

The general interest level in Open Source and specific familiarity OpenOffice.org was very encouraging indeed.

On the downside, the evening was less like a party and more like a sales pitch… But hey - that’s fine by me

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I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now. But what with the flu, Microshaft’s ongoing corruption of the ISO and some other stuff cropping up, I just kept finding reasons to put it off. Finally however, after jotting some notes and so forth for a few days I’ve managed to get my act together.

A Pet [Open Source] Project I want to give some airtime to, and get some assistance for, is Linux From Scratch.

History

Going back into the dark ages, I had been “playing” with one Linux distribution or other from the cover of PC magazines for sometime (I think it was a very early Mandrake or Suse product that first grabbed me), and found the whole system quite fascinating. The fact it was all free, and you could “LOOK” into it and see how it all worked together was a real eye opener. I was used to PCs and other computer platforms so it wasn’t all new… I grew up with VT100 terminals, DEC VAX VMS and then DOS so command line interpreters and such were nothing new in themselves but to get a complete OS, that did stuff, was free, and actually encouraged you to examine it, I remember it making me sit up and take notice even then.

One of the very first Open Source communities I came into active contact with was the Linux From Scratch (LFS for short) community. I cannot remember how I stumbled across the project or quite how long ago either, but it was quite a few years certainly. They have a feature which encourages newcomers to register their first LFS build when it is up and running. Checking on their website today, they have 19570 users registered so far. My LFS ID is 216 and the version of “the book” I recorded as having followed was 2.4.x when I registered. Although I certainly built (tried to build) a few before getting brave enough to register Anyway, I’m guessing this would have been around 1999/2000 some time.

LFS is still a project I follow closely and have a very warm opinion of. It has taught me a great deal over the years.

What is it then?

The project - if you can’t guess from the name - is all about building a functional Linux based operating system from scratch. That is, from nothing. You start with a spare partition on your hard disk and, by following the book, you learn what makes up a GNU/Linux operating system, how that operating system works and why bits of it behave the way they do. It is an educational project and it is a brilliant educational project. You gain knowledge of not just Linux itself but, Bash, compiling, device management and much, much more too. And what you also learn is what makes it all tick together… It is quite hard to explain but it’s a bit like the whole being worth more than just a simple sum of the individual parts.

LFS was started by a chap called Gerard Beekmans. The LFS project’s homepage explains the project thus:

What is Linux From Scratch?

Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with step-by-step instructions for building your own customized Linux system entirely from source.

Why would I want an LFS system?

Many wonder why they should go through the hassle of building a Linux system from scratch when they could just download an existing Linux distribution. However, there are several benefits of building LFS. Consider the following:

LFS teaches people how a Linux system works internally
Building LFS teaches you about all that makes Linux tick, how things

work together and depend on each other. And most importantly, how to customize it to your own tastes and needs.

Building LFS produces a very compact Linux system
When you install a regular distribution, you often end up installing a lot of programs that you would probably never use. They’re just sitting there taking up (precious) disk space. It’s not hard to get an LFS system installed under 100 MB. Does that still sound like a lot? A few of us have been working on creating a very small embedded LFS system. We installed a system that was just enough to run the Apache web server; total disk space usage was approximately 8 MB. With further stripping, that can be brought down to 5 MB or less. Try that with a regular distribution.

LFS is extremely flexible
Building LFS could be compared to a finished house. LFS will give you the skeleton of a house, but it’s up to you to install plumbing, electrical outlets, kitchen, bath, wallpaper, etc. You have the ability to turn it into whatever type of system you need it to be, customized completely for you.

LFS offers you added security
You will compile the entire system from source, thus allowing you to audit everything, if you wish to do so, and apply all the security patches you want or need to apply. You don’t have to wait for someone else to provide a new binary package that (hopefully) fixes a security hole. Often, you never truly know whether a security hole is fixed or not unless you do it yourself.

Why LFS is a great platform

[When I discuss LFS I also imply the use of BLFS (Beyond Linux From Scratch) which is a fantastic resource for how to build and install the stuff that goes to make up a "useful" and "complete" Operating System.]

As some of the readers here will know, the little server I’ve built for home use is running LFS. It also runs, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, PHP, Postgresql, is a Mail server, a Samba (Windows Networking) server, is our telephone exchange (running Asterisk) and a few other things too.

One of the main reasons for choosing LFS as the platform for this server is this: as it is built entirely from scratch there is no bloat, or unnecessary applications, the system is about as lean as you can get. The hardware I chose (very deliberately) is not the most powerful in the world; a mere 7Watts power consumption. But the applications running on the server currently seem very happy and there are plenty of system resources spare. This would be very hard to achieve using a mainstream distribution as they have to cater for as generic a host platform as possible and include a huge amount of features and supporting applications that are largely superfluous for a custom-built and tailored system.

Why LFS is not a great platform

LFS is not perfect however. The hurdle that causes most LFS users eventually to fall down and revert to a mainstream distribution is that of long-term maintenance of the LFS system. There is, by default, no concept of a package management system. When you install an application, you download the source code, and build the executable binaries and libraries and install them on your system. If there is a “dependency” issue like a missing library or something, this must be installed first before you can continue. In most respects this isn’t such a bad thing, but if you want to try some new app out it can involve building a great deal of software that you may realise, afterwards you don’t really want. Removing the unwanted can be a PITA.

My Desktop OS is Ubuntu. It works, and is very easy to upgrade and manage.

What happens next then?

In a few recent weeks, there has been a great flood of discussion and debate on the LFS mailing lists. The original thread for this debate, started by a long term LFS editor called Jeremy Huntwork, has sown the seed for a process to review what LFS is all about and how it could be taken forward whilst still maintaining the core principle of being an Educational Project first and foremost.

One area where I feel the project’s new direction and strategy could really benefit is from some “new blood” with few pre-concieved ideas or historical baggage.

If you use Linux, don’t really know what is going under the hood but want to, then please visit the LFS website, download or read on-line the current book and start working your way through it. Join the mailing lists (either directly or go through gmane and your favourite newsreader), and please contribute your views and experiences.

We really want to give LFS a new lease of life and that, IMHO, needs some fresh ideas and thinking too.

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Announced yesterday, The Mozilla Foundation has launched a new subsidiary called Mozilla Messaging. It will focus on the Internet Massaging and Communications space.

Here’s a FAQ with some useful information. I was particularly interested to see who is on the board. Marten Mickos (of MySQL) is a pretty “big” name…

This is a very attractive little snippet:

# In some ways we’re re-launching Thunderbird — it’s a project that has huge latent potential, and we’re there to catalyze community driven progress in the Internet communications space. The world of electronic communications is buzzing, with older technologies like email still crucial to our online experience, but complemented by other technologies like instant messaging, social networking, voice over IP, and mobile devices.

I am a user of Thunderbird and the Lightning extension (which will be rolled into TB-3) and am very happy with it’s performance and feature set. Reading the quote above, adding IM and VOIP would really make it a killer desktop app.

Oh yes. I am not one of those who believe everything is going to be “web based” applications either. Call me old fashioned if you want but I still like proper “desktop” applications and local storage. I have a gmail account, but I access it using IMAP and Thunderbird. I rarely use web based email, it just doesn’t “feel right” somehow…

Good luck to Mozilla Messaging. I follow the mailing lists with interest and will help with any input that I can give.

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After reading this post several times and thinking about the implications of it. I think the author (sorry, but I couldn’t find your name anywhere) has really stumbled on something here.

The basic premise of the article is to do with Microsoft’s takeover attempt of Yahoo, and how poor Windows is as a scalable platform for building out a very big Internet presence:

There’s no way on God’s earth that Microsoft can switch all of Yahoo’s services to being based on Windows. The IT costs and the time needed to migrate Yahoo’s applications to Windows boggles my mind. It would probably cost more than whatever Microsoft ends up paying for Yahoo.

I thought about this and think that there is even more to support the author’s conclusion than he mentions.

I started to think about all these new “big businesses” out there he(she?) mentions. They are all using Linux and other Open Source software to build out these hugely massive infrastructures. We know about Google and Amazon et al. But there is more… PayPal, a subsidiary of eBay, but a business that is taking on the old-world banking industry - especially as a credit card payment processor - build their transaction processing platform on Linux and they have discussed before how they can easily scale their infrastructure by just adding a few $1k blades with Linux on them.

If any of the recent big on-line businesses had tried to build out their infrastructure on Windows, what do you think the outcome would have been?

• Cost. This would have been a non-starter for most. How much in software licenses would a Google need to have spent? Server software, database licenses, middleware, system administration tools etc etc. The mind boggles just how impractical it would be to try and do this with proprietary software. And of course, don’t forget the extra hardware needed to run the bloated code in the first place.
• Flexibility. How easy would it be to go back your proprietary supplier and ask for new features, fixes, patches? And - oh yes - ‘I’d like them tomorrow please’. This just isn’t possible or realistic with the old-world software businesses. Businesses like Google and the others rely on change. They are dynamic businesses. They need to move fast and adapt.
• Reliability. Really. Windows, in whatever guise you like - Vista, SBS, NT - are just not man enough for the job. BSODs galore and crappy single-user file systems mean you need hundreds, or thousands, of individual boxes each running expensive software just to give yourself some sense of reliability. Although of course it isn’t in reality. Windows doesn’t scale and it’s a pain to manage when you have lots of them. It’s a desktop operating system masquerading as something it isn’t.
• Security. Yep. Would you trust your data to a Windows architecture that is so wide open to abuse it has grown a whole industry of parasites that supply further process-cycle-sapping applications that endeavour and “hope” to find intruders and malicious code?

The trend to use Linux is not just with the “new kids” however.

We have seen how, recently, Specsavers the Opticians have replaced everything in their network with Linux. From the tills to the back-office servers and more recently their Active Directory user authentication system for OpenLDAP. Here’s a lovely quote from them about the impact their migration has had:

As well as freedom from vendor lock-in, Specsavers says it is getting “superior performance, reliability and security at a significantly reduced cost in comparison to proprietary solutions”. It says it is now “enjoying a reduced need for maintenance, and increased reliability”.

I was also rather surprised yesterday when I was reading a piece about Oracle.

“WC: Pretty much all of Oracle’s internal production and development systems run on Linux across the whole company. Linux by itself is across the whole company. Also uses a lot of Python. It’s really across the whole co. 10,000 Linux servers that run Oracle on-demand.”

[WC = Wim Coekaerts, VP of Linux engineering, corporate architecture.]

Did you get that? Linux is running pretty much everything in Oracle…

If M$ do buy Yahoo, they will, undoubtedly, open the biggest can-of-worms imaginable. And probably the first nail-in-the-coffin for Windows. Especially in the enterprise.

So, think about it. Next time you need to role out some new business applications, would you go with the Desktop OS that needs excessive maintenance and support to just pretend to be a server, and that might have a limited life expectancy anyway. Or deploy the enterprise scale OS that can be customised for your infrastructure and hardware, which is proven to be extremely secure and is used by many (if not all) of the biggest and most successful companies in the world? Oh yes, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to buy either. In fact, it can be yours for nothing. Free. Zilch. Zero.

Remember too - that you can also run the same OS, properly configured, on the Desktop too. Why do you think PC manufacturers are literally falling over each to bring out new, low-cost, Linux powered laptops (Asus, Everex, Acer, Via, Palm, Intel, LeMote, OLPC, Dell, Lenovo)? Barely a day goes by without a new announcement. It certainly isn’t because they aren’t any good…

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Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire innotek, Expanding Sun xVM Reach to the Developer Desktop

SANTA CLARA, CA February 12, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced that it has entered into a stock purchase agreement to acquire innotek, the provider of the leading edge, open source virtualization software called VirtualBox. By enabling developers to more efficiently build, test and run applications on multiple platforms, VirtualBox will extend the Sun xVM platform onto the desktop and strengthen Sun’s leadership in the virtualization market. This software is available for all major operating systems at www.virtualbox.org and www.openxvm.org.

Wow! Sun is really moving. This acquisition expands their ability to get into enterprises with OSS on the desktop as well as in the data centre.

VirtualBox is a really great virtualisation engine which sits very well on top of my Linux desktops and servers. For example, it enables us to run the dreaded Windows inside a secure cage on our safe and sound Linux infrastructure. For when we need to do integration testing or migration development.

With SUN buying MySQL, and now Innotek they are moving horizontally across the enterprise, gaining more traction where M$ is currently king…

Think about it. Sun now have,

• Operating System (Open Solaris, or they could chose to support any of the Linux flavours out there too)
• OpenOffice.org desktop application suite that is gaining traction very fast world-wide
• One of the world’s most popular database engines used to power much of the web and beyond
• Cross platform virtualisation technology enabling almost any OS to any OS integration

What else do you think they might go for? Alfresco maybe? Or OpenBravo?…

I do believe there is a real strategy here… Are Sun aggressively going after M$, rather than simply being content to sit in the data centre? You bet they are.

Watch this space… The world is a-changing.

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Yesterday, we decided that we needed to get a new laptop for our business.

Nothing particularly staggering about that you might think. And, on the face of it you’d be spot on. However, as you probably know, our company The Open Learning Centre is focused on delivering business solutions and services based on Open Source technology.

Consequently what I definitely DO NOT WANT is to be forced to buy any Operating System with my hardware. I would like to choose for myself. I might want Ubuntu, or SUSE or Mint or something else. Or, god-forbid (and this is purely for example’s sake) I could choose to install one of the many valid, and already paid for, copies of Windows 95, 98, ME or XP that I have lying around.

So after a great deal of Googling yesterday, I found a grand total of TWO companies here in the UK that publicly offered me the opportunity to buy a new laptop on-line without an operating system.

The only other way is to buy individual components and assemble your own computer. This can end up being more expensive and is certainly not a trivial task, especially with a laptop. I do build my own desktops but wouldn’t consider doing the same for a portable PC.

I did look at Dell’s Ubuntu offerings but the spec of the machines wasn’t quite what I needed and - to be honest - all the “Dell Recommends Windows Vista” and notices about “Beware! This Computer Doesn’t Run Windows” made me feel a bit patronised. I understand to a certain degree the problems Dell face and must address; support and an audience of not-so-techy customers so I am not going to denigrate what they are doing. I just hope in a year or two’s time, I will be able to choose NO operating system on any of their computers.

But to get back to the main thread of this. Just two companies here in the UK that could offer me a laptop which I could choose to have supplied without an Operating System. That is bloody scandalous. EVERY other laptop (apart from the 2 Dell machines and some Asus EEe PCs [Update: I was a bit brief here. There are few other vendors who supply Linux pre-installed. But they do not offer the choice of "no operating system"]) would be supplied with a Microsoft Operating System. I had little or no choice; I could always have bought a Mac but that’s a somewhat similar issue.

Irrespective of the fact that I wouldn’t use their crappy and expensive software anyway, I have plenty of old discs with Microsoft’s operating systems on them that I have legitimately paid for and are not installed on any of my other computers. I’m sure there are many millions more like them. So why must I pay for another copy? This is completely unfair and should be (if it isn’t already) illegal.

The Globalisation Institute submitted a report to the EU commission last September saying just that:

Computers in the European Union should be sold without a bundled operating system, according to this submission to the European Commission. It says that the bundling of Microsoft Windows with computers is not in the public interest, and prevents meaningful competition in the operating system market.

The current situation basically means that for almost every single PC sold around the world, I believe we (you) are paying a TAX to Microsoft. We have already seen how they have done this with our schools. And we have seen Becta’s responses here and here.

I suggest that interested readers write to their MP or MEP, explain about this grievance and ask what the EU is doing about the report above.

On a positive note however, the two companies that did enable me to buy OS free computers deserve to be properly applauded, mentioned here, and please pay them a visit when you are looking for new hardware.

The first is a highly customisable offering from PCSpecialist.co.uk (http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/). You can build desktops, towers, cubes and laptops to your own specifications and choose your Operating System or not as you wish. Removing the OS saves you anything from about £60 to £120 depending on your other choices.

The second is a more “mainstream” computer business. And was where we decided to buy from in the end as the price/spec was just a bit better for my particular requirements. That company is Novatech (http://www.novatech.co.uk). Yes, Novatech. It looks as though you can choose your operating system (or not as you wish) for any of their PCs. Be they laptops, servers or desktops. They have a good range and probably the best value we found anywhere. Choosing no OS saves you anything between approx. £50 and £300 depending on your choice of hardware.

Up to £300 quid Microsoft TAX… And it’s a fixed penalty too. Your hardware could cost £250 or £2500 - it doesn’t matter to them. Next time you are equipping your business or home with new computers please think about this first. You can have Ubuntu Linux Desktop Edition and/or Server Edition for free. You can copy, re-use, install on as many machines as you wish and they will provide much better performance with no usage restrictions either…

Tell Someone Else!