The governments themselves also stand to benefit. [LWN.net]

The governments themselves also stand to benefit.

Posted Sep 12, 2003 10:28 UTC (Fri) by jonth (subscriber, #4008)
In reply to: The governments themselves also stand to benefit. by bignose
Parent article: Governments like open-source software, but Microsoft does not (Economist)

I disagree - the Economist is pretty good for a non-technical mainstream journal. I subscribe to it because it's just about the best print media publication in the UK if you want to have a good general view of the world. It does make mistakes, sure, but usually they're errors of omission rather than factual inaccuracies.

By comparison, if I read an article in most UK newspapers where I know something about the subject, more often than not the article is wrong. I don't just mean "slightly inaccurate." I mean, plain wrong. And I include the broadsheets in this.

Anyway, I have the article in front of me and the first paragraph says exactly why Munich went for Linux: "the municipality wanted to control its technological destiny" and "Microsoft even dropped its prices to match Linux - a remarkable feat since Linux is essentially free and users merely purchase support services alongside it." I'd say that covers "free as in speech" and free as in beer" pretty well, don't you?

One last thing: they don't have links largely because the Economist is principally a weekly print publication, not a web publication. The website is mainly a repository of the printed articles.

cheers,

Jonth

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