Finance Ministry Weaning Israel Off of Microsoft

Israel National News ^ | 12-31-03

[antiRepublicrat]

Israel has joined what has increasingly become a worldwide crusade to break free of the Microsoft Corporation and their perceived monopolistic constraints.

The Ministry of Finance announced Sunday it will begin distributing Open Office, which is a package of basic software programs similar to Microsoft Office, for free starting this coming week. The ministry plans to distribute thousands of Open Office programs on CD-ROM at public computer centers and eventually community centers across the country throughout the coming year.

Open Office suite includes all the functions supplied by Microsoft Office – a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, and a presentation manager similar to PowerPoint. The programs can be downloaded for free at www.openoffice.co.il. The programs can be used on nearly every operating system, including Linux, which is a free alternative to the Microsoft's Windows.

Over the past year the programs were translated into Hebrew by Sun Corporation and IBM with the assistance of the Finance Ministry. The ministry said its goal is to lower the price of a computer in a bid to reduce the technological gap between the rich and poor in Israel. The offer is also believed to be an attempt to break Microsoft's monopoly on the Israeli software market. Microsoft Office, which can cost up to 2,000 NIS, is currently installed on almost every personal computer sold in Israel, greatly increasing the price of a personal computer.

[antiRepublicrat]

As other governments wise up on how to save taxpayer's money, ours is somewhat behind. Related Seattle Times article says Israel will officially begin to phase out its Office software for OpenOffice. Aside from money, one reason could be Microsoft's earlier reluctance to make a Hebrew version. Since OpenOffice is Open Source, they were able to just hire someone to localize it.

[xrp]

Watch Microsoft pull the Star of David out of their Wingdings font now. ('Y' is the Star of David in Wingdings for MS Word).

[eclectic]

MS Hebrew Office was available for years...

[eclectic]

The real reason (from the part of the article that you skipped):

"Ministry of Finance sources told Globes that the decision could be reversed if Microsoft Israel shows willingness to compromise on its pricing policy for tens of thousands of computer stations at government offices. The ministry is aware that despite the substantial savings accrued by not buying Microsoft licenses, there would also be considerable installment costs. Many Linux proponents say the costs are minimal, however, and still come out less than the built-in costs incurred through installation of Windows."

[Bush2000]

Choice exists.

[observer5]

You mean to say it took them this long to find out that theyt have been CONNED all this time by M$?

[TechJunkYard]

MS Hebrew Office was available for years...

Correct. But not in IE or Office for Mac.

[zeugma]

Sounds like a good idea to me. I wonder how long it will be until MS Excel can create charts from data that spans the 1899/1900 centuries? I have a collection of pages regarding the national debt on my homepage and use some of the data to produce charts that tracks the debt over time, including one big chart that displays the debt over the entire course of our former Republic. I've yet to find anyone who can make the data work in Excel. There are always failures around the 1900 century boundry because of hacks MS had to implement to fix Y2K issues.

If any MS apologists out there would like to try I'd be glad to post a CSV for their use.

[antiRepublicrat]

MS Hebrew Office was available for years..

It was the Mac version. They even offered to underwrite the cost and guarantee a preorder of 2,000 copies, but MS wouldn't do it. They had every right to refuse, but the Israel has every right to not buy MS software.

[antiRepublicrat]

You mean to say it took them this long to find out that theyt have been CONNED all this time by M$?

I wouldn't put it that way. They, like so many others, were so used to MS software that they never realized there's a better, cheaper alternative until they finally started looking at cost.

[eclectic]

Hebrew MS Office was available in 1997 on PC