CianBlog

A friend of mine (and one of the most active FLOSS supporters in Romania – Razvan Sandu) took the time to translate in English an article that deserves being read by more people.
I promised I’ll publish it, see below:

“This is a translation of the original Romanian article, published on February 11^th, 2010 by Capital Online magazine.

The Romanian Communications Ministry will pay EUR 90.18 million (including VAT) for the right to use 163,427 Microsoft licenses – for around 30 public agencies, including some ministries. The payment will be done in nine equal batches, until 2012.

The provider of the right to use the licenses is the business association between D-Con.Net AG, D-Con.Net GmbH, Comsoft Direct AG, Bechtle Holding Schweiz AG, Dim Soft SRL and Microsoft Romania, the only provider that participated to the bidding organized by the Ministry of Communications and Information Society (MCSI) in July 2009.
The contract was signed a month later.
The first batch of payment will be done during this year, according to MCSI data obtained by Mediafax.
“For the acquisition of rights of use, the manufacturer will provide a number of minimum 50,000 hours of consultancy and support, at no cost (…). These hours will be used by the purchasing public agencies (…). The provider will offer these consultancy hours during the entire period of the framework contract, establishing in each subsequent contract the number of hours that are necessary“, says the bidding specification.
According to Government’s Order 460/2009, the act in which the Government mandates MCSI to held the public bidding, the majority of computers and servers that get those licenses belongs to Ministry of Internal Affairs – 43,417, Justice – 25,247, Public Finances – 20,395, National Defense – 17,733, Public Health – 13,348 and Agriculture – 9,554.
In 2004, the Romanian Government and Microsoft signed a contract that stipulated using the products of the American company for five years. The clauses stipulated the use of about 50,000 Microsoft licenses for 54 million USD – that have been already paid.
Together with the amounts that were to be paid in 2009, totalizing $57.86 million, the value of the 2004 contract arrived at $111.86 millions.
Microsoft is the biggest international software manufacturer.

SOURCE: Mediafax“

Last year at eLiberatica, we raised some questions about this contract. Of course, without any result… At least, the world should know. And spread the word. Here is the link to eWEEK article Romania Issues €100 Million To Microsoft Without Bids.

4 Years Ago

A few days ago, I met Zak for a beer, as we do usually to catch up with each other. Coincidentally, we realized that 4 years ago, almost the same day – in a night of December 2005, the idea of organizing a FLOSS event in Romania was born. How the time fly!

Many things happened in the meantime. The good – eLiberatica run three editions and reached 400 participants this year. High profile Open Source and Free Software activists, developers and enthusiasts came to Romania and presented their ideas, shared stories and expertise, made new friends, learned about our culture. The Romanian FLOSS community members gain something; they met each other in person, they shared ideas, they learned new things; new events and communities were developed. Although the Romanian FLOSS community is not united as I dreamt when I started, still, eLiberatica did something: it made it clear that Romanians are having a FLOSS community. It put it on the FLOSS World Map. It also attracted the government and media attention and most of all, the Romanian public attention; and the FLOSS international community attention to Romania. Many Romanians who had no idea about what Open Source and Free Software means, now learned.

Is this something? I don’t know, you judge, and the time will tell. There is still a lot to do, but it is a start.

eLiberatica 4^th edition

Back these days: people are asking me what’s next, and especially about eLiberatica 4^th edition. I can come now with a clear answer:

eLiberatica 2010 – unfortunately no…
eLiberatica 2011 – YES!

There are important factors making a 2010 edition hard to develop: on my side – I have to spend more time with my family, and to focus on my actual job. Zak is in a similar situation. Both of us spent many-many days and nights preparing and managing the previous three editions and volunteering for the community; now we should turn back to our families, they need us. The times are harsh too; there is a lot of political uncertainty and economical turmoil in Romania these days. We hope this will change in good in the next year…

Therefore, although Romi (Agora CEO – our partners we had in the first 3 editions) made me the offer to collaborate again in organizing eLiberatica, I had to say no this time.
Both Zak and I decided to go again together and prepare a big one – but only in 2011.

On the other hand, Romi mentioned to me that Agora would like to organize a local Open Source event in the spring of 2010, which I think is fain. Anyway, please note, this event is not going to be supported by Zak, and me, nor will be eLiberatica. On the other hand, I’m glad to see eLiberatica is not the single FLOSS event taking place in Romania now. A few are on the track and I hope we share our part in generating it.

I will be always supporting the FLOSS movement in Romania and, generally speaking – ROMANIA. Although Canada is now my country, and I love it and respect it, I’ll never forget where I came from. So if is anything I can help there, and is in my power, you let me know.

Related to eLiberatica 4^th edition – I’ll continue to keep communication up; I’m open to any suggestions, so please stay in touch with me. I updated my blog, I’ll tune it up even more, and I’ll start to rearrange the eLiberatica websites, unifying it in a single one and preparing it for 2011. I estimate we will start to work for organizing the next edition probably the summer of 2010. In 2011, we wish to have the best FLOSS event ever in Romania.

A New Year

These being said, I wish all of you Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!
It was an honor and a pleasure to be with you in all these 4 years, and I hope to be again together soon.

Monty was from begging on our side: he helped eLiberatica since the first edition, a great Romanian culture admirer and friend.
However, this is not so important. The most important is MySQL, which, all of us are using it, for FREE. So if you care, please help. Is costing you nothing.

Btw: Romanian translation was provided by Ceata members; many thanks for it especially to Tibi Turbureanu.

Feel free to spread the word and share the content below:

WWW.HELPMYSQL.ORG LAUNCHED: MULTILINGUAL CAMPAIGN AND WORLDWIDE CALL TO SAVE MYSQL FROM ORACLE

Online petition to oppose Oracle’s takeover of MySQL and its recent set of MySQL-related “empty promises” — Campaign vows to “keep gathering support until the very end of the process” — First of several deliveries of signatures to regulators will take place on Monday, January 4 — “The community that made MySQL popular and strong can now help to keep it free and alive” — Started in 12 language versions, “several more to be added shortly”

Brussels, Belgium, 28 December 2009 — Oracle’s takeover of Sun encounters a formidable challenge on the Internet, two weeks after Oracle claimed to be close to obtaining approval by the European Commission and other regulators. Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, MySQL’s creator and founder, launched a web campaign, www.helpmysql.org, in (initially) 12 languages, collecting signatures for a worldwide petition against the deal in its present form.

The campaign vows to “keep gathering support until the very end of the process” and says the petition will firstly be delivered on January 4, with subsequent deliveries of signatures received later to take place as well. The petition will be presented to “regulators [including but not limited to the European Commission], other governmental agencies, parliaments and [...] news agencies”. The petition text asks “competition authorities around the world to block Oracle’s acquisition of Sun” unless one of the solutions that the signatories of the petition can select is put in place. Those possibilities include a divestiture of MySQL to a suitable third party, a so-called “linking exception” and releasing MySQL (all past versions and the ones released over the next three years) under the Apache Software License 2.0, an open source license.

The petition states that Oracle’s recent MySQL-related promises “can at best have a transitional effect (if any) but cannot ensure true innovation related to MySQL and safeguard MySQL as a major competitive force.” Widenius had previously dismissed them as “empty promises” (http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/oracle-gives-only-empty-promises-for.html).

The petition expresses the belief that “Oracle, if it acquired Sun’s MySQL, would have a fundamental conflict of interests between MySQL (and its different editions and storage engines) on the one hand and Oracle’s high-priced products on the other hand.” The text also highlights “the fundamental importance of databases to the knowledge-based economy”.

Widenius said that the purpose of www.helpmysql.org is to let the MySQL community influence the outcome of the process: “The community that made MySQL popular and strong can now help to keep it free and alive. I thank all MySQL users who have already supported our efforts and are going to support them at such a critical point in time, and I want to thank the many volunteers who helped us pull this campaign off in so little time even during the Holiday Season.”

On his blog (http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-keep-internet-free.html), Widenius today published a detailed explanation of his perspective on the merger case, also seeking to clarify his personal motivation to lead this fight. Two weeks ago, Widenius already called on the MySQL community to send emails to the European Commission. The petition also asks those who already wrote to the EC to participate again, as the petition “will be presented in different parts of the world and generally have an effect that goes beyond direct messages to any particular regulator.”

The www.helpmysql.org campaign is initially available in English, Chinese, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Romanian, Hungarian, Swedish, Latvian and Estonian. According to Florian Mueller, who cooperates closely with Widenius on this matter and has previously gathered massive support from the open source movement in connection with an EU decision (on software patents), the online petition is “a truly global effort”, but he declined to specify which particular regulators outside the EU would also receive it “since regulators in some other places wouldn’t like us to talk about such activities in public.” Within the EU, the petition will also be sent to the 27 national antitrust authorities of the bloc’s member countries, which will meet in Brussels in mid January to discuss the Oracle/Sun merger case.

Mueller said that “translations to several more languages will be added shortly to the campaign site”, including translations to Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Greek.

About Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius and Monty Program Ab

Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius is the creator of MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database. He started to develop it in 1982. In 2001, he founded MySQL AB, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 for a total consideration of approximately US$1 billion. The European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA) named this transaction the “European Venture Capital Deal of the Year 2008″. On a previous occasion, Widenius had been named the Finnish Software Entrepreneur of the Year 2003.

In 2009, Widenius left Sun and created a new company, Monty Program Ab, based in Tuusula (Helsinki area), Finland. Monty Program Ab develops MariaDB, a branch of MySQL, and the Maria database storage engine and other MySQL-related technologies. The company is a founding member of the Open Database Alliance.

Monty Program Ab corporate website: http://askmonty.org

Michael Widenius’ blog: http://monty-says.blogspot.com/

About Florian Mueller

Florian Mueller is a software industry veteran with 24 years of experience as well as an award-winning EU policy strategist. Previously founder and CEO of a startup he sold to the Telefónica group, Mueller became in 2001 an adviser to MySQL’s then-CEO on corporate strategy and held shares in the company until its sale.

The Economist Group’s European Voice named Mueller the EU Campaigner of the Year 2005. Mueller was also named to thought leader rankings in intellectual property as well as information technology. He has also successfully worked on EU competition matters in connection with professional soccer.

Contact data: Florian Mueller

For further information concerning this news release, please contact Florian Mueller (phone: +49-171-2632226, email: florian.mueller.de82319@gmail.com).