CERN Is Working To Move Further Away From Microsoft Due To License Costs Going Up By 10x

[IreMinMon]

Can you share screens with Ekiga? I mean a true alternative.

What about Wire?

[NotMine999]

At some point someone in Micr0$haft will decide that CERN deserves an "academic / non-profit discount" on the licensing costs.

The licensing costs will suddenly drop by up to 90 percent provided...

...CERN signs a long-term, multi-year agreement to stay with Micr0$haft;
...CERN would face severe penalty clauses if they leave the deal early;
...CERN signs a purchase agreement to use more Micr0$haft products at CERN;
...CERN promises to be quiet in public about their Micr0$haft licensing costs, future contract pricing, and open source software.

Yep, a crafty Micr0$haft salesperson like Steve Balmer would have found a way to foist such a contract on CERN.

The process is called "arm twisting".

Let's see how the new kids at Micr0$haft handle this very public issue.

[Caveira]

Someone here nailed it. Thing is, if counterparts (the likes of Fermilab, etc.) don’t enjoy that status, one (e.g. lawyers) could see the academic licensing to CERN as unfair and tons of discussions around subsidies and economics could arise.

On another note, who said paid software is bad? Somethings require servers to run, constant maintenance and predictability that free/open source alone don’t provide in so many examples out there. Red Hat charges good money for their services and for a reason, someone has to be paid.

[microcode]

They are not an academic institution at all. Rather they are a conglomerate of government institutions.

CERN is a serious money pit so trying to save money is good. However hiring a bunch of programmers to write software that is available else where (commercial or open source) is absolutely asinine. Sadly this smacks of an effort by management at CERN to increase their size yet again.

Personally I love it, as somebody who buys hardly anything from Western Europe that isn't also subsidized. Best of luck to the whipped taxpayers of the member states! Thanks most of all to the people of Switzerland and Norway, who pay about five franc a year per capita for it. :- )

[CochainComplex]

That Microsoft employee was clearly lacking some training in German law. But I have to admit that laymen can fall for that fallacy pretty easily as there is also a "gGmbH" (which is a special form for non-profit GmbH's enjoying some tax benefits). It lacks some flexibility though especially in pursuing and distributing profits. But as a gGmbH it would have been at least easier to prove your point to Microsoft. But of course the existence of this special form doesn't mean that all GmbH's are strictly for-profit oriented, especially the state-owned ones.

There is also the possibility to re-structure it as a public institution. But that brings other challenges with it and might be impractical.

True... thats why the administrative ceo is a lawyer. Im just a physist not involved in that stuff at all. But I know for sure that our institution as some sibling which is leading the international part. The topic merger of both is on the schedule for years. Issue if you change the form of the gov institution you have to apply again for all safety certification on radioactive stuff...if you change the form of the international one you have to rewrite all the international contracts. ...so changing the gmbh to ggmbh just as proof for ms would be insane..

[CochainComplex]

Actually it is. The problem with CERN is all the little projects that siphon money off from their supposed goal of doing basic research in physics. The development of the WWW was dependent upon CERN. Hell you could even say that the development of the WWW at CERN was money well spent. However there are far too many tangents at CERN that can only be described as a waste of tax payer money. This is the problem, massive expenditures with little payoff.

...im sorry but i have to say you dont understand fundamental research.
In this field:

1. you never know what the outcome is ...thats why you do reasearch
2. on the way to achieve this rather abstract goal you have to invent and contract a lot of new technologies.
Those will be used in other fields aswell.
3. payoff is mostly there after 30 years

Prominent example:

1. Spaceships ...waste of money in 50ies ...now GSP ?
2. First valve computers .....waste of energy just to calculate 15+10000^23...
3. Heavy Ion Particle Accelerators ...oh yes find interessting new Elements ....oh now we use Carbon Ions as cancer therapy
...with less impact on the surrounding tissue. (for some brain tumors 90% healing chance)

Point 3 was developed at our institute. The accelerator was build 1970 purpose find new elements. 1990 apply accelerating technology to use it for cancer bombardment. 2010 Therapy centers are build in Heidelberg and Gießen ....how does this thing look like? gues what small particle accelerator ...

For research there are many ways to achiev the goal thats why it is done ...so no money wated.
Money wasted ....war and guns

[Buntolo]

I've visited CERN 3 times and spoken with various people, I also have an acquaintance there: they use Linux a lot, for example for the control room and systems, as well for the data gathering and various servers. They do however use Windows as well, for accounting/administration and maybe (this I don't know, so I'm guessing) for certain scientific tools/instruments, which sadly too often they only offer Windows driver (I've seen this situation many times in various universities and scientific centers).

[ms178]

Do you even realize how corrupt these people are?
Nothing of this sort is ever going to happen. These are the people who got us the copyright directive. And the corruption still goes much deeper.

The Commission is usually more progressive and wants to bring things forward. But there are other stakeholders (Council, EP) to please as well, and I don't like the copyright directive either. On the other hand, the reliance on Microsoft products is a result of the 90s and they really should change their internal position here and move things into the open source direction. The ecosystem is much more mature now and investing the same amount of money as they pay for licensing fees would provide more benefits for the world.

[CochainComplex]

Do you even realize how corrupt these people are?
Nothing of this sort is ever going to happen. These are the people who got us the copyright directive. And the corruption still goes much deeper.

They have severe vendor lock in issues... cucked

[brent]

Jitsi is a great alternative already. People can also call into it from landlines. We've tested it, it worked great! If you want to, you can self-host it, which should be easy for a big organization.