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A call for arms - the future of Hebrew in the digital age
Today, in "Yediot Ahronot" Dudy Goldman (as much as this poor "reporter"
can be trusted to convey the truth) has posted an article claiming that
M$ and the Israeli government has signed an agreement by which the
"Memshal Zamin" (available government?) project will be based on it's
entirely on M$ products (Explorer, Outlook etc.) and using M$
proprietary protocols (e.g. It's "logical" hebrew).
This basically means that if you are not buying M$ products (read:
OS/browser/email client), or stealing them, as most do you will be
unable to use the services the Israeli government will offer it's
citizens on the Internet, and the "Memshal Zamin" project aims to offer
quite a lot.
This state of affairs is, in my eyes, unbearable.
The israeli government can, of course, choose whatever company it wishes
to do business with, but whatever protocols are used they must be, so I
believe, open standards and NOT proprietary software belonging to a big
american company.
This is especially enraging because the said company own software does
not support Hebrew in it's products in a respectable manner. (Win95
Hebrew version is 4 versions and 2 years or so old then the same product
used around the world and everyone who ever tried to get Word to
function in Hebrew knows exactly what I am talking about).
I hope to organize some sort of "civilian revolt" against this absurd
decision. I would really like people on this list to join me. Remember
that if this plan will go through, Linux (and all other free software -
e.g. Netscape, is going to have a VERY hard time surviving).
I would really like to hear your responses. I personally believe that
this is a subject that is on topic on this list, but if not we can find
another home for this topic. So people, please speak out.
Gilad.