"Daniel L. Johnson, MD" wrote: > Those software vendors that are not doing this are using NT boxes as > thin clients to provide users with "familiar" window behavior, meaning > that the institution is saddled with licence fees to little functional > purpose.
A year or two ago, there was some (minor) justification for insisting on Windows to provide the user interface for vertical applications, because the *n*x alternatives (things like Motif or CDE under Unix, or early versions of Gnome under Linux) looked horrible and behaved quite differently from Windows (with which many users of vertical applications are assumed to be familiar). However, the latest versions of KDE (and even more so KDE 3 when it is finished) can be made to look and behave just like Windows, so it is perfectly feasible to use Linux and KDE to provide Windows look-alike/work-alike workstations for clinical applications. That's fine for specific clinical applications, but what about the standard "ancillary" apps, such as email, Web browser, word processor and spreadsheet? The KDE email client is not exactly Outlook, but the jump is not so great that most users will not need more than a few minutes familarisation. The Konqueror and/or Mozilla browsers similarly shouldn't present too many difficulties. Word processing and spreadsheets present more of a problem - StarOffice 6 or OpenOffice look like they will fit the bill when they are released in a few months (StarOffice 5.2 is OK, but not quite compatible enough with Word and Excel). So, the justification for insisting on Windows clients for clinical desktops is gradually disappearing. Of course, this need for compatibility with Microsoft apps and user interfaces represents a kind of open source Fabianism, which annoys all (crypto-)revolutionaries, but Marxism-Leninism-MaoTseTung-Thought does allow such tactics while the cities (?the large organisations?) are being surrounded from the countryside (?small organisations?, ?home users?). Or maybe a better analogy is that OECD countries represent the cities and the Two-Thirds World (aka Third World) represents the countryside? Of course, that sad fact is that the vast majority of revolutions fail - we only remember the successful ones. > > Microsoft's Active Directory plans include technology that will > displace samba and make data interchange with non-M$oft platforms > difficult to impossible, potentially crippling the ability of open > source software to continue to run the Net. I agree that Active Directory [AD] poses an enormous problem for non-Windows workstations and servers. AD is being sold to IT managers as providing single log-on for end-users (which it does if you use all-MS apps or at least AD-friendly apps) and unified administration of both desktops and servers for the IT people. The latter is a double-edged sword, because the hierarchical nature of AD means that if upper-level accounts are compromised, then all your servers are also compromised, so in that respect it is a house-of-cards. *n*x administration, with separate passwords and config files everywhere, is messy but less prone to catastrophic failure/compromise. Despite such worries, I think that achieving interoperability with Active Directory is the biggest challenge for open source software - without that, OSS will be progressively locked out of first large, and then medium-sized organisations as the MS juggernaut progresses. Is this happening? Are gateways available which present an LDAP interface to Active Directory? Is there any way for my Linux server-based applications written in Python to authenticate via Active Directory? Tim C
