• Support the project and sign the Letter of Intent!

Business need

The Business need is caused by a EU council directive. This directive aspires to ensure equal opportunities for small and medium enterprises concerning tenders of applications within public organizations.

The referred Edict can be found on EU - council directive (consolidate version 2004-05-01, first version 1995-01-01): A quotation of the relevant paragraph: "European Union procurement law, e.g. Directive 93/36 ", Article 6: "Unless such specifications are justified by the subject of the contract, Member States shall prohibit the introduction into the contractual clauses relating to a given contract of technical specifications which mention goods of specific make or source or of a particular process and which therefore favour or eliminate certain suppliers or products. In particular, the indication of trade marks, patents, types or of a specific origin or production shall be prohibited. However, if such indication is accompanied by the works ‘or equivalent’ it shall be authorized in cases where the contracting authorities are unable to give a description of the subject of the contract using specifications which are sufficiently precise and fully intelligible to all parties concerned."

Public organizations have to phrase their requests for bids independently of producers or vendors. Therefore, public organizations have to use independent measurements to specify the required abilities. Usually certain benchmark results are used. A common used benchmark is the Bapco SYSmark Benchmark. Unfortunately, this benchmark is operating system dependent. Babco's SYSmark supports only Windows and focuses on measuring the software performance data, which is mainly Microsoft based.

There are benchmark tests for Linux servers, but up to now not for desktop PCs. This causes disadvantages for the use of Linux operating systems and open source software in this sector.

LiSoG initiated a project for the definition and the development of an Open Source based benchmark suite for desktop systems.

Mailinglist

You can reach the members of the project through the mailinglist lbds-info AT lisog.org. You may subscribe to the list: https://www.lisog.org/mailman/listinfo/lbds-info

Goal

• The legal requirements for the procurement in local authorities are met with a benchmark.
• A specification for an Open Source based benchmark suite for desktop systems will be created.

The projects target group

• Organisations and companies that have to invite tenders for office systems in regard of product neutrality
• Organisations and companies that medium-term want to use a benchmark running on Linux as reference
• hardware vendors for office systems and Linux distributors

Status

• Fifth meeting, September 29th 2008, City of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
  
• Phone conference, September 09th 2008
  
• Phone conference, August 11th 2008
  
• Forth meeting, July 04th 2008, AMD, Munich, Germany
  
• Phone conference, Juni 2nd 2008
• Application list has been released
  
• Dr. Jutta Kreyss gives a lecture at LinuxTag 2008 on May 29th 2008
  
• Phone conference, May 8th 2008
  
• Third meeting, April 14th 2008, Novell, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
  
• Phone conference, March 10th 2008
• Phone conference, February 18th 2008
  
• Second meeting, February 1st 2008, Zurich, Switzerland
• architectural conditions have been defined
• typical workflows for "office productivity" have been collected
• first applications being part of the benchmark have been drafted
• criteria for admission of applications into the benchmark suite defined
1. application is platform independent
2. application supports of standards and open formats
3. application provides an API / command line interface
4. communication with microsoft products is possible
5. accessability and ease of use
• Agreement about timeline and project milestones: final specification for the desktop benchmark is due until Mai 1st 2009
• Kick Off meeting, November 7th 2007, Stuttgart

Projects supporter and participants

Active project collaborators participate in the telephone conferences and meetings.

Organizations with undefined status:

• Canonical
• Dell
• HP
  
• Intel
• Kanton Solothurn
  
• SyGroup

• 13 municipalities in Baden-Württemberg, Germany

You are interested in participating or supporting the project? Please contact Nico Gulden.

Course of action

• Wiki for collection and definition of
1. assumptions
2. requirements
3. types of workflows
4. applications
• evaluate possibilities of implementation. maintenance and ownership for the benchmark suite
• forth meeting, July 4th, Munich, Germany

Milestones

• February 1st 2009: draft of the specification for the benchmark suite is ready for review
• Mai 1st 2009: final specification for the benchmark suite will be released
  

The project itself will last from June 2007 until June 2009 within LiSoG.