Posted by
Hemos
on from the making-inroads-in-a-giant-market dept.
D3 wrote to us with a story from Federal Computer Weekly that details the plans of GTSI (Government Technology Service Inc.) to team with Red Hat. They plan to team up to offer "enterprise level" for the federal government contracts.
I have worked for a government contractor for about a year now, and all I can say is yikes! There are mountains of obscure paperwork and requirements for everything you do. If you thought that the government passed a lot of laws controlling private citizens, you should see the laws it passes about itself!
The most recent move has been toward COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software. The real question is: is Open Source stuff COTS? The obvious answer is yes, but how do you convince someone who hasn't seen the real world since the 80's of this?
As and example of how wierd things get, someone periodically removes tcsh from our systems believing it to be "shareware" (and therefore not COTS). Since we all have/bin/tcsh in/etc/passwd, nobody can login. Eventually, someone with a backdoor (for just such a purpose) sneaks in and puts tcsh back.
I don't envy anyone trying to introduce anything "new" or "innovative" or even "useful" to the government.
debrain has an interesting idea about the closing-ness of Red Hat -- that they could base a certified distribution on Open Source, with certain key parts closed. That might be a HUGE (underlined, bolded, blinking and colored) success, because being Linux, it could be sold at a much better price than MS operating systems, and at a price that the traditional UNIX vendors wouldn't touch anyhow.
However, in point of fact, Red Hat has been accused-in-advance of being about to make that kind of move several times in the past few years -- even before the IPOgonzosity, people dropped dark hints about the Redmond-in-Waiting that was Red Hat.
Have they? I don't think so. Can anyone name an important contribution of Red Hat that has not been promptly released for the world (and Mandrake in particular) to play with? Instead, they've stuck with the idea that their worth is in a) reputation ["But boss, this isn't some no-name OS here -- this is genuine Red Hat Linux, with a box and everything!"] and b) Service ["And boss, it comes with good support options!"]
Now, things change and I don't have a crystal ball, but why shouldn't Red Hat decide that nothing succeeeds like success and continue their mile-a-second moves to shore themselves up as stalwart GPListas (in good humor, ok?) as well as Überkapitalists who are just tickled pink to sell your company as many copies of Linux, manuals, T-shirts and mousepads as you'd like?
I work For the US Courts and our District has been using Linux for several years now. We have a Squid proxy, two brand new RH boxes running ColdFusion, a samba server, a security monitoring box, all told about 7 machines. We're also getting a new one for Domino. Many of the 92 districts use Linux because it's a stable and inexpensive alternantive to NT. Plus every court has a couple of Solaris boxes so the knowledge base for working with Linux is already there.
Some of the courts are starting to consider Linux for the desktop. Since we use WordPerfect and Netscape it's a perfect solution. I heard rummor that one small court has already moved over.
Slashdot Mirror
I have worked for a government contractor for about a year now, and all I can say is yikes! There are mountains of obscure paperwork and requirements for everything you do. If you thought that the government passed a lot of laws controlling private citizens, you should see the laws it passes about itself!
/bin/tcsh in /etc/passwd, nobody can login. Eventually, someone with a backdoor (for just such a purpose) sneaks in and puts tcsh back.
The most recent move has been toward COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software. The real question is: is Open Source stuff COTS? The obvious answer is yes, but how do you convince someone who hasn't seen the real world since the 80's of this?
As and example of how wierd things get, someone periodically removes tcsh from our systems believing it to be "shareware" (and therefore not COTS). Since we all have
I don't envy anyone trying to introduce anything "new" or "innovative" or even "useful" to the government.
Thank you for not thinking.
debrain has an interesting idea about the closing-ness of Red Hat -- that they could base a certified distribution on Open Source, with certain key parts closed. That might be a HUGE (underlined, bolded, blinking and colored) success, because being Linux, it could be sold at a much better price than MS operating systems, and at a price that the traditional UNIX vendors wouldn't touch anyhow.
However, in point of fact, Red Hat has been accused-in-advance of being about to make that kind of move several times in the past few years -- even before the IPOgonzosity, people dropped dark hints about the Redmond-in-Waiting that was Red Hat.
Have they? I don't think so. Can anyone name an important contribution of Red Hat that has not been promptly released for the world (and Mandrake in particular) to play with? Instead, they've stuck with the idea that their worth is in a) reputation ["But boss, this isn't some no-name OS here -- this is genuine Red Hat Linux, with a box and everything!"] and b) Service ["And boss, it comes with good support options!"]
Now, things change and I don't have a crystal ball, but why shouldn't Red Hat decide that nothing succeeeds like success and continue their mile-a-second moves to shore themselves up as stalwart GPListas (in good humor, ok?) as well as Überkapitalists who are just tickled pink to sell your company as many copies of Linux, manuals, T-shirts and mousepads as you'd like?
Just thoughts,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I work For the US Courts and our District has been using Linux for several years now. We have a Squid proxy, two brand new RH boxes running ColdFusion, a samba server, a security monitoring box, all told about 7 machines. We're also getting a new one for Domino. Many of the 92 districts use Linux because it's a stable and inexpensive alternantive to NT. Plus every court has a couple of Solaris boxes so the knowledge base for working with Linux is already there.
Some of the courts are starting to consider Linux for the desktop. Since we use WordPerfect and Netscape it's a perfect solution. I heard rummor that one small court has already moved over.