World Govs Choose Linux For Security & More

pjones writes "Government Technology reports that "For reasons of national security and national pride, government officials in countries like China, France and Germany are increasingly adopting the free, open-source computer operating system known as Linux." Noted in the article are China's Red Flag, NSA's Security-Enhanced Linux and much more."

Comments

Too bad the US doesn't follow suit....

[FKell]

And the reason why they don't is beyond me. Truthfully, if the reason is to support "our" software industry, its just pathetic. They even charged MS with being a monopoly.

The real problem is that no one in the government knows any better. Why the hell do you think we get all these crap laws like DMCA in the first place? Its cause the very loud kaa-ching sound of coins in big business's pocket drown out the yells of the under-funded consumer group lobiests. And the fact that there is only maybe 10 people in congress who had a person computer before the age of 20.

Competative Advantage

[darkov]

It's good to see people are finally realising that in using Microsoft products they are losing comptetive advatage. They're exposing themselves to the mediocrity of MS and all the dangers it entails. Improved security in Linux is just one example. As the net and IT infrastructure becomes increasingly improtant into the future, companies will realise the folly of blindly following Microsofts lead.

Re:German Parliament and Linux / Windows...

[hughk]

I was at a presentation at Linuxworld in Frankfurt where the politician responsible for this states (I believe he also chqairs the committee for new media) that MS had offered to make the source code of Win2K (not XP) available to representatives of the Bundestag to inspect. Please note that a knowledge of C or C++ is not normally amongst the qualifications needed to be an elected federal representative.

This guy knew enough to say that he hadn't the expertise, but he would like to accept their offer and bring some experts from the from the Bundesamt fuer Sicherheit in Informationstechnik and, of course, the Chaos Computer Club. Microsoft Germany did not respond after that.

To be honest, it could have been a good advertisement for MS if these guys had passed Win2K, but oh well, obviously they had their doubts.

One telling statistic...

[StarTux]

"Microsoft Web server software powers about 30 percent of the world's Web sites -- and 62 percent of the sites that have been hacked, according to data collected by two Internet sites, Netcraft's Web Server Survey and the Alldas Defacement Archive."

My company is switching Wentzville, MO schools

[Mustang Matt]

It's not just the Government, schools are switching as well!

We just finished switching servers to (SuSE 7.3) linux (vs Novell) for Wentzville, Missouri school district. (wentzville.k12.mo.us) The workstation machines might be next!

Not because anyone hates Microsoft or Novell, just because it was going to cost them a minimum of $13,000 a year for Novell licenses and who knows how much for Microsoft licenses.

They simply can't afford it and don't want to resort to piracy as so many other schools and companies have.

On top of that their getting a lot of added functionality they didn't have previously such as in house email, dns and web hosting.

We also got them setup with NAT, DHCP, and a firewall. None of which they had previously!

They are very excited to see it up and running so quickly. We're going to train them with what they need to know and they've got other training in their future budget plan.