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Advocating Open Source Within the Gov't
There's an interesting piece running on Newsforge concerning advocacy of Open Source within the (US) Federal Government. The Feds, as we've talked about here before, are caught in an interesting cross fire - and based on personal experience, I can tell you that they are looking at it. Carpe Diem, folks.
One of my biggest concerns regarding the adoption of Linux by the public sector is the availability of human resources. Having worked for several non-profits I can say that it is a lot harder for public institutions (and especially government) to hire the right people because there are always political problems. For example, how many Linux professionals come from areas outside the United States? If the government can only hire US citizens, then it will have to cut out a significant portion of its applicant pool. A pool that even on a world-wide level is not that big. As a result, it will have to step up and compete for a resource like a "Linux Systems Administrator" in the US labor market. Given the short supply of these types of people in the US, the price of labor (i.e. the salaries expected from these people) will be too high for a public institution to compete against a private one. Consequently, the public institutions will have to hire folks with lower salary expectations (probably as a result of a lack of experience). Therefore, public institutions will likely have more problems with their systems and blame it all on Linux.
This is just one scenario that I have seen played out in the government (or government sponsored) institutions that I've worked at.
w o r l d w i d e w e b e r
Due to some unusual circumstances, I had an oppertunity to speak before a multi-agency federal conference, held at the National Science Foundation last month. It was an interesting group as it included some fairly senior level people from several agencies.
This conference was not announced for until the Friday before, and yet was fairly well attended, for reasons that became appearent fairly appearent even by the OPEN remarks made by the by some.
To understand the context of those remarks, one must understand I have had some experiance in federal contracting in the past. Occasionally federal employees would complain about certain vendors entirely in private, and certainly some vendors achieved some level of dislike and disgust in the past, particularly telecomm vendors.
However, never before had I been in a room with federal employees showing such open and complete contempt for a given vendor. The reason became clear when one of them spoke openly of how reps of this particular vendor had targetted her and the process and methods used to harrass her and other federal employees who would consider to openly choose other products. That this would happen in front of outsiders and also in front of some senior policy people, was a complete shock to me.
To have one such person in any completely random meeting of federal employees that this might happen to would be surprising. To have this same circumstances explained to me by others, some later in private, and some in other venues since that I had known in the past because I became curious and called some people I used to know, is statistically mind boggling.
The vendor in question would use a very simple method of intimidation to those that it's reps identified. The next time they would speak to a given person they would make it clear they are watching them and are reporting any inappropriate activity to their superior, the threat implied and clear. They would state specific complaints, whether valid or not, and then that employee would find his/her manager asking about these same things a few weeks later.
Never in all my years dealing with federal employees had I ever before, personally, or even second hand, heard of ANY vendor doing anything like this, let alone on the scale and scope required for people from random agencies to have much the same story to tell. To say I was and still am very angry is an understatement.
Out of this it was clear also a grave miscalculation has occured. It became clear that for every person so harrassed, perhaps 10 others would become aware it happened, and all 11 would become rightly angry. There is a groundswell of support for free software in the fed, and really for ANY other software, and this vendor has created it!
Other things came out of this conference that were also interesting. Certainly there are some who "get" free software, who understands what it means and could do for them, who would prefer it. Certainly it was also true that there were others who would do anything to never have to purchase, install, or deploy any product ever made by such a vendor ever again. I would love to talk more about each these things, and particularly about those who understood free software.
The reaction of the more senior level agency people was most ammusing of all. For years these people had "friends" who would try to help them with their it needs. These vendor "friends" were of course paid to be such a "friend" to a key agency person, what some might call a "buddy" in the parlance of that particular vendor. For years, they would tell these people free software was not usable, would describe editing and word processing as or in terms of emacs and vi, etc.
To show these people gnome, kde, abiWord, open office, etc, this was very much an eye opening experiance for many of these senior agency people.
Clearly those that would be the enemies of free (and open source) software depend on ignore and terror to sell their products. Clearly we must respond with education, enlightenment, and make it clear they alone are the terrorists.
David
I can't imagine the 'best and brightest' out there would really be interested in working on some of the most boring code available... and at ridiculously low wages compared to what they could be earning in the IT industry.
:) and I have the freedom to experiment. I could certainly "cut it" in the private sector (in fact, I have and I still get offers) but why on earth would anyone who considers themselves the "best and brightest" want to put up with that nightmare of a job market? I read Dilbert because it is funny, not because it is the life I want to lead :)
Let me set up a situation for you. I am 23. While most of my friends went to work in private industry for high wages, I chose to work for a boring university for much less pay. Working on mainframe systems no less!
Fast forward to today. Nearly all of my friends are out of work. Dot coms gone, stock options tanked, private sector hurting. I'm still working (just promoted in fact), and enjoying what I do. I don't have to worry about the changing tides of the economy (so much), I don't have to worry if what I'm doing is contributing to stock holder value, I don't even have to put up with a restrictive work environment as far as technology choices go. I get to take classes for a fourth of the price, I have great benefits, and I spend my time working with cool technology (linux on s/390 is cool to me, ok
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