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Microsoft Battles Free Software at Pentagon

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the attack-of-the-lobbyists dept.

Spirit of Ishmael writes "The May 22 Washington Post is running a story under the headline Microsoft Fights Free Software at Pentagon. According to the story: 'Microsoft Corp. is aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to squelch its growing use of freely distributed computer software and switch to proprietary systems such as those sold by the software giant, according to officials familiar with the campaign.'"

3 of 679 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nothing like drumming up business for yourself by MrResistor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mitre has been tight with the government since just about the dawn of time. They were one of the origionators of what became the internet. At this point, I doubt Mitre has much difficulty getting contracts, especially from the DoD, since they have such a long-standing relationship. I think it is significant, however, that Mitre is pushing Linux. That, even more so than IBM's efforts, tells me that Linux has made it to the big time.

    --
    Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
  2. The Navy Loves Windows NT! by toupsie · · Score: 5, Informative
    The US Navy "Smart Ship" Yorktown was outfitted completely with Windows NT to run the ship's systems. Because of a Divide By Zero bug, the Aegis missile cruiser became dead in the water in 1997 and had to be towed back to dock. Windows NT had frozen the propulsion systems.

    At least with an open source system, they could have patched the code and moved on. But with the closed source Windows NT system, the USS Yorktown had to be towed into harbor and let the boys from Redmond check under the hood.

    Thank God it was peacetime..

    --
    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
  3. Re:Under GPL NSA must release source code? by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative
    NSA does release the source code for Security-Enhanced Linux. Click on the above link for the project page and download.

    SELinux is not well understood. NSA has built a version of Linux with a mandatory security module. The idea is to allow people to experiment with a system that enforces mandatory security (which can be tough to live with) and to develop apps that can work within that model.

    If you want to move things along, download SELinux and make some application work within a mandatory security model.