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Microsoft Battles Free Software at Pentagon
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.'"
Quoth the article:
Jonathan Shapiro, who teaches computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said: "There is data that when the customer can inspect the code the vendor is more responsive. . . . Microsoft is in a very weak position to make this argument. Whose software is the largest, most consistent source of security flaws? It's Microsoft."
As ye sew, so shall ye reap, I guess.
This article was so full of typical Microsoft FUD, but it hit one or two points very clearly:
The Gub'ment is savin' your tax dollers by usin' that open source Linux thingy!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Nothing at all, of course! It is perfectly normal and acceptable for companies, especially in a troubled economy, to pare back and focus on their core competencies. The Post article is irresponsibly making a fuss over Microsoft leveraging two of its well-demonstrated core competencies: lying to the government and subverting democracy. These essential skills are central to Microsoft's operation, and it's an abuse of free speech to present them as something dangerous -- worse, it might panic the consumers!
Unquestionably, it is "idiotic and inflammatory", as you point out, for the newspaper of record in our nation's capital to report on these perfectly normal goings-on. The matter of which development efforts are funded by our tax monies has no bearing whatsoever on the public interest. It may be safely left up to our trusted government agencies and their staunch allies in large corporations and special interest groups.
After all, what would we commoners have to tell them? They're the experts, and should be left to run the military and the government without any bother from us civilians. And under our sacred and inviolable system of government, power vests in the State, its Employees, and its Contractors -- not in the unwashed masses. For a so-called "newspaper" to "inform" us about the government's activities is nothing short of treason.
Yes, opposition doesn't prevent a firm from being a monopoly. Consider the railroads in the 1800s: they were opposed by many (mostly those that needed to ship goods,) but they were still monopolistic because users didn't have a real choice of transportation vendors. The railroads used similar tactics to those of Microsoft today (incompatible hardware/protocols, discriminatory pricing, and exclusive partnership agreements.) In addition to strong-arming their customer base, the railroads also hired private "security firms" to hassle their competitors and detractors, spent large sums of money to lobby congress.
A vigorous opposition doesn't mean you are not a monopoly, but it does mean that your days may be numbered.
To that end, the Defense Department is now prohibited from purchasing any software that has not undergone security testing by the NSA. Stenbit said he is unaware of any open-source software that has been tested.
Hello! The NSA has their own freaking linux distribution. I don't think you can get more undergone than that.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
(you might consider that absurd until you've seen some of the submissions made to the courts by Microsoft's lawyers)
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
From the article:
Among the most high-profile efforts is research funded by the National Security Agency to develop a more secure version of the open-source Linux operating system, which competes with Microsoft's Windows.
IANAProgrammer, but I think that if the good people working on the kernel would like to contribute in a huge, meaningful way to Linux AND to national security they could put their heads together and bang out an iron-clad version of Linux, contributing to the above project and developing a superior, open-source solution that could achieve three primary goals, all very desireable.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Nothing a user of Microsoft software can do, developer or otherwise, can possibly obligate Microsoft in the slightest. It's impossible. As impossible as trying to come up with a scenario where I somehow create a legal obligation for you based on the posting you just created.
I can make a derivative work with your posting and try to Open Content it, but all the means is that I had no right to Open Content your post in the first place. Nothing I do can aquire those rights by fiat. Nothing I do can obligate you without your consent.
This line from Microsoft angers me, because it goes beyond FUD, beyond number juggling, beyond threats, beyond monopolistic manipulation. It's not FUD, it's another three-letter word you may be familiar with: L I E . It's a flat-out lie. And they know it.
Promote Linux as the premier OS for security. It's already good - make it damn near perfect.
Linux isn't engineered, developers' scrath their itches, if lots of people care about really high end security, it will get done, otherwise it wont.
Provide our nation's defense infrastructure with an open-source secure OS. The DoD is a BIG customer - keep them happy.
While the more linux users the better, no developers care about specific countries or how big a user might be.
Less importantly, shame the fuck out of MSFT. Prove these dicks wrong while they're still patching IE security holes twice a month.
There have been more events than you can shake a stick at where MS screwed themselves over, Linux just needs to be good in order to make MS look like a fool.
Also I should advise you that 1) the NSA has their own version of linux is has extra security stuff, and two, don't forget about *BSD. OpenBSD hasn't had a remote root exploit in 4 years or something.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
Good grief, was it not less than two days ago that Microsoft claimed they could never release the APIs for Windows out of fear for the damage it would do to National Security?
One has to wonder how selling the Pentagon software with SEVERE, KNOWN FLAWS that threaten NATIONAL SECURITY is *not* treason... What ecaxtly could a spy sell to the U.S. that is worse than that?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
The fact that MS can lobby the pentagon (the *pentagon* for crissakes) speaks volumes about how much corporations run this country. The pentagon should tell MS to fuck off - if they want to whine about it, they can make an appeal to congress or some such. The military is supposed to be insulated to some extent from this kind of crap.
If I were running the pentagon, I'd kick those slick backstabbers out on their asses -- "we'll call you if we have any questions".
XML causes global warming.
When I read about stories like this the impression I get is that Microsoft is desperate and is fighting a war they cannot win.
The best way to respond to Microsoft when they are in this position is to ignore them. By that I mean don't communicate with them. Refuse to take their phone calls, ignore email messages, throw faxes into the circular file, assuming of course that you have the power and authority to do so. This will have the effect of demoralizing the Microsoft employees tasked with preventing you from using non-MS products. This in turn will inhibit their ability to do this to others as well. At the end of the day anything that causes a Microsoftie to do a bad job is a good thing.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I know a little about that, since I used to work for the competitor to the contractor that developed that software.
:-)
:-(
:-) ).
:-)
The fact of the matter is that the Navy, like any other large beuracracy, has all sorts of mutually-antagonistic factions that love or hate various systems more for internal political reasons than for their inherent value.
My old group (the Marine Systems division of Lockheed Martin - great bunch of guys and gals...) developed and maintained the engine control systems for all of the Navy's guided-missile destroyers. This class of ship has been around for a while, so it was originally developed using technologies that are incredibly outdated by today's standards. The sensible thing to do with such a system is to slowily modernize things, with an eye towards longevity and maintainability.
You first have to realise that Naval systems have to be way more reliable than your average PC. The open ocean is not kind to electronics, and warfare certainly isn't. The shock and vibration requirements are unreal (like 100G's). The sailors might all die, but the engines would be just fine. I guess the ship would be puttering around in a big circle in the open ocean.
Also, you must realise that it is considered a disgrace for a captain to have his ship towed back to port. Thus naval engine control systems have to be very reliable, or captains are very unhappy with you. It was not unheard of for our engineers to get woken up in the middle of the night and flown to a diabled destroyer via heliocopter to fix a bug, rather than have it towed in. So a "tow-in" bug is even worse than it sounds to an uniformed civilian. Nasty things happen that a peon like me doesn't really want to think about.
For that reason, the natural and sensible route is to update these systems using Naval-standard COTS hardware (HP/UX based), and to develop all new software in Ada (the only language designed for use in "life-critical" applications), using accepted (and time-consuming) software development processes.
However, there was an R&D branch of the Navy that was investigating use of all sorts of new unproven technologies. In this case, they were using C++, expert systems, common 'PC's, and lassise-faire development processes. Experimenting is what R&D folks should be doing, so that's all good. But these technologies are notoriously bug-ridden, compared to what we were using in the actual fleet. We didn't bid on the R&D stuff, (I'm not sure why), so it went to a competitor of ours who I won't name. (But who's initials are CAE
Now of course the commander who has the R&D folks under his command wants to see his stuff used, as that will validate his R&D group, and of course give him a good reason for an increase in funding. So he fights hard to get us thrown off of all future contracts, and our competitors on. But the other Naval oganizations have a lot invested in our stuff, and the captains are understandably leery of massive changes. It probably didn't hurt us any that our competitor was a Canadian company too. So its a big hard political battle, with us mostly winning. I'd like to think this was a victory of reliability and proven techniques over fashion and flash, but I'm not that naieve.
However, apparently they did manage to get the R&D system put on one ship as a test case. Probably it had something to do with CAE having a better position in Crusiers than us. Imagine the captain's displeasure, and our secret delight, when that system failed in the middle of the ocean and the ship had to be towed back.
The moral of the story is that you can probably get something thrown together with whatever's considered "cool" today and that might make it an easier sell, but if you *need* reliablity, you use Unix and Ada, and good software development processes.
(disclaimer: I currently work for a competitor to CAE in a different market.)