Open Source in Government

A reader writes: "There is a feature running on NF about a conference this October. More information can be found on the conference website." It's worth pointing that despite the fact that the conference is two days long, the organizers have asked for material submissions to be included in the conference handbook. So, if you've got some materials/thoughts, start polishing them up.

Comments

How About Open-Source-Government?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a good plan...

Re:RMS's failure is complete

[Clue4All]

Who cares? To the average person, Linux = Open Source = Free Software. That's good enough for me, the more people that are aware of anything along those lines, the better.

Sha, I wish

[PhysicsGenius]

Back in 1998, when Linux was cool, I started a project to convert our lab to Linux servers, desktops, embedded, etc. The project itself was still exploratory, just seeing what this baby could do, you know. Well, we had our yearly audit (as a federal grant-getting institution we need to have accounting/insurance/safety/security audits, etc). When I showed the GAO guy my Linux test boxes he nearly blew a gasket and told me to yank those out of there ASAP.

These were his claims (before you mod me down, remember that I disagree with his assessment, I'm just the messenger here)

• He said they'd found massive security issues with Linux
• He said the reliability wasn't quite high enough for those mission critical items we performed
• He said their was nobody to call when it broke
• He said that the haphazardly "open" way it had been developed practically guaranteed the existence of bugs
• He also said that the licensing issues prevented our lab from putting the results of our experiments in the public domain

So anyway, I'm glad the gov't is taking a second look. Hopefully Linux has improved since then.

Re:Sha, I wish

[tps12]

Wow, now that strikes me as a lot of FUD. Do you work for Microsoft? Okay, I will deal with these complaints one at a time.

He said they'd found massive security issues with Linux

Okay, fine. But what operating system hasn't had massive security issues? It's the nature of the beast. If you've been paying attention to Slashdot lately, you'll know that even the ultra-secure OpenBSD has its share of security holes.

He said the reliability wasn't quite high enough for those mission critical items we performed

Well, given that this was in 1998, he may have had a point. But Linux has improved quite a bit since then. 2.2 was a very stable and reliable kernel, and since the 2.5 branch, I've been using the latest kernel on all of my high demand enterprise servers.

He said their was nobody to call when it broke

Yeah, except for Red Hat, SuSe, Caldera, Debian... Next!

He said that the haphazardly "open" way it had been developed practically guaranteed the existence of bugs

Yes, but they are shallow bugs. Read RMS's article, the Cathedral in the Bizarre, located here for more details.

He also said that the licensing issues prevented our lab from putting the results of our experiments in the public domain

Hahahahahahaahhaha. That's a good one. Maybe you haven't heard about the GPL, but under Linux's license you actually are required to release your experiments to the public. Try doing that in Windows!

I hope you are now educated and will not go believing any more FUD of this sort.

Where are the support opensource vendors?

[BrookHarty]

Just wondering, Typical questions.

1. If you want to use an opensource product, where do you learn about it? I know about oracle and mysql, but who do I goto for mysql paid support?

2. What about total solutions, other than RedHat or VA Software, are there other vedors? Or do I just goto IBM and Say "Linux"?

3. Are any opensource vendors bidding on government contracts?

4. Do the opensource vendors support 24/7 priority support? What about public safety? (fire/police/ambulance/etc.)

I deal with public safety, and they want a live person, with escalation if something is service impacting. They want service level agreements.

If I contact a large vendor, they have all those answers, they even seek my business. I have not seen much opensource support or opensource products besides apache and support utiltiies. I have not *seen* many adverts, people offering demos, people offering to fill a niche market, where are the opensource companies people need to turn too?