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Software Libre: DoHS Switches, Commerce Slights
An anonymous reader writes "Some excellent Pigdog investigative journalism: Apparently, The state department is trying to block international support of OSS and Free (Libre) Software. See also this InfoWorld article." Contrast that with this NewsForge report of a switch from Windows 2000 to Linux+Oracle at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They picked a good week for it.
The free world won the cold war because an open society is more efficient than a closed one.
Free software will win on the same basis. Sure, the US is open compared to most of the countries in the world, but it's not as open as open source.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The same government that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and turned a monopoly breakup into a mime of a wrist slap fights the good fight to make sure that software that isn't being licensed by the major party contributor is on superior footing against "free" "better" software. Why is anyone acting surprised?
Open source technology - there really is no way to ensure that the third world would get second rate technology using free software, and where will the NSA put all their back door
No, Starbucks became popular because most places sell a WORSE product.
They remain popular because they sell the SAME product line everywhere they are. Kinda like McDonald's.
This is an excellent action on the part of the US government. Open Source software has a few bright spots (Apache, BSD) but its overrun with too many amateur, half-finished programs - a quick look at sourceforge will reveal as much. By doing this, the American gov't is simply saying they want proven, reliable code. Unfortunately this tends to mean closed-source code. I hope one day that most OSS goes thru as rigorous quality control that most major closed-source programs do.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
If the rest of the world's governments use OSS, the US government might have a harder time spying on them.
So, other than my own connotations for "support" and "encourage" what do they mean to the rest of the world? By this, I mean the people who actually control policy/pursestrings?
"Encourage" could be syntacially stronger than "support" if "encourge" was used in this community to mean financial support in addition to moral support.
I strongly doubt this is true, but someone reading has to have seen enough of these things to actually know what the between the lines meaning is.
Motivating my curiousity was a discussion I had today about some GPL'ed code, and what exactly could be done with it. I realized that past a certain point, all I was comfortable saying was: "Well, to my understanding... blah, but you really outta talk to a lawyer before assuming anything" Words mean different things to different audiences.
No they used to sell good coffee, but as they grew in size, the quality of the coffee went down. Kinda Like McDonald's :)
All Microsoft software is an export of the US this brings trade $ to the US and profit, employment and tax dollars to the the US. Manufacturing costs are minimal. The US State Department has a mandate to support exports of American products.
Internally the US government is mandated to support national development and minimize costs. This is best done through an open source solution system and the development and support of many independent local service companies. See the Peru OSS document.
Thus we have the two faces of government:
1) attempting to get other nations to buy overpriced, over hyped expensive american products
2) attempting internally to minimize costs and local development
Should one be suprised that other governments are also attempting 2. No. But the best thing to do is to pressure them to do 1 and send those $ to the US.
My understanding (and I've not much MS experience) is that the security model for Win is more complex and therefore more difficult to secure. In *nix, everything's a file, and I think that makes it simpler. Plus, the Unix model's been around for 30+ years, and it's an open model.
I dunno - considering that the only utility you need to customize *nix security is vi, where with Windows you need countless wizards and administrative tools and multiple registry settings for the same items.... well it confuses me (not that that's hard to do)
The United States (as originally designed) != capitalism.
Captilism is a new, post-industrial idea. The thinking is that things are run by the few who have scrambled to the top and can negotiate with each other for power and influence (see Rockefeller on this, who actually disdained the idea of a free market). I therefore don't subscribe to the idea that a government must be either Captilist or Communist. Call me a throwback, but I am kind of partial to the word free.
As far as I can tell, our government(to all you other Americans) is favoring proprietary software vendors(ie. Microsoft) over OSS/free vendors, including RedHat, IBM, HP, etc. OSS has become integral to a number of U.S. based companies, BIG companies like IBM and HP. OSS/free software is also used internally at companies like WalMart, Burlington Coat Factory, and our oh-so-fucking-precious movie studios.
What incentive does our government have to favor certain U.S. based companies over others? You have one guess...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I'm not sure how you are tying that to selection of software. Effectively the US outspent the USSR and broke them. At the present rate of growth in China, which is in some ways open, some ways closed, it will be interesting to see how the US stacks up in the years to come. Seems to me the biggest economy wags the tail.
It is ironic the government embracing pricey closed systems, particularly how they are doing it. NSA and Homeland Security employ open source, apparently because they have full access to code and updates. Less critical applications get the junk. I've had to exchange data with various government departments before and typically they're a bit disorganised, so throwing buggy software at them seems like a way to compound their problems. Great for the next round of budget cuts, "Department X is inefficient and unresponsive to the needs of the people and will be eliminated/restructured/etc.", as sacrificial lamb to show leadership, etc.
"Their giving us Microsoft Office and and Exchange Server."
"Yeah, looks like it's time to polish up the old resume."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Get ready to repeat yourself when the story is re-posted tomorrow :-)
Actually, the State Departments' actions in trying to discourage open source are the biggest crock of shit I've seen today, especially in contrast to the DoHS switching to open source.
Countries Support Their Primary Export Industries. Film at 11. The US isn't being any more persnickety than say... oh... France when it comes to the name "Champagne". I'm sure the Europeans who don't want to cave to MS feel the same way I do that we (the US) haven't caved to the French and allowed them to dictate how we use words. Cheers.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?