Red Hat, Oracle to get Gov't Certification for Linux

Mark writes "As this news.com article states, 'Red Hat and Oracle plan to announce on Thursday that the companies have teamed to get Linux evaluated under the Common Criteria, a certification that could open doors for the broader use of open-source software by government agencies.' It looks like this will be an important step in getting Linux to be more widely adopted in governments around the world."

Comments

Re:Is Larry making a stand?

[speeding_cat]

"We are going to use Unix and Linux as the evaluation platforms for our products in the future, and not Windows, because the customer demand for Windows is not there," she said. "Frankly, there is a fair amount of disenchantment with Microsoft products because of security problems." ... said Mary-Ann Davidson, chief security officer for Oracle.

Wow. I knew Larry hated Bill and MS, but I sure wouldn't have expected this! Or is he just conceding the Windows server database market to Bill and trying to grow the Linux market on the low end + the UNIX market at the higher end?

Smart companies try to transform complementary products of other companies into commodity items. OS for Oracle nicely fits into this picture. Since they need it anyway, might as well be inexpensive Linux. Also, one more Linux system - one less Windows system that could run MSSQL instead of Oracle. The choice to support Linux is really no brainer for Larry the Nut.

Linux port should also be relatively cheap for Oracle, since it is very much like standard Unix and Oracle tends to use basic OS facilities anyway.

Re:dupe? No. This is different.

[The_Dougster]

This seems to be another type of cert.

This is a good thing as the US DoD uses ADA95 for most everything AFAIK and the GNAT compiler works just dandy with Linux. This is what DoD needs, an inexpensive, yet totally robust system which they can put unleash the military programmers on.

A good example is BRL-Cad which is available for free download by US Citizens. This is a nice OpenGL capable solid modeler, somewhat clunky, but probably better than any other free CAD program available for Linux right now.

I'm a veteran of the US Military, and I think that Linux is a great choice for them, since they have the capability to provide cheap, effective, and efficient training about their computer systems to all the members of the armed forces. The US Military could easily train several million service personnel to be effective Linux programmers in a quite short period of time.

And of course, as a taxpaying citizen, I want my armed forces buying the best weaponry, not lining some 2-bit computer software vendor's pockets, especially when those vendors undermine the rights of the citizens by channeling that money back into lobbying for laws like the DMCA.

This is where RedHat shines. I use Debian myself, but Debian is too chaotic to apply for these certifications; however, RedHat could make a killing by supplying the US Government their software, and since Linux is Linux is Linux, this gives my government the state of the art software: it is secure, it is robust, it is inexpensive, and it is the best development environment in the world!