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Who Opposes Open Source Software In Government?
Skapare writes "Linux Journal is doing a story with a roundup of who the players are that are opposing open source in governments. The one I find interesting is the Gates connection to BSA. But I think we all need to become familiar with this round-up of special interest groups not operating in our interests (as taxpayers)."
its funny nobody seems to realize that the current state of most software is open source. all the assembly instructions you need to fix/modify a windows program are right there in the .exe file. thats why people are able to crack shareware, make keygens etc.
the people arguing that opensource is a security risk seem to be under the impression that compiled source is secure. its not. this is ALL about the $$$$$
bite my glorious golden ass.
On an unrelated note, Preston Gates' IIS seems to be slashdotted now. I was surprised to see that the BSA is using Apache on FreeBSD. It seems to be working fine, if a little slow.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
One of my friends was employed by the military (mechanical engineer), and often got involved in computer issues as a side-effect of his rank and position.
From the stories he told me, it sounds to me like the U.S. military often resists change on a department by department basis. I don't doubt that politicians at the top play a big role in keeping closed source commerical products in the military -- but in many cases, it seems like the only hurdles are technical ones. (EG. A specification demands that any software or OS solution used meet a number of criteria. If a Linux installation can meet them, then fine - it can *technically* be substituted as the server platform for that department.) Where it falls apart is when a colonel decides he really likes Microsoft products (maybe simply because that's all he ever used), and he dictates that *his* staff will never use anything but Windows.
On the particular military installation my friend worked at, they had a similar situation years ago, where one group kept using Novell - despite the rest of the base running Windows. Everyone tried to put pressure on the other group to ditch the old Novell server - but for years, they insisted on sticking with it. (Everyone else ended up having to mess around with loading Novell modules and IPX stacks they didn't want to use, or else not be able to access that one department's data.) Since the Novell system technically met the (old) requirements drafted up, there wasn't any way to mandate a change.