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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)."
Somebody'll have to look this one up to confirm, but last i checked microsoft was a private corporation. It's not a part of the government.
It doesn't seem like anyone (who isn't affiliated with a proprietary software company) is necessarily against open source as they are against the idea of the change itself. Changes in government are mostly reactionary. You need a large number of voters interested in the issue, otherwise its hardly worth the time. I believe the opponents to the open-source bills were mostly afraid to favor open-source; they weren't against it.
Britian, France, Japan, Peru, China and Germany are all moving to Linux and open source. Hell, some are even writing up legislation that gives incentives to businesses that do so as well.
You are exaggerating or purposefully misleading the extent to which OSS is being embraced by these countries. Perhaps increasing the use of Linux in certain areas by a fraction of 1% is a huge gain considering that it had previously been 0%, but in the grand scheme of things there is no mass exodus towards OSS.
They testify that releasing the code to their competitors would constitute a clear and present danger to national security then give the source 3 months later to a communist country. Excuse the hell out of me, either MS doesn't care or they are too daft to read the obvious writings on the wall. Anyone who has read anything on how the Chinese view us militarily knows that the PLA's documents call for "alternative means" to take out the US's critical infrastructure and military forces. I'm sorry, but given their history with our legal system, I think they are some of the most disgusting treasonous scum in corporate America.
The only thing worse was IIRC Boeing it was that moved Loral rocket technology to China to launch satellites knowing damn well that much of that technology was dual purpose. Now the PRC has missile technology that is approaching ours. Thank you corporate America, may so many of you be among the first up against the wall.
Your right to try to turn a profit ends where our national security is concerned. I don't give a flying fuck why Microsoft released Windows' source code to them, but that alone is grounds to punish them by shit-canning their products in the federal government. Every desktop should be switched to MacOS X and/or Linux and MS Office replaced with OpenOffice. We have to draw a line in the sand and scream at them YOUR BEHAVIOR IS NOT ACCEPTABLE YOU UNPATRIOTIC FUCKERS!
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
That may be true, but that doesn't mean microsoft hasn't bought a substantial part of the government.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
a corrupt and entrenched mass of politicians who have no incentive for doing what is good for the electorate because they don't need to do so to remain in power.
:)
I thought that was the definition of government.
Seriously, the people of the US have a heck of alot of more important things to worry about than whether the Government chooses Linux vs. Microsoft. Do you think the CEO of General Electric gives a crap whether the OS of choice on Random Project X is Linux or Microsoft. Heck No!
Anyway, the money that would be saved by going from Microsoft to Linux is miniscule compared to the money spent on pork barrel projects by both sides of the isle. Unforunately, pork barrel projects are essentially politicans bribing their own people so they are hard to remove.
Brian Ellenberger
The only thing worse was IIRC Boeing it was that moved Loral rocket technology to China to launch satellites knowing damn well that much of that technology was dual purpose. Now the PRC has missile technology that is approaching ours. Thank you corporate America, may so many of you be among the first up against the wall.
What's worse is how the FTC (under Clinton) approved the sale of several supercomputers (Crays I believe) that were on the export control list to China. This happened around the same time as the missile technology thing. The really scary thing was that the FTC asked China to let them inspect the facilities where these supercomputers were to be user for "academic research" and China said no. A major corporation with ties to China made a huge contribution to Clinton's reelection campaing, and voila, sale gets approved.
Of course nobody even noticed because the same week (or month) as all this happened the Lewinski scandal broke and Americans seemed to care more about who blew the pres in the oval office. Nobody cared that we gave away to the Chinese missile technology and the computer horsepower to be able to target us with it.
It needs to be based on free, open and documented standards.
Why wouldn't it be better to have custom software that helps the government employee do his job? What business of yours is it that the thing conforms to arbitrary standards?
Are standards more important than having the right tool for the right job?
I have been pwned because my
And for the record, there have been plenty of security holes in Linux and the many packages for it. The difference is they are usually fixed faster. Think sendmail or bind here. How many stupid bugs are in those?
[Linux] is inherently MORE secure than Windows
"Inherently"? Highly doubtful. Linux may happen to be more secure than Windows because programmers took a little more care here and there. The usual advocate would insist that naturally it has to be so.
But there's nothing fundamental about Linux that makes it "inherently" secure. It's based on essentially the same technology (hand coded software running on the same hardware) and is, if anything, older. There are a few zillion well-known holes in Unix and the usual Unix tools, most of which have been plugged (hopefully). But you can see the same brain-dead design decisions (I know, let's let any random user connect to our port and escape to a root-level debug shell with '!'; that'll be useful) and coding errors (yet another buffer exploit). For that matter, finding buffer overruns is easier when you have the source code.
More secure, maybe. "Inherently", no. If Linux is more secure, it's because it took a lot iof hard work to patch the holes, not because it's reached some higher level of security design.
Tell that to the soldiers at My Lai who turned on their CO and fired on those killing the civilians there. And in case you didn't notice, I said that national service could also be peacecorps or americorps.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
We can praise the nations that throw caution to the wind and roll out Linux rapidly.
Funny thing: For the past year, I've been working for a little consulting company whose main contract is a big European conglomerate that's doing just that. Their management was getting more and more paranoid about the implications that their corporate data was under the control of a big American corporation. We're extracting all their data (with precious little help from that big American corporation, who know that they've lost the contract) and putting it into a flock of networked linux systems. And to do the the job, they hired an American company! But it makes sense, because our chief's main sales pitch has been to point out that we're building a system that they will control from the top to the bottom.
Linux is NOT a perfect beast, and it should surprise no rational person that it is, at this time, treated as "the devil you don't know".
One of the stories was of a big meeting at the big conglomerate's site. One of their managers brought up the subject of linux support. Our guy asked for a show of hands: How many ran linux at home. About 1/3 of the hands went up. He observed that they didn't need to hire any more linux expertise.
Linux is hardly an unknown. Anyone who says they'll have trouble finding linux expertise is simply shovelling a pile of BS. For that matter, finding BSD expertise is nearly as easy, especially now that OSX is getting rave reviews.
It makes sense to transition gradually. But it need not take many years. Especially when the inevitable happens and MS forces you to upgrade. Transitioning to linux then will be cheaper, and it won't take much more retraining. So you might as well do it, and get out from under the thumb of the American beast.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You're a fucking idiot.
It's been proven time and time again that open source software is more secure as long as it's properly managed and vigilantly kept up to date. On the other hand, the security by obscurity crowd continues to play the same, tired old message that proprietary systems are secure because people don't know about the exploits. Do you honestly think that the black hats are going to come out and say, "Umm... I found this really big gaping hole in Windows that allows me access to credit card DBs on a few major e-commerce sites. Just thought I'd tell you."? No! They're going to keep it to themselves until the damage has gone far beyond anything that open source would be vulnerable to. Not to mention the foot dragging that Microsoft tends to favor when it comes to releasing patches for security holes. Especially if it's going to mean that they are going to lose money. And THAT'S where the root of the problem is. As long as companies are in this for profit, the main focus is going to be making more money with as little expense as possible. This means ignoring security holes that haven't been made public. This means gnoring security holes in old versions of OSes and applications simply because they want to FORCE people to buy their new products. This means no longer providing updates (even if the security hole is glaring and widespread) if it will keep people from migrating to the new OS or application. I'd much rather see my government using OSS because it's safer, gets patched quickly and is FAR easier to manage than proprietary crap. Go astroturf elsewhere you Micro$oft goon. MS is losing this battle. It can't be won in any honest way.
Un-news
In a short speech to the Charlottesville (VA, USA) City Council last week, I proposed the consideration of open source via an internal bid approach, considering the results alongside traditional proposals. I haven't gotten any results or response yet (it's only been a week, after all), but based on the thoughtful nods and scribblings of the councilors while I was talking, I feel good about it. :)
:) Hey, and I keep my campaign promises, too...even though I wasn't elected. ;)
I'd be interested in hearing if anybody else has convinced their municipality to consider the use of open source on a project-by-project basis and, if so, how they went about it. I'm not so naive to think that a mere speech will do the trick, so I'll need some ammunition for the follow-up.
Hey, funny -- this really follows up nicely on the Ask Slashdot on the topic that I submitted a year and a half ago.
-Waldo Jaquith
From the article at LinuxWorld:
The main thing a government unit considering open-source software wants to know is how it can save money.
Not necessarily. Another 'main thing' is...does it do what we need it to do? In many instances, yes. General office funcions can be done with OO.o, back end and server functions with various flavors of Linux, webservers with Apache. There's a whole raft of free and OS tools available for various functions.
But also, in many instances, no, it won't. For instance, there are no good quality open source tools for GIS or CAD requirements. Free or open source is good, but does not always fit the requirements of what is needed in a particular environment.
In any case, I care far more about open format, accessible documents, rather than worry about which tool is used to create that document.
I do consulting in the Washington DC area, and have been in a lot of federal agencies. At the point where products are chosen and designs are built, nobody really cares what any politicians think. It comes down to the people who are in charge, at the agency level, of that project. At times, it isn't even up to them, as they hand that duty off to the contractor or even subcontractor. Good example: we once did a Citrix solution for Raytheon as part of a larger solution that went to the FAA...and only one person at FAA even knew what we were doing.
While the NSA was granting Common Criteria Certification to Checkpoint Firewall-1 (an Israeli product), relative small-fry in multiple agencies were afraid to use it due to the classic federal urban legend about Israeli backdoors or other malware embedded into it. The US Army has a collossal site license (or at least had, some years ago) for Netscape products, so that's what they used when possible. Ultimately, the people in charge of choosing the solution do so without significant awareness or care of what politicians say, think, or feel...and this is both good and bad.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
1) This is really the only reason I need to be stating. "Every body has access to it". Other government agencies and/or anti-government/terrorist organizations could easily search the code for exploits and vulnerabilities that would allow them to attack government computers. Depending on how the gov designs their networks and implements the opensource software, it could lead to some serious troubles.
So you're arguing for "security through obscurity?" Get real. Security through obscurity doesn't work and we all know it. People find plenty of exploits and vunerabilities for Windows and commercial Unix, without the source code, now don't they?
The benefit of OSS and Free Software, is that the exploits and vunerabilities tend to get fixed MUCH faster, than they would for commercial operating systems.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
...does it really matter? ...will any of us really notice a difference in the Government? Will any of you be directly affected by this decision other than being happy (for some strange reason) that the Government is using Linux?
You can keep the two cents...
In the sense that it saves the tax payer incredible amounts of software license purchases for large scale systems.
Of course I'm only referring to the GPL licensed open source. It would be pointless if someone open sourced something and refuse to deliever the source unless you pay em a billion dollars.
But back to main point why governments should be using open source.
1. We all know that the government systems are probably just a step up more secure then university systems. Colleges have been strong supporters of *nix / open source but never truly as secure as businesses, so why bother? Well because colleges like government are big entities that are kinda very inefficient because the markets don't punish (I'm definitely dumbing down the issue... you bond/rating agency guys must forgive me) governments or colleges for inefficiencies. The cost of these inefficiencies acutally do produce savings because government employees are not paid a lot and it wouldn't be worth it to pay so much more to buy 10000 licenses when you can just buy 1 and distribute.
2. Another reason why the government should be open source is because it's tied very closely to academia. Most of the huge research labs/super computing facilities are sponsored by the government. I'd shudder to think how little work would be done with a closed source solution when the scientists are acutally intelligent enough to know how to hack the code.
3. The fact that all top secret military stuff like nukes and all that dangerous shit is definitely not open source and probably some ass backwards properitary system that you'd have to learn san script to break in.. just makes me all the more comfortable knowing the government doesn't use open source on shit like that.. which comes back to the Terry Pratchett quote... "If there was a big red button and you put a big sign next to it that said 'Don't push' some idiot is bound to push it" kind of mentality that retarded people in this world have when it comes to dealing with classified information.
So if you've read down this far congratz on listening to an old man rant.. but it wouldn't be complete with out a point.. which is PEOPLE... there are places for open source.. and there are places for closed source... the government doens't just look at MS or linux...
unlike some certain group of readers of a certain website... So instead of being hard core open source or hard core closed source..
Sit back... think about what each is good for... and choose appropriately.
These reports must document carefully the reasons why each decision was made in favor of one choice over another.
Not at all: if the organization chooses open source software, they don't have to justify their choice because they haven't spent any money of the software. If they choose software costing millions of dollars in licensing fees, like that from Microsoft, then they bloody well should have to document and justify that if there are free alternatives.
So, no, this doesn't generate any extra paperwork unless a lot of money is at stake. And when a lot of money is at stake, I, for one, want the extra paperwork.
Well, because Linux is GPLed. The law wisely says that works made by the US government can not be copyrighted. This allows us to freely copy and use and more importantly see many of the works our tax dollars paid for.
The GPL requires that if you can not contribute to it under the GPL, you can not use/modify GPL software for something to be distributed. Since they may not put the retrictions on it that the GPL requires despite its sophist use of the word `free' we can not in the United States move to Linux. We could move to open source though, just have to use a less restrictive license then the GPL or any that require your to use the same terms (which require a copyright etc.)
Take a read:
"Separation of the [democracy and capitalism] also depends on an unspoken deal, a nonaggression pact, between democracy's political majority and capitalism's affluent minority. The majority acknowledge that capitalism benefits all of us, even if some benefit a lot more than others. The majority also take comfort in the belief that everyone has at least a shot at scoring big. The affluent minority, meanwhile, acknowledge that their good fortune is at least in part the luck of the draw. They recognize that domestic tranquility, protection from foreign enemies, and other government functions are worth more to people with more at stake. And they retain a tiny yet prudent fear of what beast might be awakened if the fortunate folks get too greedy about protecting and enlarging their good fortune."
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Now, if they go with the 'default', and something goes wrong, that's just the "way it is". That employee was just following orders.
.NET. ;)
I understand the risk aversion at the lower levels, but the it's the default setting levels where this due diligence should be happening. However, the problem is that the government works for us citizens (supposedly), and we're generally oblivious in these matters. So the ultimate overseers aren't actually paying any attention. And even if we were, we usually only get two choices on our ballots, and then those people are the ones who can actually affect the agencies involved. This is hardly a campaign issue at this point.
Now if a major breach in national security could be pinned on a specific failure in a Microsoft product, then it might become more of an issue. But most of the general public is either too scared of computers to feel like they know enough to challenge policy makers or we're all so used to the annoyances of worms, viruses, rebooting, etc, that we don't really think about it in terms of overall loss of efficiency or safety.
All that said, Microsoft actually only seems to win in places where it doesn't actually matter that much anyway. Like the bureaucracy. I suppose someone can correct me by pointing out that our guided missiles are all programmed using
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