Slashdot Mirror
Get Listed Free In Gov't Open Source Directory
BanJoota writes "Probably most useful for U.S. people, but sounds like a good deal. The story (at Newsforge) says you can list your Open Source business, non-profit group or Open Source project or whatever for free in a 'Who's Who and Who's Doing What in Open Source' book that's being distributed to government agencies on March 15. The deadline's March 1, so better act fast." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN. Remember to keep your write-up suitable for pointy-headed managers...
I have an understanding of how government software projects work.
That said, Open Source is respected. People are always trying to get their hands on the latest and greatest from Apache, Mozilla, etc.
Keep up the good work. Your efforts are not blind to us.
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
after several government recommendations (US and AU) that departments "should consider an Open Source alternative", they would have had hundreds of angry PHB's saying "WTF - what is Open Sauce? where do I get it? Is this a new version of Windows?"
So, they *finally* sponsored a directory.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
I am interested in seeing this guide as well. Will it be published beyond the fortune 1000 / govt folks?
Blogging because I can...
I thought the government was primary running Windows. Are they going to pay attention to this directory or will it end up going nowhere?
With all ya read about how the government is subverting science etc. It's nice to see that the governmnent is promoting open source which will allow it's citizens to get access to the best/cheapest/open technology rather than promoting what the corprate overlords suggest.
It's also interesting to note that(unlike some other governments) this isn't exactly an endorsement of use for OSS software, but rather a flag telling agencies that it's ok to go ahead with OSS projects you planned, and here are some resources OSS.
It would be interesting though for the government to fund more OSS projects who have a significant amount of dedicated US citizen contributors, but with the deficits and tax cuts, it's probably a pipe dream.
Oh well, a step in the right direction anyway.
That's going to be a problem with an open source developer? It's not hard to identify open source projects and their development team members now.
Doesn't Chimera use the Mozilla rendering engine?
The submission deadline is March 1st...yet the government is going to be distributing these books on March 15th? Of the same year? Can they be that efficient?
And the not so interesting bit is that it's so typical of the government...doing a job that's already been done. All this information really didn't need publishing. Freshmeat, Sourceforge, linux.com's directory...
What worries me more is that managers are going to actually go to some of these project websites...let's just say most open-source project people don't have very good marketing skills, or at least never put much effort into their homepages for the "what IS this?" crowd..save the really big/popular projects like Gimp, Gnome, etc. They just don't try to sell themselves. Often times I'd kill just to have had a project that, right up front, detailed is major features and how it compared to what else was out there...
Please help metamoderate.
If the US government wanted to monitor people who had an interest in producing security-related software (and real-world equivalents), they'd have a stack of documents at least tens of millions of pages long. It's possible to dig up data on people online, but it's a pain in the ass (i.e. there aren't great ways to do automated data mining on someone who maintains a set of unassociated pseudonyms, which many security-advocacy folks do), and given the number of people involved, not worth it unless the government decides to *really* panic (think of the FBI-PGP debacle).
May we never see th
Whoever said that open source 'threatens capitalism' clearly doesn't know the meaning of the word. A true threat to capitalism would be a specific program of government funding for open source projects.
..
Not that this directory seems to be anything like that
Actually, based on reading over old FBI files released under FOIA and seeing the sort of people that the FBI build files on (i.e. just about anyone of note), it wouldn't surprise me if Stallman has a file.
He stands to be a significant player in the next decade or so in the intellectual property world. He has an impact on politics, and is a rabid idealist.
I mean, China's pushing for a domestic software industry and relying on much of his work now, right?
May we never see th