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Linux Journal On Linux's Adoption In U.S. Courts

Posted by simoniker on from the guilty-of-being-a-penguin dept.

Sam Hiser writes "Tom Adelstein writes in Linux Journal that, technically, one-third of the U.S. Government has moved to Linux: its Third Branch, the Judiciary. That's 30,000 users across 800 locations, comprising the nation's Federal court system. Given our information overload, it's easy to miss the most significant kernels of news."

6 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Wow! by neiras · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now let's see the US government follow in Germany's footsteps and directly sponsor the development of some critical piece of open-source software.

    1. Re:Wow! by presarioD · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why do you want open source to die?

      Seriously now, this is kind of scary. If Open Source ever "dominates" in the governmental sector, the impact it will have on the Open Source community will not be a trivial matter to consider.

      The worst thing that happend to socialism for example is that they actually got elected for government.

      New forces will be created in the Open Source community once it becomes mainstream and the temptation to "bend" GPL for more and more profit might be there. Of course you might argue that this will automatically exclude anybody that does it from the Open Source community but I am just wondering how the future might look 40 years from now...

      --
      Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
  2. Woo hoo by adam.skinner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So our judicial system is moving from Solaris to Linux for their servers. This would have been a story of note had they put Linux on the desktop, but as it stands it hardly seems newsworthy. I mean, the multinational company I work for uses Linux on many of it's servers as well.

    Adoption of Linux as a server is one thing; adoption of Linux on the desktop for 30K is quite another...

  3. Check the math there, chester. by chumpieboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One third?

    One of three branches, yes.

    Those 30,000 users are a drop in the bucket when compared to the total number of Federal employees and offices.

    Will the slashdot readers be hypocrites or will they denounce FUD when it comes from Linux Journal? If Microsoft (or a journal that is focused on MS technology) had released a statement that "two-thirds of the US government runs MS software!" then there would be a huge shitstorm.

  4. One can only hope not by ScouseMouse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From a purely impartial point of view, I certainly hope they dont let the use of underlying systems influence their decisions.

    The judicirary is supposed to be impartial. I think for the most part it is. I would like it to stay like that no matter whatever happens.

  5. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > Now SCO owns the Judicial System..... what next, the Senate? ;)

    I know you're being funny, but let me draw attentions to a significant detail: if courts grok Linux it will be far more difficult for "people" like Dearl to initiate such "operations" like the one we witness.