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Open Source in California Government
catfoo writes "California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently posted the California Performance Review Report, a 2,500 page plan to overhaul state government and save $32 billion over the next five years. Part of the proposal: Open Source alternatives. Imagine that..."
The Army reading list
Could the content of this news item be even more surreal?
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger?
California overhauling their budget?
Replacing Windows with OSS solutions?
Im going to put my head in a bucket now.
Perhaps they saw what Testra did to get their discounts and they think they can save their money by doing something similar.
Just by "posting" that, they are guaranteed massive discounts from microsoft who is scrambling now.
Either way, it is a win-win for california...
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
... the OSS angle has been pushed into government policy by a small number of committed activists, as soon as the debate goes beyond the number of people they can talk to directly it all falls apart. It would be interesting to see legislation written in this areas, but be cautious, it takes a lot more than "intent" for something to become "law".
In my experience, Open Source (while often associated with the left) seems to reach across all political idealogies. What is weird to me is that people keep thinking of it as communism and to me is it the purest form of democracy.
Finkployd
there is such an incredible inefficiency in large corporations, especially governments. there are so many causes of this, it is hard to pick them, but here are just a few:
1. "tenure". once you're on the job a few years, it's very hard to fire people. people realise this and slack off.
2. "gotta spend my budget". if you don't spend this year's budget on something, somewhere, next year's budget will be less than this year's budget, regardless of what next year's budget actually needs to be. people realise this and spend money on non-essential things, to preserve their budget slice for next year.
3. "follow procedure". often large places will have massive procedures for procurement, which end up doing things like making a hammer cost $100 to acquire, desktop computer costs skyrocket, etc.
4. "workplace as a supply depot for employees". people take reams of printer paper home. it happens. ditto blank CD's, pens, you-name-it. computer monitors, desk chairs, all these things go home with people.
5. "croneyism and nepotism". similar to situation #1, you have people who retain their jobs when they are not operating at a good personal efficiency -- or are even downright awful performers.
To fix these things in government, all that is required is (1) absolute transparency of budgets. Every $1 which is collected from taxpayers must be accounted for somewhere. Hundreds of eyes seeing these budgets will find the waste very, very, very quickly. And (2) impartial performance review of employees. Get rid of or "fix" the lazy and inefficient employees -- they are destroying the system in ways that simple material waste cannot even come close to in comparison.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Either way, it will save Californian tax payers money. It's a win-win situation.
I think the whole point of the report was:
"Here are things we should change in the future"
Not- "gee, look at the cool stuff we are doing now."
It makes perfect sense that they are NOT running open source now, but are supporting a move toward open source in the FUTURE.
No reason to lie.
I'm not really sure it's the whole "Open source" movement they are embracing. It's more along the lines of finding the best tool for the job. Sometimes it's open source, sometimes it's closed. But I want my government to spend the least amoung of my tax dollars while still getting the job done. I honestly don't care what kind of software they are using as long as it's functional and secure.
Looks like Arnold turns into the Terminator regarding the State's wasting of taxpayer's money on Windoooz licenses. I'm not a replublican, but he's got my vote on this one. Seriously, one can say a lot about Arnold being a Republican and all, but at least he's not one of those party-line drones I see on Fox and MSNBC all the time. Alongside with people like McCain (and few others who's name I don't remember) he represents the few remaining people who have their own personal convictions but don't engage in 'scorch-the-earth' practices daemonizing anyone who disagrees with them. Anyway, back to the real world, I have some taxes to accrue (which can be wasted on killing brown people in poor countries)....
You can say that again. A really surprising move from a conservative government.
How can you call the California government a conservative government? Just because Arnold is a republican? He's probably more liberal than some of the southern democrats.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
You may want to reconsider your perceptions of what Republicans stand for.
Republicans generally believe competition encourages innovation and efficiency. I'm not surprised by this move at all.
i dont get this mentality. i'm in the conservative/libertarian camp, and i use FOSS wherever i can. i use it at home, got a Samba server at work, etc. i have never thought of Open Source as an idealogical problem, and i certainly don't associate it with communism. quite the oppsite--using the GPL and sharing your code is a conscious decision, and people are perfectly free to use it or not. free market, baby ;)
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
California's had a really serious debt for quite some time now. It's simply that the last administration was NOT DOING HIS/THEIR collective jobs that Arnold appears the "well-intentioned hero".
THAT'S WHY WE FIRED DAVIS.
In a time when there's so much incompetence in doing one's job, someone who DOES do their job looks like hero.
No one actually believed that Mr. Muscle man had the training and experience necessary to fun the fifth largest economy in the world...
They didn't vote for him because of his party affiliation either.
He was perceived as being a real human, rather than another product of the political machine. Sheeple, for all their stupidity, are still able to recognize that successful politicians achieve their success by favor-swapping and compromise. This means that by the time any given politician arises to a position of real power, he or she is alreay so loyalty-laden that acting independently is outright impossible.
Arnold has no such loyalties tying him down...so he can actually make decisions that benefit the majority and make sense. The fact that his own agenda is actually beneficial to the people at large is, IMO a Very Good Thing.
$0.02
While I agree with your problems, I don't think "drown them in yet more red tape" is a viable solution.
Honestly, the biggest one to crack is the "got to spend the entire budget" attitude. And there's a simple way of achieving it:
1. Budget allocation meetings are not allowed to take usage of last years budget into consideration. In fact, they won't even be told how much of the previous year's budget has been used.
2. Departments are allowed to keep the procedes of any underspend for 1 year. If they haven't spent it by that time, it goes back to central funds.
This will encourage departments to be frugal with their spending, as everyone knows it is useful to have a bit of money left over in case of emergencies.
It would be ideal, of course, if all those paper-MCSEs out there turned out to actually have a brain in their heads. Experience, however, leads me to a different notion.
When I see a computing system, I see a computing system. I don't see Windows or Not-Windows and stop there. They all basically do the same things and it starts from there. Whatever is there to learn in order to do your job or serve your purpose, you just do it. So when I am operating an AS/400, a Linux box, a QNX system, MacOS or a Windows PC/Server, it doesn't matter all that much to me. They do the things they are supposed to do and you just learn how the writers decided it should be done.
On the other hand, there are people who need training and certs to do everything and even then they aren't particularly good at adjusting to changes. That's just not a good mind-set for an I.T. pro to be in. So when someone says, "I don't know nothing about __(blank)__" and stops there, I have to doubt their ability to learn and their tallent as an IT professional.
All these paper-MCSEs and one-trick-ponies have gone a LONG way to de-value those who are actually good at what they do. Bean-counters and HR folk just don't know how to judge tallent... they just read resumes and ask if they can afford this guy or that.
I just don't see I.T. as a commodity profession as many are attempting to place it.
Communism has many meanings. If by communism you mean the soviet political system, Open Source/Free Software don't really have much in common with it. However, it is not hard to see how Marx could 'like' the OSS model. OSS puts the computing 'means of production' in the hands of everyone. To compete in the hardware industry means billions of dollars in investments, so you pretty much have to work for a 'capitalist'. In the software business, using the OSS model, a few hundred workers can compete with the biggest software giants, since the means of production are inexpensive. The only barrier of entry is labor.
So IMO the OSS does share something with communism, but only the pretty, flowery side. Applying Marx's economic ideas in the 'real' industry has so many problems that I can't even begin to describe them. When the product can be copied for pennies w/o any expensive equipment there is no 'natural struggle' to hoard resources, and the OSS model becomes the natural way of doing things. It just happens that true democrats, marxists and libertarians like it just fine. Just don't try to reuse the model in a more traditional industry.
With Pure Capitalism, you would charge whatever gets you the largest profit for your hard work
I beg to differ. With pure capitalism you would own the products of your labor and be free distribute it to others for what ever form of currency you wish (in the GPL case, it's the products of the next guy's labor, but could easily be some other form of barter under a different license). Some people think of the GPL-flavor of OSS as more a part of a Gift Economy, but I see it as an exchange of current goods (your contribution to the code) in exchange for the promise of future goods (derivative works) from others. Essentially you are "investing" your captial in the hopes that others will make improvements and return them to you (and everyone else, in this case).
Communism (in the Karl Marx sense) sees the products of your labor as owned by everyone outright, so you have no inherent "rights" to anything you produce above and beyond what everyone else has.
Big government is here so the only solution is... bigger government? Que?
And I think the mental images of communism come more from, oh, let's say, every example of communism in the 20th century, rather than any mind-control conspiracies...
s/some/most/
California is its own special blend of politics; it is a huge state both in terms of population and footprint and its people run the gammut. Schwarzenegger is quite "liberal" in social issues--he's anti-gun, pro-abortion rights, pro-gay rights. He's conservative in fiscal issues. Look around CA and you'll find lots of strange combinations of political ideology.
Compare this to the south, where people tend towards extreme social conservatism (no gays, no abortion, guns for everyone) combined with a desire for larger government fiscal investment.
Government schleps are the political ideologues, not the people.
None of this is black and white; Schwarzenegger is becoming more partisan because the Republican party is forcing him to, not necessarily because he believes that crap. This F/OSS initiative is a positive step that he's able to break away from the partisan crap and do something useful.
Someone asked if I had patched against MSBlast; I said yes, I installed Linux.
he may want opensource solutions but obviously what he really wants is just cheaper alternatives. The gov't could care less if they can modify or redistribute software. they just want to be cheap.
IMO a government using OSS is almost a waste because even if they do find a bug or add an enhancement, do you think they will release it back into the community? NO.
Big companies and government use the free aspect and dont give anything back.
kinda defeats the spirit of the OSS community if you ask me.
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The fact that you people label yourselves and each other sickens me. Thats the problem I have with all of this political crap. Enough of this Democrat/Republican bullshit. No one fits into the parties 100% and no intelligent person would vote one way or another straight down the line. Believe it or not, no matter how scary it is, but Republicans and Democrats can agree. OMG, its the end of the world... Stop assuming that just because someone calls themselves a Republican that they have a jingoist mentality bent on world domination, and stop assuming that just because someone is a Democrat that they are a baby-killing communist hippy. Form your opinions on an individual basis instead of being lazy and blanketing an entire political party as evil or stupid.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
My God, both of you are exactly right.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Schwarzenegger is not "anti-gun." I doubt any but the most left-wing whacko is "anti-gun", the term would be "pro gun control." In any case, he supports the Brady Bill and closing the the gun show "loophole" but has also made it clear that he supports the 2nd amendment. As to his interpretation of it, that is still unclear. I'm not sure if he's pro-gay enough for most of the liberals here, because he does not support gay marriage. Frankly, he's way too un-Terminator like for me on that issue, because his response to the San Francisco mayor's flagrant disrespect for the laws of California should have earned the mayor a ride to the pen with the state police. The mayor's duty is to uphold the law, not use his authority to blatantly disregard it. As it is today, San Francisco is still a rogue city and this corruption must be stopped.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I'm certainly an OSS advocate, that's all I run, and all I have run for the last two years.
I do agree with using the best tool for the job in Government, be it open or closed source.
However, I really think a prerequisite, in the case of close source being the best tool, is an open data format. It shouldn't be acceptable to have government, and therefore the public's data locked away inside a file that only one application can process.
Yes, I know that OO.org can handle Word documents, for example. However, it shouldn't be necessary to reverse engineer the file format each time MS release a new version. That isn't an open data format, and so I don't think government should use MS word.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf