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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 Governator should be applauded for his adoption of Open Source in the government. My only question is whether the Open Source solutions will have to be made in California, because it is my understanding that The Governator is against Hollywood productions saving money by filming up north in Canada. I think this is a *great* move to use Open Source in the government because it will help keep everything much more secure and stable than going with expensive closed source anti-solutions. I only wonder if this will mean that Allnold will be moderating his anti-Canadian rhetoric any time soon? A great deal of Open Source comes from Canada.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The GOVERNATOR wants open source alternatives eh?
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Currently running IIS and an average uptime of about three days. See here.
This is obviously because Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are girly-men.
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The Army reading list
Wow... I haven't been an Arnie fan since his desecration of a movie, T3... but this evens the boards back out. Hell, this even puts him back over to the good side.
;-)
Now if he gets a cameo (along with Jessie Ventura) in AvP... that'll put'm both in highest regards in my book
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
BSD. Yes, California should finally use BSD more than just a research project. Finally put their spent tax money to work for them. That's my opinion.
...a serious Republican like Arnold would let something like this out. I figured he and his people would've thought Open Source software was too fast-and-loose appearing, too ideologically different to use.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Translation: I must suppress my kneejerk reaction to reject out of hand any suggestion made by a politician because said politician is not a member of a political party approved by me.
His political representation has nothing to do with this move. He has gone against the norm and has proposed the use of Open Source on a large scale. I'm not too sure if this is a first, but it is still revolutionary. If this goes into affect, this may mark the beginning of the true war between Micro$oft and Linux
Perhaps they saw what Testra did to get their discounts and they think they can save their money by doing something similar.
I had no idea a government-produced document could be so clear, concise, and easy to follow. If OSS really takes off in California, maybe other states will turn to this justification. I honestly believe that if more lay-people read similar descriptions of open source software, the doors would be opened to Linux users everywhere.
Live free or die
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.
I hate the IT Design
/arnold accent
/end arnold accent
ITS NOT A TUMOR!!
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
and now coming soon to a theater near you...
Terminator 4: Rise of the Penguins
Featuring the lovable Tux as the TERMINATORR
"HE IS BACK"
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
... 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".
Part of the proposal: Open Source alternatives. Imagine that...
So.....I take it that the source code to SkyNet and the T-800 series Terminators will be open sourced? Or will it just be limited to T1000 source code?
Red Bull gave me wings and I flew into the ceiling fan.
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.
..most governments over the world have realized the benefits of OSS.
To have a glimpse of OSS and governments all over the world, just use good ol' google
Interesting to read is CNET on Governments push open-source software
There's even a Getting Open Source Logic INto Governments (GOSLING) Community
http://efil.blogspot.com/
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.
Second-to-last sentence from the body of the link:
Looking to the open source community for applications that serve the same function as closed source solutions may cause vendors to be more flexible with pricing and licensing structures.
But the rest of the report makes a very strong case for the adoption of Open Source, including a couple of figures naming savings already known to have been made by California state agencies.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
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)....
He doesn't have to read it (but I'll bet he's at least been briefed on it). He doesn't even have to understand all of it -- that is what delegation is all about. Since we use the democratic method to elect leaders, not their cabinets, we might as well elect people who are good leaders and who we think will select and lead a good cabinet. After that, governors and presidents are mostly figureheads, not policy or decision makers. If we could find someone who could completely understand health care, welfare reform, social security, taxation, the military, space research, etc, I'd be all for electing them. But such a person doesn't exist, and if they do likely they have incredible social problems from having spent all their time in the library learning all this stuff.
But I think you grossly underestimate Arnold if you don't think he has some sense of policy, especially this one. He's been talking about the waste in the government for quite some time now, and ran on a platform of getting rid of the waste -- not the programs.
MORTAR COMBAT!
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.
So SkyNet runs on BSD?
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
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.
- The Governor should direct the state Chief Information Officer to obtain copyright and patent protection on the code owned by the state to protect this valuable resource as an intellectual property.
While it might look like a plan to simply create a code library, the real goal is, of course, to license this valuable intellectual property:The whole suggestion is mangling of ideas, where the author treats "copyright" and "patents" as if they were the same thing. Here's my favorite paragraph:
- Computer application programs over the last few years have evolved into programming languages that are designed to be easily modified to work in various environments. For example, HTML, XML, Java, LINUX and others are written in modular formats that can be connected in different pieces of code to accomplish a variety of functions.In computer terminology, each computer operating system is called a platform and language code that can be used on more than one platform is called "cross platform code."
Where to begin with that? I hadn't realized that applications had "evolved into programming languages". What "cross platform" code has to do with anything is beyond me.They go on to claim that by using a code library - which will only need four librarians to handle all the code in the State:
- The State Chief Information Officer should issue a directive requiring all departments to follow the standards and submit all code developed to the library
we'll be able to code faster, cheaper, and stop using contractors:Fortunately, we've got a 30 day period for public comment, so folk from California might want to chime in here!
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.
But, I don't suspect that this is something to get people like Microsoft to come down. Face it, in order to under bid open source, they'd have to give it out for free. You don't need a MS employee to come and install it, you just need a technician who knows what he's doing; likewise, some random from Red Hat doesn't have to come out and install Linux for you, some guy from MySQL AB doesn't have to come out and install MySQL, etc. You just need a random who knows what he's doing. Or in California's case, a whole lot of said randoms.
Now, that's not to say they'll work for free; they will naturally want to be put on the state payroll. Either way, you HAVE to pay somebody, and I suspect it probably won't be nearly as much as Microsoft would suggest with their "lower TCO" argument that they like to use with their examples of 7-11.
So, we'll wait and see.
And before people spec that CA will reneg on the deal, remember that Munich re-renegged.
This sig no verb.
This is the reason why you shouldn't learn about politics from the movies or TV. While I like Moore's movies because I find them to be thought provoking, the problem is that his facts are extremly one-sided.
Unless a bill is higly controversial, it's pretty much guaranteed to pass once it makes it past appropriate committees, because even though they hate to admit it, the both parties negotiate those things behind the scenes (e.i. I'll pass your bill if you pass mine). In that case, reading of the bill on the floor is merely for following the formal procedure as the vote's already been decided.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Nice way to copy a website. In rebuttal:
# People who use drugs deserve compassion and understanding -- unless their drug of choice is tobacco.
# Children can be exposed to years of violent and sexually-explicit imagery in popular culture with no ill effects, but an adult who is exposed to a racially insensitive remark is emotionally scarred for life.
# Banning abortions will only drive them underground, but banning guns will make them disappear.
# Teaching children about safe sex in school will make them sexually responsible, but teaching children about safe gun handling in school would make them violent killers.
# The Enron accounting scandal is an indictment of free markets as such, but UNSCAM is no big deal.
# An unemployment rate of 5.6% during the Clinton administration was unusually low, but an unemployment rate of 5.6% during the Bush administration is unusually high.
# Successful government programs should be praised and publicized -- unless the program is welfare reform.
# A work of art portraying Jesus submersed in urine is daring and avant garde, but a work of art portraying Mohammad submersed in urine would be bigoted and hateful.
# George Bush invaded Iraq for the oil, but the many profiteers from the oil-for-food program opposed the war out of principle.
# Janet Jackson's breast is protected by the First Amendment, but political advocacy ads are not.
# Scientists and engineers can't build a safe nuclear reactor, but global warming activists can accurately predict the weather.
# Education should be value-neutral, except for values like multiculturalism and environmentalism.
# We need to move beyond 9/11, so we can get back to obsessing over Vietnam.
# The Second Amendment does not protect the right to keep and bear arms, but the Fourteenth Amendment mandates race preferences.
# Fetuses do not have rights, but animals do.
# Parents should have a choice over whether their children are born, but not what school they attend.
# American corporations outsourcing jobs to poor foreign workers is bad; taxing American corporations and sending money to foreign dictators who promise to give it to poor foreigners, but actually squirrel it away in Swiss bank accounts, is good.
Open source is the way to bring SkyNet online.
And here I always thought SkyNet was Windows revenge for BSOD'
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
... it's the bureaucratic minded people involved.
I was involved in a major California project in the early 90's where my company was a sub to Lockheed. Some of you may have heard of it as "Dead Beat Dad" tracking.
The goal was to automate and establish information sharing between cities and counties in California with the additional tie-in of Federal data sharing.
The result hit the news well after I left the company; I was offered to take over the Project Management duties and I flatly refused. I worked long enough on the project in a support role to see the underlying flaws and why the project would never deliver to goal.
In order to meet the overall goal, it would require some 50+ county and several hundred city governments to literally cooperate on various details. Of course, the Los Angeles Metro area insisted on being treated like its own little kingdom.
You'll never get that many bureaucrats and policy wonks to ever cooperate toward a common goal.
Open Source won't do anything useful toward cost cutting since the technology isn't the cost load factor toward final cost.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
"# For potential immediate savings, departments should take an inventory of software purchases and software renewals in the Fiscal Year 2004-2005 and implement open source alternatives where feasible." yes - immediate savings and finaly my tax dolloars being spent wisely. thank you Arnold
Imagine all the programming power available through senior projects and grad thesis of the University of California and the California State systems. The state of California has an awesome potential to direct that government specific open source software be created or tailored or reviewed to fit their specific needs.
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
"This is your Controller speaking! All Microsoft Reality-Realignment Commandos to their disembarkation tubes!"
"This is not a drill. I repeat - this is not a drill. We have identified a Clear and Present danger to our Cash-Cow-Money-Factory (TM) scam of charging for operating systems and commodity applications!"
"The Governor of California is a threat to Capitalism! Parachute in there and give away a bunch of our crap, while pretending it has more value than free alternatives. Those techno-schmucks will never know the difference. We know what is good for everyone, everywhere."
"That is all. For now."
The original #9 on Mr. Perens' website("The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software.") is longer, and clearly GPL friendly; he goes out of his way to state that the GPL is in fact compliant with #9.
The report version is shorter with no explanation, and actually uses different phrasing: "License must not contaminate other software".
Sound familiar?
The problem isn't that there aren't enough moderates, the problem for you is that you don't see any candidates who agree with you on (almost) every issue. But that's not a reasonable expectation, unless YOU run for office.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.