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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.
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.
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.
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
I think this is more the austrian mentality Schwarzenegger has been grown up with before he went to California. Have in mind overe here in Austria, after the second world war we had a political climate of talking with each other no matter which party and to try to find solutions out of a problem no matter what lobbyists are behind. That climate has changed the last ten years, but that exactly was the climate you can see with Schwarzenegger, once in the office he started to talk with both parties. I would not say he is a conservative, he is more a free thinker who is on the conservative side.
... 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.
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)....
As a democrat, I feel dirty for defending a republican, but..
Republican != neocon. Traditional republicans are ones who try to eliminate as much waste/pork as possible(McCain is a good example of this type). From what I have seen, Arnold is as well.
The government of California simply wants the best tools to do it's job at the lowest cost. Open source works for that some of the time, others maybe a proprietary solution is the best bet. It all depends on the circumstances, there are very few "silver bullets" in life. It seems that the study indicates that open source alternitaves may be able to deliver the best functionality/cost(it's certainly not free when you consider all the transition costs etc, but long term they believe it will pay off). The government should be looking at what is in the best interest to the taxpayer.
The neo-cons are another story however. They are into cutting taxes for people who are a whole lot richer than you and I, and then using your taxes to reward their buddies while you and I, and the americans to follow us will foot the bill. (*cough* Accenture *cough*)
I am hoping for a rift in the Republican party, and who knows, maybe another W. victory might finally cause that rift, but I don't think it's worth the chance.
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
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!
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.
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
- 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!
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.
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.
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
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?