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UK Government Reports Linux is 'Viable'
CProgrammer98 writes "The Beeb is reporting that The UK Office of Government Commerce has published their final results following trials on the use of OSS and especially Linux and they conclude that Linux is a viable option for government use. From their summary: 'The report shows that Open Source software is rapidly maturing, offers significant potential benefits to government and should be actively considered alongside proprietary alternatives. It concludes that decisions should be based on a holistic assessment of future needs, taking into account total cost of ownership, with proper consideration of both proprietary and open source solutions.'"
Has the US government already stated that Linux is "viable," or is their vision still blocked by a large round pig known as Microsoft?
It may come as a surprise to Steve Ballmer, but Microsoft's stranglehold on the operating system market is doomed - and if it folds to Linux or Sun or Apple or any other organisation that supports open standards in its operating system, there will no longer be any reason for organisations to support Microsoft. With any of their products.
Hear that noise, Mr Ballmer? That is the sound of in-evit-a-bility.
-- james
Your Getting UK Government confused with Tony Blair he would have no impact on whether Linux is used by Gov departments, It is a business decision for the departments themselves this study is a guide for them not TB.
My own department has recently swapped contractors from Accenture to IBM mainly because some of our managers are interested in taking a closer look at Linux, this is before this report came out.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Erm no, these are family boxes.
They run mozilla (1.73) and FireFox (1.0PR) They have spybot removing spyware and the AV definitions & windows Update & manually applied hotfixes are all up to date.
You will find that when mozilla mail pulls down the latest mail with an attachment of netsky then craps itself cause it can't 'truncate the mailbox' due to the AV software restricting access to said mail box that is not about securing the PC.
I personally run Windows and Gentoo on the desktop & Free BSD on any important servers.
I did infact admin windows servers and can secure them correctly. So if your going to get all stupid with your posts, please at least provide a username so I know who is going.
[Which berk modded this Karl Marx bullshit insightful? Just cos you've got mod points doesn't you have to use them.]
Firstly, stop thinking of OSS as a bunch of hippies writing free code which individuals then support themselves. This is the viewpoint that MS et al want to push (oh look, you're an anonymous coward...).
Most OSS in big business is now supported by a variety of other big businesses, each with a vested interest in customising, improving and maintaining it. These people are going to be paid for their business and some of that will be ploughed back into development. Even if the government supported it itself, it would result in any bugfixes being handed back to the community. That's the quid pro quo of OSS - fixing the thing that bothers you (or paying someone else to do it) will cost you time or money and the benefit will go back to the community --- until we have the perfect free solution!
Does that answer your complaint? I'm not sure, cos 'I have a bad feeling' is difficult to argue against.
I should add, btw, that the open standards for open information interchange argument suggests very strongly that governments should use OSS until proprietary solutions support them well.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
So the final results page offers some mild amusement when looking at the file types on offer. In June 2002, the "Open Source Software Policy Document" was released in RTF, PDF, HTML and ... Word DOC. September 2002's "Guidance on implementing OSS" was only released in PDF. Then, a glimmer of hope! The Qinetiq (what a stupid name...) report was released in PDF, RTF and none other than OOo SXW! There may be hope yet... but no, the final report that this article is about was released in RTF, PDF, HTML and DOC.
The question is: why bother releasing in .DOC when there's an RTF right above it? Hmm...
What I find interesting is how many of the problems and costs he's talkiing about seem like they would disappear if Linux were to ever really get off the ground.
Three years ago (2001), while I was working in London at a Medical Software Development firm, I recomend that the company move from ColdFusion to J2EE for scaleability and I wanted to work with Java. But the company, on Micro$ofts urging, went to .NET. Then a year later(2002) after attending LinuxExpo in London, I presented to the IT Director a plan to build a desktop OS for the National Health Services using Linux. But the Brits do not like chage and they really do not like Americans recomending change. Also around that time Sun approchad the same Director and showed him their first run at linux the SunLinuxOS. But the business reality was "We are an Microsoft shop and we cannot afford to change direction." Which was fair enough.
Now just a few weeks ago there was a story about how Sun scored a deal with the NHS for $9 Billion dollars or 5 Billion (GBP).
Respond if you want but I am jsut trying to vaildate my self worth now that I am back in the
US and unemployed.
I like-a do-the cha-cha.
The UK's IT failures are not surprising. Executives from the companies that have failed them in the past sit on key committees that determine government IT policy. It's called corruption.
The UK satirical magazine Private Eye has followed this story for a number of years.
In this climate, open source software like Linux and Apache has a good chance of seizing a large chunk of their respective markets. Such software is free, and service is low cost due to a supportive community of geeks willing to offer free advice via various bulletin boards and chatrooms.
By contrast, Linux has little chance in China. In China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong), all software is essentially free. The Chinese freely steal what they do not want to buy; 95% of software in China is pirated. Since Windows is "free" and Linux is free, there is no motivation for Chinese people to choose Linux over Windows.
Apple continues to lose market share, as they have for a long time. Even with the introduction of Power Macintosh G5s, new Power Macintosh G5s, and the new iMac G5, growth of sales of Macintosh computers haven't kept up with the overall growth of the PC market. Apple is a profitable company in little danger of disappearing in the near future, but it is in even less danger of becoming a dominant force in the overall PC market.
Linux is gaining traction in industry, but it seems that it is still mostly in customers moving from other UNIX systems. Sun, HP, SGI and IBM are losing the low-end UNIX workstation market to Linux. The mass migration to Windows has stopped, but Windows is still taking a little bit of that. A more common path I've seen is a move from proprietary UNIX to Linux. With Linux comes cheap x86 machines. Shortly after the x86 machines arrive people start running Windows. That is, the migration goes proprietary UNIX->Linux->Windows. Overall I have seen more Linux to Windows migrations than the other way around.
I don't mean this as doom and gloom to Linux. Proportionally, Linux is growing much faster than Windows. Linux is also improving much faster than Windows. As the installed base grows bigger, more services will become available, and Windows to Linux migrations will become more viable.
Hmm... let me make a WAG. Microsoft is really concentrating on security now. I think that Microsoft will handle security issues just as well as they have handled stability issues. That is to say in ten years Windows security jokes will be a cliche that out-of-touch Slashdot readers make, and get corrected on by the more normal users.
At that point, there will be some other big issue. I propose (another WAG) that it will be how well the operating system supports new hardware models, and highly parallel personal computers in particular. Hardware will move from todays fast single-threaded processors to processors that run a single thread not much faster than today's processors, but can run many threads in parallel. Windows and Linux both have trouble with scalability now. In this future scenario it is quite possible that one operating system will be four times faster than the other. If you want Linux to beat Microsoft, make sure that Linux is the one that is four times faster.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
it is encouraged that more OS's besides Microsoft's should be used. Diversity is important. Linux is authorized for use throughout the government, and actually is used alot more than you would think.
Unfortunately the Navy has implimented a brain-dead, microsoft only, across the enterprise, $8 Billion (yes, that is a B) contract call NMCI adminstrated by EDS.
The contract was designed for typical office use with no thought how it would work in a Development, Research or Industrial environment which the Navy has considerable. All of my existing Linux installations are now referred to as "legacy systems" and any new system development is required to comply with NMCI (Read microsoft).
The system is a monoculturist dream. One vulnerability and the enitre Navy's infrastructure will be fall like a house of cards. Not that someone thought it wise to relocate all our local LAN servers in central locations across the country - increase the likehood for failure and data compromise.
We cannot install software unless it is on an approved list. Only problem access to the list is restricted and difficult to get. The list is a joke. I am allow to install Mozilla but it must be verion 1.1. Or I can install perl but only 5.6 is approved on windows. Notepad is the text editor of choice.
Any fellow NMCI suffers out there take not that I found a place to complain here at NMCISUCKS.com.
And No to any NCMI lurkers I did not post this from work.
The point of these government and corporate reviews isn't to make an artificial split open vs. proprietary, it's to legitimize the *open source* software for use at all.
I've had many conversations where people were against open source for reasons that aren't true.
Short story, I was told by one executive that 'Since the source is available, it's less secure...we'll use use our current solution'. When I pointed out that our primary web server including our flagship product were stable and secure she agreed. She went white when I started to list off the open source that the made up the core of that product. The conversion was quick, though, and they began to appreciate open source...for the flagship product only.
The chance to have that type of conversation is limited. These reports, though, can pass along those revelations without looking like a fanatic.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I have a feeling that this was a baseless threat - if he tried to pull off something like that, the resultant outcry would have caused Congress to pass an exception to the copyright laws, just for Microsoft software. Somehow I don't think that's the effect Gates would've had in mind.
This isn't purely an academic exercise. I have an appointment with the progressive mayor of a medium sized city to show off a LAMP project that I'm doing for the city bureaucracy. This city administration is stuck with a nightmarish tangle of legacy proprietary software garbage and yet the city is home to one of the world's leading CS departments and is a hotbed of OSS. It's absurd.
Anyway, even if that weren't the case there's a case to be made that governments should not merely tolerate OSS but demand it. This mayor and council would be open to such arguments if they were appropriately presented.
I'm sure it's been made somewhere by someone besides me, but Google has not been kind to me so far.
I'd appreciate any discussion or links on this topic. Resolved: a democratic government, in service to its constituency, should whenever possible refrain from building its public services around proprietary software built upon trade secrets.
Thanks in advance.
mt