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Oregon Government Supporting Open Source
amountlad writes "In a pair of articles released today on N4N.org, Oregon continues to lead the way in government open source adoption in the USA. The Oregon State University's Open Source Lab will host a Government Open Source Conference in October. The GOSCON has strong support from within the state government. The State's Department of Administrative Services released a white paper detailing their use of Asterisk for audio conferencing for more than 500 conferences a week. The set-up includes a web-based interface for judges to manage recording the hearings. In doing so the State joins Metro, a Portland area regional government which uses Asterisk along side its Beowulf Cluster."
One of the great things about open source is that it offers a way for business and non-business organizations and individuals to leverage the power of existing equipment for very little additional expense (to wit, additional peripherals or upgrades necessary to run the software) rather than investing the money into a solution they're just going to have to throw away shortly down the road.
With the increasing price of oil, I can't help wondering what the face of computing is going to look like five or ten years down the line. The average computer uses as much as seventeen swimming pools worth of coal to run on any given day. Much of this is spent on wasteful peripherals we could do without, such as fancy 3D graphics cards or optical mice, but even more is being spent on processing power well beyond the needs of the average user.
Inefficiencies in microcomponent fabrication mean that a great deal of the electricity that goes into your computer is given off as heat. Techniques such as reversible or quantum computing hold much promise in the future for putting more energy into computation but today it is up to the consumer to safeguard the environment.
In a way, the argument is the same as with vehicles -- most people don't need a SUV or a top-of-the-line system but many choose to get them to compensate for inadequacies or because of marketing -- but with computers at least it is impossible to argue you are "safer" for having a faster system. Indeed, you are more likely to run viruses or worms without realizing it because you don't notice the hit in operating performance.
I've noticed that, between the advances in open source and the levelling off of true innovation in hardware design, I've been holding on to computer equipment longer and longer these days. Oh sure, I have to fix a power supply here and a fan there, but besides slack engineering standards from software companies there is little reason to keep up with the hardware treadmill... and at least one compelling reason not to.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Unfortunately, not all government agencies in Oregon are following along. I work for the Oregon Judicial Department, and there's not a drop of open source in use that I know of. It's pretty much all Microsoft, Lotus, and Corel.
What's even worse is that there's a lot of alternatives in use between counties. For audio recordings in the court, most counties use either FTR or CourtSmart. My court uses Office products, even though the "official" standard is the Corel suite. It makes it difficult at times when working with other counties.
I think it'd be great if we went with Linux and Open Office, but that'll never happen.
Due to the trolls above- but if you're having problems viewing the Coral'd links above, try going directly to http://goscon.org/
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The average computer uses as much as seventeen swimming pools worth of coal to run on any given day.
No, it doesn't. Not even close. Please, for the love of God, don't pull "facts" out of your [thin air].
For those of you who aren't complete idiots, a computer uses about 300 Watts. 300 Watts in 24 hours is 7.2 kiloWatt-hours. That's a little less than 17 swimming pools worth of coal in energy.
*burying face in hands*
Nope. Intel has a central campus in Oregon, and is home to other major tech companies like Tektronix and Flir. Don't forget OSDL's main HQ is in Oregon. The west coast in general is technology-dense.
"Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable."
Replace your lawyer--he can't read. The GPL does not require you to license things under the GPL simply because they were compiled with gcc.
If you don't believe me, read it yourself.
The average computer uses as much as seventeen swimming pools worth of coal to run on any given day.
l
t ml
1 ton of coal produces 2,500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity
1 pound of coal produces 1.25 kilowatt-hours
From:
http://www.teachcoal.org/lessonplans/how_much.htm
It looks like an hour of active computer use should use no more than 200 watt-hours in an hour.
From:
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.h
200 X 24 = 4800 = 4.8kwh/day = Under 4 lbs. of coal.
I think the grandparent post got the words "day" and "year" mixed up. Easy mistake. Half the time I get carded, I tell the bartender I'm 22 days old.
How quickly we forget, Oregon schools tried to go open source and got the smackdown by Microsoft's lobbyists. No, this state government is NOT in the lead on the use of open source.
I'm one of the DAS staff who helped develop this system. While cost was certainly a factor - off-the-shelf commercial alternatives were exorbitantly expensive - we also chose the Asterisk-based architecture for its flexibility and the ease by which we could modify it to suit our needs. While we're only using a minuscule fraction of what Asterisk can do, it is constantly being modified, expanded and enhanced. Check back with us this time next year and I bet we'll have tons more to show off. :-)
http:www.lsb.orgLinux Standard Base
is an standard, supported by all major linux distros, which ensures that even proprietary software can be developed using it's components as a framework. When it comes down to compiling with GCC it is just bullshit and FUD that this imposes any license restrictions. As you can surely see onhttp://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIUseGP LToolsForNF
gnu.org
the copyright on the editors and tools does not cover the code you write. Therefore it is possible to compile even proprietary applications with GCC.