Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

U.S. Governments Advised to Use Open Source

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the think-anyone-will-listen dept.

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices is reporting that non-profit public policy research group, Committee for Economic Development, has released a 72-page report that takes a look at open standards, open source software, and 'open innovation.' From the article: 'The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.' The full text [PDF] of the report is also available for download from the CED site."

2 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. LinuxDevices' summary is a tad misleading... by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Informative

    From LinuxDevices' summary:
    Open Source Software

            * Governments should not mandate any particular license, such as requiring open source software only; however...

                        o No citizen should be required to use the hardware or software of any particular vendor

                        o International procurements should also supprt inter-operability requirements
    And directly from the report (boldface mine):
    The Council believes there are certain critical functions of government that should be conducted solely with interoperable technology; in these critical areas, no citizen should be required to use the hardware or software of any particular vendor.
    It's fortunate that LinuxDevices included a link to the PDF so we could read it in its entirity (plus, although the report is 72 pages long, only 44 of those pages are the actual report).
    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  2. full circle (jerk) by yagu · · Score: 4, Informative

    What I find curious, amazing, confounding is this whole thing seems to be full circle for what I remember the government doing a LONG time ago! And, it is and was one of the fundamental original underpinnings of some of the Microsoft shenanigans in the early 1990s.

    I worked on some government contracts circa 1985, and I remember a movement in the government contracting to require new contracts for computer services to be POSIX compliant. I also remember thinking how cool of an approach that was, especially considering it was a government initiative. Anyway, lots of fun programming, lots of fun (and hard) work and all on a Unix (SunOS) platform... yeah, it was even fun though we were using SunView (look it up).

    Enter Microsoft, late 1980s, and 1990 on. They sorely wanted to get into the big government contract business, and as one of their boasts for their new and improved OS (NT), they talked loud and long about NT being a POSIX OS (not an OS with a POSIX subsystem, a POSIX OS). Heck they even convinced me to come work for them for a while, until in a closed door presentation, the project manager for the POSIX subsystem prefaced her notes by saying (and I'm paraphrasing, but it's close to a quote), "Before we start, I just want to point out that we don't care about this subsystem, we don't intend to use it, and we don't intend to support it. It's just a check-box for government contracts."

    And, now the government is back to recommending Open Source and "open innovation". I only wonder if this has any impact on Microsoft this time. It didn't before, I'm guessing it won't now. Sigh.