Governments, Beyond the Open Source Hype

An anonymous reader writes "ForeignPolicy.com takes a look at Open Source as it applies to governments and some of the reasons that a governing body may or may not like OSS. From the article: 'Governments around the world are enchanted by open-source software. Unlike proprietary software, for which the code is kept secret, the open-source variety can be copied, modified, and shared. [...] Trouble is, the benefits of open source are not always so clear-cut. Software is too complicated a creation to be captured in rhetoric, and assertions about some of the technical benefits of open source fail to tell the whole story.'"

Comments

...And the FUD-spreading site runs on what?

[orzetto]

Running a nmap -P0 -O foreignpolicy.com, you get among other things:

Device type: general purpose|media device
Running: Linux 2.4.X, Pace embedded
OS details: Linux 2.4.18 - 2.4.27, Pace digital cable TV receiver
Uptime 175.187 days (since Tue Dec 6 19:18:51 2005)

So it's open source, Linux, and running continuosly for 6 months. Ahh, the coherence.

Re:The sweet smell of plastic grass

[Ithika]

nor can they say with certainty that having fewer bugs makes open source more secure

Well, that's a good one. "There's no evidence that our product, having more flaws than their product, is actually any worse."

Oh puh-lease.