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Obama Looking At Open Source?
An anonymous reader writes "'The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through Open Source technologies and products.'
The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley's most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
He revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the new administration."
In just the Intelligence Community alone, there is great support for open source software and open standards and protocols.
As part of Community-wide tools and services, the Intelligence Community takes advantage of:
- MediaWiki for Intellipedia
- WordPress for blogs
- Jabber (XMPP) for instant messaging
- Zimbra for enterprise email
- Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP to support and provide many of these services
- LDAP backends for single signon and other authentication tasks
- RSS for blogs, social bookmarking, news feeds, realtime information, etc
- Open APIs and standards whenever possible
All of these services and tools are available via a suite called Intelink, and are available to all 16 Intelligence Community components, the military, federal government, and law enforcement and homeland security partners at the state and local levels. They are accredited for use for information anywhere from UNCLASSIFIED to TOP SECRET/SCI, and everything in between.
For the last few years, the Intelligence Community has not only "looked at" open source, but has embraced it with open arms. In fact, the information sharing supported by these tools was listed as one of the major achievements during the tenure of DNI Mike McConnell.
Open source works, and has allowed the Intelligence Community to rapidly provide a secure and robust suite of tools to its personnel, easily respond to changing requirements and requests, and all for far less money and far more flexibly than many commercial solutions. And the Intelligence Community isn't alone.
after numerous asian countries, and germany, france, all looking into, and some moving some state governments entirely to open source.
Read radical news here
Next week: Steve Ballmer himself visits the White House...
My blog
I was starting to write here that McNealy is an odd choice for this, since he was somewhat dragged kicking-and-screaming to OSS.
But thinking about it, I actually can't think of a better choice. I can understand the administration wanting a "red blooded" businessman to write the paper rather than wild-eyed OSS advocate that might be less than objective about the pros and cons of OSS versus proprietary software. McNealy really does have a broad background... he's run a major business, he's sold proprietary software, and he's made major releases in OSS software.
He's actually a pretty good choice.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You mean, this Scott McNealy? The one who said Linux is for hobbyists, not enterprise?
Teh funny, it hurts. I even think it's called "eating crow" in U.S.
When you can't beat 'em... Right, Scott?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Let's just hope they don't try to "help".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The summary goes something like this:
This Whitehouse Administration is seeking a x86-64 64 bit computer operating system (OS) that is free of cumbersome and expensive licensing issues, can be secured and is not vulnerable to Windows security flaws, and which the Whitehouse Administration IT department can view, modify, and re-issue the source code in compiled form. ....
My understanding is that the maintenance staff at the Whitehouse are currently working 24/7 to secure any chairs that can be picked up by a single person. ....
In other news, the New president has asked for help installing Seti@home in the Oval Office, and has personally initiated communication with Adobe because he can't view the Zebruder Youtube videos on his laptop.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I surprised that Obama did not spend more time in his inaugural address on the differences between GPL and Berkely licensing. Oh well, hopefully Stallman will have the time to visit soon and set Obama straight.
Open source is pervasive already in large companies and government. Not as pervasive as Windows, but a significant and growing proportion of their infrastructure. The real weak target markets are small and medium businesses and governments, where open source adoption requires a zealot like champion. The main problem here is ISV's which have a great deal of influence over solutions and have no incentive to deploy open source. In fact they get a revenue stream from licensing proprietary software. For example Microsoft gives a 12% kickback for selling their products and a 6% renewal. Most other software companies have similar arrangements. So any open source solution an ISV may present reduces said ISV's profit margin on the deal unless it is made up on increased service fees. But as we all know, Linux and most open source software has a bad tendency to just work and has a lower need for staff than many proprietary solutions. So the only way open source gets into a small or medium organization is if it is customer driven.
Is CmdrTaco masturbating furiously.
Of course the government looks at, and likely uses, Open Source. What's next, "Obama decides to eat breakfast" and we all drool and slaver over THAT piece of minutiae?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm not disputing the Open-Source angle, but I imagine a paper produced by Sun will be somewhat skewed in that company's direction. Which is great if you want that boss-friendly logo on your machines, but not so much if you care about cost-effectiveness.
....to a more secure and cost effective government is to merely start getting rid of 50%+ of the morons working in it and also get rid of most of the useless fucking programs they have.
it's the same way with schools.
We have terrible schools, so the obvious answer is throw more money at it.
we have inefficient government, so change everything....
we spend to much money on Computers and software in government (HAHAHAHAH) so change everything to a different, not widely used in the real world day to day personal use sector, Operating System....
we aren't secure, so instead put on something that in "inherently more secure" because it's open source......
not fucking likley on any of those accounts.
Want security?
Fix the fucking problems, like lame policies, lax standards, etc.
want efficiency?
make every department actually use their people and time properly.
Want a prime example of wasteful policies and lack of intelligence? Look at the post office.
"we need to raise the price of a first class stamp because mail volume for personal letters has decreased and we are losing revenue."
oh good choice there spot....
how much of the mail is bulk rate versus first class?
50%? 60? 80?
it's about 90% actually.
so lets raise the cost of somethign and drive away the ones using it, instead of the common sense thought of raising bulk rate 1 cent.
oops
common sense and government in the same sentence, I'm sorry.
this administration will be no different than any other about this.
oh wait, except they want to GROW the government by 25% already and thus spend MORE money (from the magic money tree)...
so yeah, the open source is gonna save us......
not.
While I have no doubt that Scott will mention Open Source Software, he better include serious success stories of OSS implementations and detail how such an approach if adopted, will result in jobs created here in the USA at the same time save money.
My suggestion to Slashdotters:
Let's write to Scott informing him of these success stories with as much detail as we can. I do have a success story in the education field to write about. All I need is Scott's contact.
Let's also remember that on the other side, folks at Microsoft will also be doing something similar only that to them, they would reap all the profits while undermining Open Source Software.
Hey, if you look at the new WhiteHouse.gov, you may find that, unless I'm mistaken, it's running WordPress.
might be to eliminate IT contracts for sensitive services and communications that have been awarded to foreign companies. Foxcom, an Israeli company, comes to mind. The government should handle its own IT, not contract it out, especially when it involves communications that could easily be used to gain leverage (read blackmail) and shift US foreign and domestic policy further against our best interests than we typically experience.
President Obama inquires as to whether to use white sheets or beige sheets
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
...overall it has been estimated that the global loss due to proprietary software is "in excess of $1 trillion a year."
That's the same kind of lame-ass no-evidence silly figure pushing that the RIAA and MPAA uses to sell their Anti-Piracy measures. I love Linux and I'd love to see it spread even more but this way of propagating it is just retarded. You get Microsoft software for your money, be that a good investment or not is your decision. It's clearly not a "loss" it's merely a costly under-utilization of alternatives.
I tend to praise Linux and rant against Microsoft but this OSI guy Tiemann just blew the frame by using the same silly and faulty means of propaganda rhetoric. One thing I try to learn and live by is "Just because THEY do it doesn't mean we have to or even should do it too". By pulling figures out of his ass to make himself look more interesting he's not a single notch better than Microsoft with it's installbase or the supposed piracy figures by the media companies. That is just NOT the way to convince people of the right thing.
Big announcement about MS generously discounting licenses, citing the need for everyone to tighten their belts and get US through these hard times.
"The tuna .. with a heart!"
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Go ahead mark me troll, but have any of you seriously given thought to what will happen if open source were to become the norm and all these people were out of work, being asked to volunteer the skills they once got paid for?
Who says that Open Source has to be free? Seriously. This model is still completely misunderstood. Someone wants a specialized application for whatever ... they pay you to write it. You publish it under a license and share the code. That way you get money AND free input from the community. Sure there will be competing products that base on your code but look at the distro vendors. SuSe, Canonical, RedHat they all use more or less the same code and sell their specific very individual solutions.
I can imagine what would happen if programmers were no longer bound to huge companies by NDAs and Non-Compete agreements and all code was open: We'd get a shit ton of awesome code to work with and all the brilliant results stemming from there.
The difficult part is to change the perception of open source from the one like yours "Everything is free as in Beer and the brewer goes broke" to "Everything is free as in speech and you get paid for the quality and sustainability of your work". I wouldn't mind having companies go broke that re-release the same product year after year with little to no improvements. If there are other companies that do the job better and improve over time I guess it would only be fair. The current market is based on monopolism and power struggle between the monopolies. That's what has to change for FOSS to succeed and we need to start in the heads.
The summary goes something like this:
This Whitehouse Administration is seeking a x86-64 64 bit computer operating system (OS) that is free of cumbersome and expensive licensing issues, can be secured and is not vulnerable to Windows security flaws, and which the Whitehouse Administration IT department can view, modify, and re-issue the source code in compiled form. ....
Well, open source generally isn't free. Some one else generally pays for it somewhere. I do think that it is 30-40 years past to do this though. The government "pays" for tons of software development just for it. There should be a push from top down that every spec that the feds push out to contractors makes the source, apis, file formats, all open as far as the government is concerned. If they pay your company 10 million and they turn in a half assed product, well instead of spending another $30 million at the same place trying to fix things, you could have other contractors fix it in theory.
The government is still paying for development to be done somewhere by some one, but this time it knows to either own or open up the code, file formats, and APIs needed to get multiple contractors to work on it without being tied to any of them. That's the real benefit of open source to government. Of course, if the feds or states really wanted to be nasty or evil, they could just pass a law that said any software that the government runs has to turn over the source and be modifiable by the government. If the government really wants something, they can and will use eminent domain to take it away from those that currently "own" it.
you have to switch to the state of having balls to post with your username first, else you will get confused.
Read radical news here
"Do not expect to automatically save money with open source software, or OSS, or any technology without effective financial management," said analyst Mark Driver. '
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Seriously, what?
Sun has completely tanked in just about every aspect of their business. They're trading at around 1% of their peak value, and about 10% of their 5 year value. They're still laying off staff like nobody's business and they're really ripe for snapping up by some other company. McNealy drove them into the ground with a complete failure to read the market and respond to threats to Java and/or external influences on Java. Now you have the promise of Java revolutionizing the desktop all but dead to .NET, and IBM and Apache effectively in control of Java in the server space.
Taking McNealy's advice on technology is about as smart as taking Kenneth Lay's advice on energy independence.
If you really want some better advice, look towards some of the more successful companies in the software space and get a set of opinions to compare against each other. I'd probably take a range like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple for opinions and take into account their natural biases when you read their reports. McNealy's just wrong and so typical of governments rewarding failure with fat contracting positions.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
I am as big a fan of Open Source as the next slashdotter, but there seems to be this feeling that because something is free or opensourced it is automatically better.
"...like Analyst's Notebook..."
A program written in Lisp. Even if open-sourced I suspect few would be able to develop for it. OSS methodology only really works when a majority can work on it.
The real weak target markets are small and medium businesses and governments, where open source adoption requires a zealot like champion.
It also requires a LOT of money. My small business can't afford to go open source. It's *very* expensive because of the staffing requirements. That's the only reason why my business isn't 100% open source: it's EXPENSIVE!
as if stuff happens without working.
Read radical news here
So what are the chances he will examine the prospects of open source governance?
Perhaps by the end of his administration, he will step down in order to cede power to the Metagovernment? (Assuming a constitutional convention, that is.) :)
Why wouldn't you want them using the best tools for the job, rather than choosing ideology or the lowest bidder? I'd rather they spend tens of millions of dollars on programs like ArcGIS that work really well for them, than using open source versions that don't really work nearly as well. The fact that they've reached such a pragmatic view on open source is itself a fundamental victory. It means the war is over because they're now focused on the best tool for the job without other considerations.
Let's make these people really accountable for their actions by making them use git to track, where all the public can see, exactly who put what into what version of what bill, who signed it off, all of it verifiable, with commit messages explaining the change and why it was made.
Of course such a system would be violently opposed, because git sucks.
I wonder, if MS were to suddenly open source their OS but not actually stop existing ... how many OSS volunteers would take up the stick? I'm guessing a very considerable portion of MS hackers would still be on the payroll, only working on source code that the rest of us can see, too.
If volunteers were free to attack some of the low hanging fruit, MS could focus on harder stuff instead of dealing with everything as they now do. Or, volunteers might fix some deficiencies which aren't "bugs" in the eyes of MS (such as boot loader mangling). ;-)
Hey who knows -- Windows might become respectable!
"Good news, everyone!"
I bet at this point Bill Gates and top execs at MS wish they hadn't given so many campaign contributions to Republicans and conservative causes.
Capitalism is about creative destruction.
Having a standard size of screw did not stop production of screwdrivers and screws. It made them cheaper.
Microsoft and others want excessive amounts of money and that's not good for the economy.
15 companies *like* microsoft that produce editors of standard formats at a tenth the price is better.
The faster we rip off this band aid and get it over with the better off we will be. Japan has been in a recession for a couple decades because they propped up the bad actors.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
What do you think these calls for change were! You cannot change a proprietary program.
Obama will bring change. IDE time outs will end. Gnome will be half way functional. NetworkManager will stop dropping my wireless signal.
Change is coming my friends and I for one welcome our change bringing overlord.
Replying to undo accidental mod
Please don't make me hand in my geek card for this...
Confusion: When you see
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
and don't know what it means
Curiosity: When you want know what it means
Consequence: When you've googled it, still don't know what it means except that it seems to be pertinent to the writing and sharing of viruses ... and you did it on your pc at work.
Pardon me, but pray tell: what does it mean? I mean, it seems that "B8 00 4C CD 21" prints characters to screen, but surely that in itself is not fearsome?
"Good news, everyone!"
Exaggerate much?
While certainly OSS could introduce cost savings, frankly it is freaking rounding error compared with the current budget deficit. A copy of OEM Vista, is what, $80?
And low-paid govt. IT that can't secure what they have now would hardly do a better job securing OSS.
It may help, but it isn't some kind of magic wand, and it introduces costs of its own.
SirWired
They want, for example, a firewall system for their OS. So they write one. Their need sated, they let people have it for free. It costs them nothing to do so (since their need was for a firewall and they paid for it by writing one). It costs no more to let people have it than to keep it secret.
Other people want a firewall that works with a VPN. So they take the free firewall the others made and add VPN knowledge to it. Their need sated and the cost paid for (by their time) and the benefit offsetting that cost (having a firewall that knows about VPNs) they give it to others to use.
The first group now has a better firewall and didn't have to pay for it.
Truly free.
Just idle, hypervigilant speculation!! ... Please! DHS, NSA, CIA, FBI, SS(Treasury), et al. I'm just speculating!
Given Microsoft's propensity to undermine any potential conversion to open source software by big government, such as by: going over the head of proposers; spreading FUD about the proposer; getting proposers fired; paying people with influence (like legislators and regulators) to get the proposal blocked; subverting standards processes; and other monopolistic practices ... does anyone but me think that Microsoft might try the same things here?
Given that the dollar amounts at stake are so large and the prestige of an open source win and the damage to Microsoft, does anyone also speculate that Microsoft might go so far as to have Obama, McNealy, and others killed to prevent it from happening?
Again, I'm just speculating!!
OSI President Michael Tiemann says:
This article suggests that Obama's style of governing will employ lessons learned from FOSS, and this will improve the prospects for FOSS because people will come to understand the open source model as part of the Obama Administration's way of doing business. Additionally, the government actually using a lot more FOSS would add to the credibility of FOSS solutions among the "nobody gets fired for buying IBM (or Microsoft)" crowd, and any cost savings actually achieved by the government can only make risk-averse decision-makers more likely to give FOSS solutions a shot. All these factors would be very good for FOSS adoption, greatly helping FOSS developers and vendors of FOSS-based solutions. In return, in addition to the model being applied to opening the government and seeking suggestions and solutions in the community, the cost savings could be significant enough to help with the serious budget problems coming in the next few years.
The US Federal government already had huge budget problems, with enormous structural deficits that will only get worse as health care costs, and therefore Medicare spending, continue to grow. Additionally, the handouts to financiers who caused the economic crisis have added $700 billion to the deficit, and an economic stimulus plan will add hundreds of billions more. Even with a 16-month withdrawal from Iraq, the costs of continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the deployment of more resources in Afghanistan, can add hundreds of billions more.
Health care reform will probably involve, in addition to bigger changes, the standardization of electronic formats and computer systems to generate administrative cost savings, another opportunity for FOSS solutions using open formats to be used, further bolstering the image of open formats and open (source) software. Further, the cost of proprietary software in the Federal government is large enough that cost savings from using FOSS, even after training and migration costs are considered (support costs should be similar or cheaper, given that there can be actual competition among providers of support for FOSS), could be significant, helping the Obama Administration with the challenge of starting to cut the deficit in 2011 and 2012, after the bank handouts and economic stimulus, temporary and huge increases, come out of the budget.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...
...
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
Disappointing.
"it almost sounds like they're saying that if you want to save billions of dollars you have to do .. some .. (no!) ... work!?!?"
But too many people think that switching to Linux, Apache, etc, simply means that you don't have to pay for software anymore. And then they're shocked at the expenses that are racked up on things like re-training, support contracts (have you seen what Red Hat charges?) custom software cost due to migration, etc.
I'm a fan of open source software, but I'm under no illusion that it's always the right solution. High end Unix systems like Solaris still have better administration tools and built in virtualization, which is one reason why Linux doesn't completely own the 'nix market. When Qualcomm was looking at a mass-switch to open source (and ditching their Solaris-based infrastructure), they were unhappy about the state of management tools, and estimated that switching to open source would cost them more money, not less.
Bottom line: analyze, determine your needs, and use the best solution for the job, whatever it is.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Who would you prefer? George Bush, or Richard Nixon...
What if some one company takes open source software and on the request of a Government Official "Adds" a new feature. What is stopping them from adding malicious code. I know corporate QA is a joke but the chance for some small rogue app in open source seems far greater to me.
Poor chairs in the White House. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The inauguration was streamed using Silverlight. Way to go ...
http://www.pic2009.org/blog/entry/watch_the_swearing-in_ceremony_on_the_web/
i work for the largest drug store in Canada (shoppers drug mart) and they have moved all of the store servers to opensuse, and will have to be giving the store managers some kind of spreadsheet program for inputting data for sending to the head office. I am SUPREMELY hoping that they will be giving the managers the Openoffice suite for use at store level.
As it stands now, we at store level cannot even access the Internet or gmail due to (i guess) the fear of virii.
i am hoping that eventually, the head office will be moving everything into linux/gnu/openoffice/open software.
It is a pain that i cannot even access the internet to access the websites of products we are putting into a promo for our customers information.
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
A significant problem with this model is that businesses with the resources to hire developers to program custom solutions often consider software, such as the custom solution they just paid for, to be competitive assets.
Businesses rightly consider it foolish to give assets that they paid for away to their competitors. As a result, they will often be reluctant to pay for a custom solution only to have their competitors receive it for free.
Consequently, they often choose to pay for custom solutions that are proprietary, so that their important IT business assets remain theirs and theirs alone. Alternatively, they will reach for proprietary, paid solutions ensuring that competitors who wish to use the same will incur the same costs. They'll then pay their own people or contractors to customize the proprietary solution, again, ensuring that the fruits of their investment in software accrue to them only and not their competitors.
Of course Obama is looking at Open Source.
The important question here is this:
At what level is software the standard component/commodity like a standard screw?
IOW, what is the standard infrastructure level of software?
kernel + filesystem + compiler?
+ desktop?
+ applications?
MS acts like the whole shebang is not infrastructure/commodity.
Apple acts like kernel + file system + compiler + utils are infrastructure/commodity but *not* the desktop and applications.
Linux/*bsd acts like the whole shebang is infrastructure/commodity.
The real question is where do we draw this line between standard/infrastructure and proprietary value-add.
See? We knew he would come and make everything right! Linux takeover of government ftw!
Please, don't be so delusional. He's just another politician.
My understanding is that the maintenance staff at the Whitehouse are currently working 24/7 to secure any chairs that can be picked up by a single person.
Uh oh, I smell trouble. They'll follow the spec and use screws that are only strong enough to keep the chair from being lifted by a person, not realizing that the person in question is actually a gorilla!
The enemies of Democracy are
Not quite. The real secret to a more secure and cost effective government is to have less government. Less people to leak news from the intelligence community, less people to waste money, etc. Until open source software can intelligently pick and fire a large number of government workers, it is not the solution.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Considering the company is the only user they can request to have the code the vendor request that it be GPL'ed so if they do any change and try to sell it the original company can get the code back and review the changes. In effect, the company buying the software gets no advantage in reselling the original code while they still get what they paid for. Both company win in this format.
A significant problem with this model is that businesses with the resources to hire developers to program custom solutions often consider software, such as the custom solution they just paid for, to be competitive assets.
That's one of the problems with business. A competition is usually open and fair ... equal grounds. Good sportsmen and musicians for example jam together or practice together to tell each other about new tweaks and hints. This way the overall situation improves for everyone. In our system or the business end of it we have strict this "hedging" of ideas. People come up with something productive and lock it up so that they are the only ones to get a benefit from it. Then they release little portions at a time to whoever pays for it. The majority of benefit flows into this, let me call it, "bubble" which grows and grows because all the benefit can only go nowhere else. At some point there is a burst and all the great ideas vanish with the locked up holders of the assets. The customers have paid time and time again and now all is lost.
With an open structure you would have to build smaller bubbles and more of them in many many places. Maybe held together like a plastic foil. Sort of a bubble wrap type of thing. Then when one of the tiny bubbles bursts it makes an interesting "pop" sound and the people feeding, tending and eventually pushing the bubble until it burst have a kind of gratification. But the overall structure of the system wouldn't be compromised. You just go to the next bubble that does practically the same thing.
Businesses rightly consider it foolish to give assets that they paid for away to their competitors. As a result, they will often be reluctant to pay for a custom solution only to have their competitors receive it for free.
Look at the phone market just now, or the netbooks. One company started it (Apple iPhone, Asus Eee PC) and everyone is buying one of these things, disassembling, analyzing and reproducing it. Some of the Meizu phones look just like an iPhone where one has to wonder "How drunk was their designer to draw the exact same thing". It's already going on. Everyone's copying already, that's what our human nature is about. Sharing ideas. We only still have to find a way of building smaller bubbles. So in a way the competitors are already getting the work for free. They just copy some of the concepts, modify them and produce it. But why are the originals still mostly dominant? Not because of the market power but because they provide quality service. If someone came along with an iPhone clone that did the same things and better, worked with all carriers and was cheaper do you think Apple would still sell theirs well? I think not, but so far Apple has done a good job to provide services (iTunes, MobileMe etc.) to make their product more attractive. And that's just what needs to go on in the FOSS model. People providing good solutions. They don't have to protect their partial "assets" (like code) because their overall product/service quality is the asset. Most of the parts could probably be done in a better way stand-alone from someone but only those that succeed to put it all into one and juggle that package seem to make it in the market. Linux is a good example here, I don't hear anyone shipping Arch Linux to noob users because they have some good concepts but overall their stuff is still to convoluted. Ubuntu on the other hand has marketing, support and fair organisation behind it and it seems to work.
Consequently, they often choose to pay for custom solutions that are proprietary, so that their important IT business assets remain theirs and theirs alone. Alternatively, they will reach for proprietary, paid solutions ensuring that competitors who wish to use the same will incur the same costs. They'll then pay their own people or contractors to customize the proprietary solution, again, ensuring that the fruits of their investment in software ac
Now an issue that's been awesome for desktops and laptops. Why not for our administration? Voting systems for each user, govt being transparent with it's citizens (cept in lilitary, finances should be open tho). Let the Senate do tie breakers, not get to whatever bills they can afford to (in time wise). Not saying remove the Senate by any means, just more inclusion for regular joe people to vote where they want their tax money to go (or 35% of it in votable dollars). if it works so well for comps imagine giving voice/small amounts of power to normal people. Log in 24/7 to govt website and vote/read about laws and such if 90% of the public says downloading songs is harmless (and therefore no longer against the law) FORCE the senate to vote based on popular vote for the issue.... in any case many eyes/opinions could reshape our govt the way it's reshaped computing... or is this a horrible idea never able to work? (we aren't axing the admins...our current govt, just upgrading them with an educated populace...)
I'm sure the military got great value on their $600 toilet seats. An excretory experience second to none. But if you're asking me to foot the bill, your ass can sit on the $19.95 job.
While 'the best tool for the job' might actually provide a little extra productivity for a power user, forcing the entire population to use an expensive tool to write the occasional memo will counteract any such gains pretty quickly.
Ideally, they'd demand a fully-compliant ODF office suite and then have the choice to give high-volume users a slightly better tool if they need it. But locking everyone into MS proprietary file formats throws that option out the window.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
yes, like A/C has modpoints...
Linux is not for everyone and cannot do everything Windows does. Mainly, this is because Windows is cared for by MS. MS makes deals and partnerships to get devices supported on Windows and Windows supported on devices. A partnership with MS is always profitable. Who does this sort of wheeling dealing on Linux behalf? How do you form a partnership with Linux? How profitable is such a partnership?
While they may never be able to run Linux on every government owned desktop/laptop, as the migration of applications to the web continues, as the open source community continues to add to its portfolio of great applications, I believe government should be able to replace more and more Windows computers with Linux computers (or BSD).
The government should endorse and utilize (to whatever degree) some distro of Linux or BSD. Furthermore, the government should contribute to chosen distro or actually create it if no suitable distro exists. This would have the following benefits (in no particular order):
- increase adoption of open-source software
- increase manufacturer and vendor support of open-source software
- create new technical jobs
- perhaps create other misc. jobs since the overhead cost of software will be reduced
- increase interoperability and adoption of standards
I feel the need to stress that last one. Since the beginning of history, governments have developed, endorsed, and enforced standards. It's a basic foundational component of order, law, and government. In this day and age, our economy is based on business that is conducted on computers running operating systems and applications transmitting data through the internet and other networks. It makes perfect sense for the government to take a more active role in the forces that shape and govern technology.
China has Red Flag Linux, which I think is funny and appropriately named due to their cencorship of the internet.
If Bush did this, we would have Stars and Stripes Linux, you know, SS-Linux.
If Obama does it, maybe we could call it USA Linux. Jar-Jar Binks could be an additional celebrity endorsement..."Usa Linux!"
to tell the new administration why open source is so bad and it is probably going to center around how important Microsoft is to the US economy. They'll say stuff like how many Windows based jobs there are and how they would be lost. It'll all be lies but the fact is that McNealy should have kept his mouth shut until after he'd written the paper and submitted it.
But wait, Scott McNealy is much smarter than Microsoft's PR people and lawyers. Hmmm, what happened the last time he thought that?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The difficult part is to change the perception of open source from the one like yours "Everything is free as in Beer and the brewer goes broke" to "Everything is free as in speech and you get paid for the quality and sustainability of your work". I wouldn't mind having companies go broke that re-release the same product year after year with little to no improvements. If there are other companies that do the job better and improve over time I guess it would only be fair. The current market is based on monopolism and power struggle between the monopolies. That's what has to change for FOSS to succeed and we need to start in the heads.
Nah people understand pay for what you want.
People understand "free" as in some one else paid for what they wanted and are giving away freebies that we may not want/need.
People can't wrap their heads around its free/open, but you still want me to pay for it, and those that make similar products as yours can use the work with and you want me to agree to give way what I've funded you to develop so those that are in my industry get it for free to them?
Trying to explain it gets a "are you insane?" response.
Who says that Open Source has to be free?
The people who are watching Sun Microsystems doing open source and becoming a not-for-profit business.
I certainly have a great deal of respect for Mr. Mcnealy, but I'm not sure that includes expecting him to objectively comment on MS's competition.
I anxiously await his analysis. :-)
How about no government instead of "open source" government. This is just a new spin on tyranny of the majority, direct democracy idea.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Government isn't like a business; particularly, unlike a private business, externalized benefits (particular those that accrue to the governments constituents) are benefits to the government, whereas externalized benefits are usually irrelevant to private businesses (and actually costs, when they accrue to their competitors). Widespread government adoption of open source would not only produce direct software cost savings for government, but also for the governments trading partners (which, in many cases, end up savings for government), and private business and consumers by making more high-quality open source software available.
just like the law, the code that regulates our behavior and enacts our laws needs to be readable. without readability a society cannot decide and debate if its laws are just. the same holds true for code.
nobody will trust an identity management system - and digital identity is going to be a big topic during obama's tenure - if it is not open source. even microsoft has long understood this. go read kim camerons 7 laws!
one could carry this argument even further and include hardware. the dod already is debating policies in that direction, since they need 100% control over all their assets.
diebold might eventually free the code in their voting maschines. but can we trust them when we don't know if something in their hardware changes certain bits?!
so governments will move to open source software short term and probably towards open hardware in the long run.
and on a side note: sun is pretty cheap right now. I wonder how long it will stay that way - their open source strategy is pretty compelling and covers everything from the desktop to the data-center.
Nah people understand pay for what you want.
Apparently they don't because many people don't even know there's alternatives so they can't "want" Windows but they pay for it anyway. So not everybody seems to understand "pay for what you want" (and only what you want).
People understand "free" as in some one else paid for what they wanted and are giving away freebies that we may not want/need.
That's exactly the problem, since when has cooperation become "ach if you give it to me it must be worthless", certainly didn't come from the people it came from the business thinking.
People can't wrap their heads around its free/open, but you still want me to pay for it,
These are the same people that don't get it when you try to explain to them why their tax money is helping homeless and addicted people. We currently live in a society where paying is forced and has become a habit for us. I want back to the place where you pay because you're happy and you appreciate what someone has done for you not because it always had a price. I tend to give my money only to those I want to support. I don't feel comfortable having to buy stuff just because I have to for some weird reason.
and those that make similar products as yours can use the work with and you want me to agree to give way what I've funded you to develop so those that are in my industry get it for free to them?
You didn't read my posts. You fund it for your use. You get a license to it and others can use it as well. They pay for support or need to hire people to make the software work for them. You're locking it down so only you can use and benefit from it while you could also benefit from the licensing and the feedback from other developers using your prior art as a basis. Sure it's a complicated thing and it won't work for some types of applications and in some markets. No doubt about that but so many other things could be improved by just opening it. Operating systems for example could easily be open, would benefit many people. A highly specific factory control system or so could still be produced as a closed source proprietary thing. I'm just saying that the applications for broad public use shouldn't be in the hands of some weird patent lawyer. We have a common canon in literature and music and art which is mostly open and widespread for modification, why don't we do this for code in some places as well? If millions of people know the "source code" to classical music why can't we give people "classical implementations"?
Trying to explain it gets a "are you insane?" response.
Forgive me but that's what I first thought when I read your post. Don't want to be the grammar nazi but I had to read your post like five times over to get what you're trying to say. Probably isn't your primary language so no hard feelings OK? Just don't want to answer to something you didn't even want to write.
All torture on Cuban soil in this millennium has been done by American hands? Apart from that being an insupportable statement (there's no way you,or anyone, could possibly prove it), it's also highly unlikely to be true.
The Cuban government, like totalitarian governments everywhere, keeps political prisoners. Even their normal jail conditions would probably constitute something pretty close to torture by our standards, without even delving into what they do there.
That doesn't mean I support our current Cuba policy - I don't, and have long considered it foolish when we have normal diplomatic relations with totalitarian governments all over the world, including communist ones, and including communist ones with which we have engaged in shooting wars. Throughout the Cold War, we maintained full diplomatic relations with the USSR. Up until our entry into World War II, we maintained diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy, and Japan. There is no rational reason to maintain this policy towards Cuba.
Why, then, do we do so? Because of the disproportionate political influence of Cuban-Americans, particularly in Florida. OK, for no reason that would appear rational to anyone but a politician :p
Here in California, there are within the Vietnamese community a strong general dislike of communism and a small but vociferous hardcore anti-communist movement which still dreams of the overthrow of the communist government in Viet Nam. The government pays about as much attention to that movement (if you can even call it that) than do I, which is to say none whatsoever. I'm aware of its existence and I notice the old RVN flags that some people still fly on flagpoles in their front yards, but I pay no attention. Why is it so different with the Cuban community and their anti-communists? The communist takeover in Cuba happened a lot longer ago, and yet people seem to care about it so much more.
It's time we stop caring about communism in Cuba, restore diplomatic relations, and get on with it. All we're doing in the meantime is denying a market to US business and tourism. However, to state tht the only torture being done in Cuba is being done by Americans is ridiculous.
If OpenOffice.org gets a ringing endorsement from Baz, might the government mandate an Official Document Format? In which case Microsoft's alleged manipulation of ISO regarding Open XML would partially have been a waste of time.
Go Mr McNealy!
There's a biiiig fallacy here. When you are producing physical goods, that might be true. When you are producing intangible goods (such as software) the more companies there are working in producing the same goods, the less efficient the market is. If ten companies spend one million dollars each in producing a document editor, you end up with worse results than if two companies spend five millions each. It is true that if a single company produces the software, then there's no incentive in spending even one million. But if that is the case, and there's business to be made, a company spending one billion should be able to displace that company, and that's precisely the reason why Microsoft's R&D budget is over ten billion dollars. They want large amounts of money because that's what their product are worth in the view of the market. If the product wasn't willing to pay $200 a pop for an office suite, they wouldn't be selling any. Open source changes that in that there's no "budget" as companies are sharing the load of building the product, but as there's no profit from developing the product either (and no, developing the product is not related in any way to supporting it, so if you live from support, development is still 100% sunk cost), the incentive to invest effort for companies is even lower.
If free (And I mean freeware, open source and Free software here) software serves the exact same function as the for-pay software, the other company is benefiting as much as Microsoft is losing.
So that doesn't completely nullify your point, because there is a good chance that the non-pay alternative will be slightly different than the for-pay solution, but it sure does mitigate it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Here's my prediction: After several billion dollars, three studies, and a thirty day comment period, Obama will decide to use Firefox.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The endless argument between anarchy and libertarianism.. it's like man's struggle between true freedom and bondage.
I may believe and pine for anarchy.. but I can tolerate minimal and will support those ends.
Nice post.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/