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."

Comments

Eh. It was about time

[unity100]

after numerous asian countries, and germany, france, all looking into, and some moving some state governments entirely to open source.

Yeah.

[morgan_greywolf]

Next week: Steve Ballmer himself visits the White House...

McNealy?

[Reality Master 101]

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.

Re:McNealy?

[jellomizer]

Careful consideration and healthy skepticism isn't really "Kicking-and-Screaming".
I myself take open source by a need by need basis.
I will use Photoshop over the GIMP
I use Apache over IIS
I use Linux for a server Mac OS X for a desktop.
I prefer Microsoft SQL Server over MySQL ...

Open Source has the Free as in Beer quality, as well they tend to have ports to multiple platforms, or soon will. Sometimes it is nice to go under the hood and add some hooks to get my job done better.
However there are also a lot of Bad Open Source apps out there which will take me more time to make good that it would be cheaper to get a closed source version and deal with stuff I cant change.

I personally don't like RMS vision of all software Free and Open Source, it has its place and its advantages. However we still need close source applications to drive the market. Running of a support model insures your software never gets easy enough to use without the support. Also close source software has the mix bag of PHB controlling the projects, which sometimes hinders it abilities, and sometime pushes people to do things they just don't want to do. "Oh that interface is difficult to use and not orders in the way that people use the app". Competition is good, competition only works well when we have an well educated consumers who can really balance the pro's and con's without falling into political nonsense.

Fortune 500, Government, Big

[xzvf]

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.

A better first step

[Zolodoco]

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.

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

[daveschroeder]

I would say that depending on where you are, there's certainly no question that there is a lot of Windows on the desktop. There are many reasons for this.

The main place where open source shines is in central service delivery...the client is irrelevant. The client piece is more complicated: sure, you can argue cost benefits for running Linux on the desktop, but even on the unclass side, there are still practical benefits to using a commodity OS. Some of it is management, some of it is tools. A lot of it comes back to familiarity of the user...in that setting who doesn't know Windows and Microsoft Office?

I don't think open source on the desktop is the place to start. The place that open source software can make the most impact and positively affect the most people, at present, is on the server and service end of things.

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

[cayenne8]

"...in that setting who doesn't know Windows and Microsoft Office?"

Well, at least with Office, it may no longer be the case.

While I've admittedly not been using MS products that much the past 3-4 years, in the past when I needed to do a quick word or excel doc, I could do it pretty quickly...like you said, you just 'know' it.

However, at my new gig...I was given a laptop with what I think is Office 2007....the one with the 'ribbon'? I swear, I'm still fairly lost on this thing...it took me an actually bit of research on the web to find the menu for a 'save as' option. I mean, it just wasn't intuitive for me to click that big round dot thing on the top left. I was looking for a normal menu option.

IMHO, this was a huge mistake for Office. I'm fairly computer literate...and it took ME some time to find things. I feel sorry for the secretary that isn't really computer savvy.

So, at this point with what MS did to Office and the complete change of menuing system, with no way to switch to classic mode...it might actually be easier to get people to use OO or something like it that more closely resembles MS Office classic..than current version of MS Office do.