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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.
The problem with the US Postal Service is not that it is being
treated more like a business. Infact, that is the root of it's
problem. They want to push this illusion that the Postal Service
can or is self supporting.
It is not and never was meant to be a clone of FedEx.
It was intended to be a necessary public service, not an outlet for spam.
The jokers in charge responsible for the current state of the postal
service should be strapped down Clockwork Orange style and forced to
watch "The Postman".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
What's next, "Obama decides to eat breakfast" and we all drool and slaver over THAT piece of minutiae?
Obviously you missed CNNs inauguration coverage yesterday.
...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.
The USPS is the only Government agency I can think of that actually makes a profit, albeit a small one, $45 billion industry with about $1 billion profit, but it is designed to break even. I still think that it is one of the best values out there. $0.42 and I can send a letter across the country in 3 days.
I'm not not licking toads.
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.
"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
Obviously you missed CNNs inauguration coverage yesterday.
Every UK news channel was equally sycophantic, and he's not even our president except by proxy.
Martha Stewart has been asked to prepare a report on that subject for the
new administration.
I knew the BBC had completely run out of space filler when they started recounting Joe Biden's political career (not so much thirty years as one year thirty times over).
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I work for the Postal Service as a contractor (Probably half of IT work in the USPS is done by contractors).
The USPS employs at least 1 employee in every Post Office in the country, significant amounts of administration and behind the scenes operations to support its primary function. In many rural locales, the Post Office is the only presence the Federal Government has nearby, which is why draft registrations and passports involve the Postal Service.
Now, if we get rid of the business that the Postal Service does handling junk mail, the cost of first class and package shipping will have to go up a significant amount to cover all of the costs to maintain that entire workforce. If bulk mail is half the cost of first class, and makes up 90% of the volume, then the cost of a first class stamp is going to have to go up to a $1.50 or more to make up the lost revenues. And if that happens, what will happen to the volume of first class mail and shipping packages? Would I love receiving less junk mail? Sure, but not at the cost of having to pay even more when I wanted to send something of my own.
And, I do think Open Source would help a lot. Once government computers are on non-proprietary systems, every vendor will support it, which will mean drivers for hardware, and familiarity for regular computer users. Once people are familiar with it, they'll decide to try it at home, and their kids will grow up with it. And once it starts to grow that way, software (games and the stuff you see on the shelf at Best Buy) will be written for the *nix environments. Then people will be able to choose based on the merits of the Open Source systems instead of saying, 'Oh, I can't use Linux, because it doesn't have Photoshop.' Then, Microsoft and Apple will have to do some pretty significant things to compete, and if they can't, they'll eventually become the minor players in the market. Unfortunately, if that ever comes to pass, it will be at least 15 years away.
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.
No, that is not the point at all. You're missing the point. Free/Open Source has the greatest potential to be better because it gets extensively peer reviewed and improved and thereby debugged and tested far more than any for profit company could ever afford to. Open source also means open standards. It means that you can watch streaming video without having to use MS Media Player but in a standards compliant MP4, AVI, or whatever other format. An open source website uses a browser agnostic and not requiring Internet Explorer in order to view it properly. Finally, and perhaps the largest advantage of open source is that hardware becomes open again. By forcing open source compliance, hardware will now be truely owned by the consumer. The consumer will not be forced into using Windows (or some NDIS wrapper) because a manufacturer, such as Broadcomm, deems open sourcing its drivers to be anti-competitive despite the fact that its drivers must be standards compliant to interoperate with other products. I hope Obama and his CIO will force the use of open source software. We are in a dawn of a new era now wherein it will take the collective effort of everyone to raise our country out of the ashes of our former president. Open source becomes one of the vehicles for large scale, rapid improvements not seen since the new deal.
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.
"...have enough knowledge to be able to mess up Windows servers/desktops..."
Fixed it for you.
Proprietary software IS the problem. The ideology IS the driving force; it is what makes open source software the best tool for the job. While of great benefit, the cost savings are a secondary motivation. See the following Peru-Microsoft letter for guidance.
call me FOSS im the boss with the sauce and the source
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...
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. :-)
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.
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.