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What Happened To Obama's Open Source Adviser?

Posted by kdawson on from the get-over-it dept.

gov_coder writes "Back in January of 2009, various news articles announced that former Sun CEO Scott McNealy was to become the Obama administration's Open Source Technology adviser. Currently, however, a search for Scott on the whitehouse.gov website yields zero results. Searching a bit more, I found that Scott is currently working on CurriWiki, a kind of Wikipedia for school curriculum. So my question is, what happened? Did some lobbyist block the appointment? Did Scott decide his other activities were more important? Scott, if you are out there — please tell us what happened. There are many people working in government IT, such as myself, who were really excited about the possibilities of an expanded role for open source software in government, and are now wondering what went wrong."

5 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Advisor? by hondo77 · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to this article, he was merely asked to write a paper. That hardly sounds like it was a full-time position as an advisor to the administration.

    --
    I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
  2. Re:Confirmation hell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Are you suggesting that Democrats didn't go nuts with Bush hate, or that Republicans didn't go nuts with Clinton hate? It isn't new.

    No, but not being new doesn't make it the same, and because Democrats opposed Republican administrations in the past doesn't mean that their tactics were on the same level.

    Republicans have set filibustering records and then shattered those records in term after term.

    Republicans last night broke the all-time Senate record for filibusters in a two-year term when they forced the 62nd cloture vote of this session on the omnibus appropriations bill, H.R. 2764. The previous record of 61 cloture votes in a two-year term was set in 2001-2002, the last time the GOP comprised the minority in the Senate.

    Just halfway through the session, they broke the old filibustering record that was set by them.

    Similarly, we have Republicans placing holds on every single one of Obama's nominees -- something that has never happened. Why? In this particular case, it was so Senator Shelby could get some pork for his state. But there has been a great deal of other unprecedented obstructionism on the part of Republicans toward Democrats. For example, accidentally "losing" their voting cards to delay everything, preventing the usual unanimous consent motions to go about business, shutting down the Senate at 2PM. A classic example of this would be Republicans filibustering a defense spending bill just so it would take longer to get to the filibuster vote on health care reform. (Imagine what the media reaction to that would be if Democrats had done it -- instead we get deafening silence.)

    Yeah, Democrats have obstructed Republicans in the past. But to compare that with what's going on now -- or in previous Republican-minority Congresses -- is completely insane. We're talking about an entirely new extreme (which the Democrats have been ineffectually responding to with "well, maybe if we play nice they'll play nice again!") that has never before been seen.

  3. Re:Isn't It Obvious? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative

    He was only ever an Open Source evangelist when it was opportunistic to be one. I spent enough time fighting him when he was in anti-open-source mode.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  4. Do Some Research!!! by Brian+Edwards · · Score: 5, Informative

    You've got your facts wrong. Scott McNealy was never slated to become the Obama administration's Open Source Technology adviser. According to the articles you referenced, all he was going to do was write a paper:

    Scott McNealy "revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject (open source technologies and products) for the new administration."
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7841486.stm

    "According to BBC News, the Obama administration has asked Sun chairman McNealy for a position statement justifying the administration's use of open source software. The BBC wasn't clear on who specifically asked him, but McNealy's spokesperson, on a query by the Linux community, acknowledged that McNealy had been meeting over the last year with members of the administration's new technology initiative, which apparently led to this request."
    http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Sun-s-McNealy-Advises-Obama-Administration-on-Open-Source

    I don't know if Scott ever got around to writing that paper. Searching the White House website for papers on Open Source, the only one I found was here:

    Open Source Software and Cyber Defense
    A White Paper provided to the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council as input to the White House Review of Communications and Information Infrastructure.
    Bob Gourley, Chief Technology Officer, Crucial Point LLC
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/cyber/Gourley_Bob_Open_Source_Software_and_Cyber_Defense_01_April_2009.pdf

  5. Re:Isn't It Obvious? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative

    I already advise some other countries.

    --
    Bruce Perens.