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What Happened To Obama's Open Source Adviser?
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."
It was just another lie from the WH. More broken promises.
The same goes for: Gates, Jobs, Ellison, and every other Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
A lobbyist cannot block an appointment...
It was a "figure of speech", not a literal suggestion.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Just because a lobbyist has no legal authority doesn't mean they're powerless or without influence.
Did you learn everything about politics and government from Schoolhouse Rock?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Lobbyists block appointments like unions pass legislation.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
Am I the only one here who never really bought-in to Sun's latter-day 'open' evangelism?
To me Sun's 'open' efforts always seemed to me to fall into one of the following categories:
1. "Fsuk M$!" - e.g. Open Office
2. Forced to do it by their own guys - e.g. Java
3. Desperate attempt to stay alive/relevant (too late) - e.g. 'open' Solaris, (a bit of a FOSS joke, since most of the work was done by Sun employees)
I'll admit that I'm not fan of Scott McNealy, who - in my opinion - failed to navigate the dotcom bust, and subsequent massive fall in hardware revenues, and then presided over the gradual, sad demise of a formerly pretty good company.
Putting aside my bias, I'll still advance that there are plenty of other people better qualified to be a FOSS tzar.
Your nominations?
except now the Republicans have gone crazy with here Obama hate.
It could just be their turn at the cycle, but have you watched? jeez, they literally say one thing, then say the exact opposite an hour later.
I have never seen any party be this bad at it. Sure, a party will try to block, but usually it has a specific reason.
It's one thing to have issue with a specific policy, and the facts there in, but lately it's just been about making stuff up.
And the worst part is when you specifically point out when they are speaking lies, the people who are behind that just pick the lie they want to believe and refuse to acknowledge they other thing that was said. Even when you show them a video or transcript of it happening..
I know this will be taken as some sort of anti republican/pro democratic rant. but it's not. It's observation that it's just gotten stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Lobbyists have no power when the electorate is well informed and active. WE are failing and causing these problems by allowing these lobbyists to have influence. The only way a lobbyist can have influence is if the gain from more money to a campaign offsets the number of people who leave because a politician was bought off and voted against his constituents interest. Please keep money in government especially when it helps the candidates I like. If a politician votes against my interests I refuse to vote for him. No amount of fancy campaign ads will ever change that. However there are more people who will vote for a candidate just because of a fancy and expensive ad. These people offset me and many other voters who vote not for nicest campaign ad but voting record and their ability to represent us. This is the fundamental problem with our country. Believing anything else is delusional and seeking a simple short term solution, the voters are the problem, until they take their civic duty seriously by ignoring nice haircuts and expensive ads and voting for actual substance we will not have a government that represents us.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
didn't help.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
I'm generally of the opinion that if you truly believe the other party is completely evil, and your party is perfect, you're delusional. Both parties are largely filled with corrupt politicians who want to line their pockets, and cater to special interest groups. Both parties overspend and pass mammoth bills filled with crazy riders. Both parties have compromised personal liberty to appease knee-jerk reactions. Both parties have helped build a larger federal government.
They flip-flop on policy so much, it is hard to keep track. For instance, when McCain proposed a cap-and-trade system, every Republican loved it, and every Democrat hated it. When Pelosi proposed a cap-and-trade system, ever Republican hated it, and every Democrat loved it. Which is it?
When McCain was pushing for oil drilling, Pelosi threatened to drill in people's heads because it was such a stupid idea. When Obama suggested oil drilling, Pelosi said it was a great idea.
Look at major players in the Liberal/Democrat party like Biden and Reid. Both pushed for warrantless wiretapping very early, even though it is supposedly against the common Democrat platform. Biden was pushing for it after Oklahoma City, and bragged about it during the debates.
Look at Reid's Wikipedia page. It sure reads like a Conservative platform on many levels. And yet he is one of the highest ranking Liberals. The truth is both parties are far more similar than anyone wants to admit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reid
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Maybe there is a option not listed - Obama lied in order to help him get votes.
I know it's shocking that a career politician that rapidly rose through the ranks of Chicago in one of the the most corrupt districts there would somehow not be totally truthful. After all he talks nice and chanted "Yes we can" over and over and over. I'm certain, absolutely certain, that if you could just get a message through to him he would realize the enormous accident that occurred and go have a nice long talk with his advisers and other appointees (whom he had *no* idea were doing all these bad things) and fix everything right up.
Really, even if you think everything he has done so far is peachy keen and figure the guy is mostly honest - he is still a politician. At best I would say an open source advisory is so down the priority list that it will likely never happen. Lets face it - he promised to nix the "do not ask do not tell" policy regarding gays in the military, that one simply takes him to write out an official statement and it has been over a year (and promised more than once, basically every time that segments polling numbers really start dropping) and still not done.
In his own auto-biography he points out that people will necessarily be disappointed in him as he presents himself as a blank slate and allows people to write whatever they want on it. He isn't a blank slate - the Obama you are looking for only existed in your mind, not in reality. He never went anyway as he didn't exist. Man many many others are slowly coming to realize this, sadly Obama the idealist (whichever one you wanted to see) doesn't really exist, Obama the politician is the only one that does. He will continue to milk the blank slate and hope that the person you once saw will "return" for as long as he can too - that is the nature of a politician. Some groups have learned how to manipulate a politician and treat him as such (assuming they have enough money and or votes), others sit around confused.
But if it makes you feel better - I'll leave this one generic as it is currently the answer given for all of them: Obama has WAY too much to worry with on his plate. What with all these global crises, economic downtime, and the seditious Tea Partiers blocking real reform it is no wonder he hasn't got to yet. Since he inherited such a mess it will most likely take longer than his Presidency to fix it and get on with the real work that America needs and address your issue.
And as long as that boiler plate works with his core group he will run with it too.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Lobbyists aren't always bad, they don't always achieve their goals by unscrupulous means, and they don't always represent corporate interests with tons of money to throw around.
Lobbyists are an exceptionally effective means for people to communicate with their elected representatives, being a sort of representative themselves. They can provide a clear voice for large groups of similarly minded people, who would otherwise be lost in the noise.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Open source would require transparency...it the Obama administration...dah
Can't it be both?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
And the running joke among Democrats was the Bush was a Nazi as well as the rest of the Republicans, that wasn't over the top was it? Just a bit of Democrat hyperbole? Or was it more a sinister campaign to derail anything Bush was for?
Both parties do it, it simply has now gotten obnoxious enough for all to see. If you go back to Lincoln's era, the politics was just as nasty. Politicians do it when they have nothing to contribute but are afraid their opposition does.
I have never seen any party be this bad at it.
I have never seen any party be this good at it. It's working out well for them. The constant repetition of bald face lies is shaping public opinion.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Scott McNealy is ineligible for a czar position in the Obama administration as he is current on all his tax liabilities.
the guy who tries to do good and sometimes fails... or the guy who tries to do bad and often succeeds?
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
And not everyone in the KKK is a bad guy either. Some are just part of it for the potlucks.
But the vast majority of both groups deserve to be tared and feathered.
Whatever the intention or original purpose that lobbists served, there is a systematic problem with them. If they were removed then the majority would be better off.
But if you look at the issues Republicans oppose, you will find that they supported many of those same issues when proposed by Republicans. Like the bailout. No, this is obstructionism, pure and simple. Republicans feel they can not let Obama rack up too many wins. They know their only real chance to regain power is if Obama fails. The Republicans want Obama, and our country, to fail, and so they oppose everything he does, regardless of their own personal beliefs.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And the running joke among Democrats was the Bush was a Nazi as well as the rest of the Republicans, that wasn't over the top was it?
Nah; it was just wrong. Anyone who knows anything about political theories knows that Bush isn't a Nazi; he's a Fascist, as are most of the policies of the Republicans.
If you can't get such well-known epithets right, do you expect us to trust you with anything else?
Jeez; American political rhetoric has become so ignorant these days ...
I suppose it was inevitable, though. People have gotten so lazy that they can't even be bothered to look a word up in a dictionary before applying it to their opponents.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
As any college aged revolutionary will tell you- the Democrats are NOT liberal.
And any libertarian will say the Republicans are not conservative.
however, the amount of demonization between the two reads like an absurdist play.
To drag this off-topic - Gore may have helped the internet to win.
It diddn't have to.
If prodigy/compuserve/AOL - and the giants of yore - had gotten mail between them working without the use of the internet, a large driver of the internet dies.
At one point, the internet, and other corporate networks that were poorly connected to each other - were growing rapidly.
These networks did not always run tcp/ip - for example AOL.
Gore helped (in some degree) get the legislation that encouraged the internet to grow a bit faster at that crucial period.
If it hadn't grown as fast, we might have ended up with something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel - driven by a conglomerate formed by a merger of several of the large ISPs.
Oh - and maybe the internet may be kicking around as a research project still, or in use in academia.
Fundamentally - if you manage to get users locked into a platform that serves them - getting tehm to switch, and break all their applications is hard.
'Invented the internet' - clearly not.
'Had a vital role in making the internet win' - maybe.
You may already know this but the post you replied to was an uber-troll that has been showing up several times in just about every article. Please, don't feed the trolls.
Until Open Source(TM) starts making major campaign contributions, this is how it's going to be.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Whatever happened to "Dissent is patriotic"?
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 for National Open Source Adviser!
I move we start a letter-writing campaign to president Obama.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
This is an analysis with one eye closed. Tip O'Neill and Reagan were as far apart as you can get on the political spectrum, but they actively worked together on many different pieces of legislation. Clinton owes a large percentage of his legacy to legislation that was pushed by Newt Gingrich. Late in the Clinton administration this cooperative/adversarial relationship began to seriously break down. During Bush II it pretty much died. Obama took the reigns with completely unassailable majorities in both houses and the White House and Congressional leadership governed that way, aggressively leaving the opposition out of even the most trivial policy discussions. During this period the Republicans couldn't obstruct a damn thing. They were able to get a handful of democrats to vote with them in opposition on a few select issues - but calling those "Republican obstructionism" is quite the stretch. This all changed with the Mass. election. Now the Republican opposition actually has a chit in the game, albeit a very small one. The White House and Congressional leadership have not come around on this yet, and are still governing as if they have an unassailable majority. After the mid-term election shaves a few more seats off of his majority I think we'll see the President begin to make good on those campaign promises to work across party lines on a few select issues. And magically the filibusters will fade into memory.
He set up the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation - and funded it with about 30 billion dollars (in stock, I think). At a time when he was worth about twice that. As stock prices have fluctuated he's given even more. Complain all you want about the guy's software company, but you can't say he didn't do more than you* did for charitable works. And he's not done yet.
*for exceptionally large values of 'you'.
Obama proposed that they launch a task force to study a proposal to drill. You would think that is an actual prelude to drilling.
In reality here is what happens. In the short term, many individuals in East Coast States are friendly to Obama because there could be drilling coming their way. Obama does not risk actual drilling right now, because anyplace where they are ready to drill and even a little action would allow drilling to happen, is not on his proposed study list. And by the time the task force which has been hand picked to say "no, can't drill there" is done, it will be 2020.
So where we could drill today, we won't. We will talk about drilling in other places for 10 years, but then we won't do that either.
This is just a chance to talk out of both sides of his mouth. To the pro-drill group he gets to sound good. The the anti-drill group, he can say "just look at the results", you know I am on your side.
vi +