Just by the act of using OSS in government operations is helpful to the community in ways that are indirect but powerful. First, you're helping to preserve the open nature of the government through using technology that can be reviewed on demand by anyone, without having to get permission from a corporation with private interests. Second, by using OSS, you are saving money for your taxpayers by not exhorbitantly paying for upgrades and fixes to remain current. Third, you are representing a model of successful OSS deployment to other government agencies, which may lead to those agencies to switch to OSS in tight budget conditions. Through a long-term leaching effect, as more and more agencies use OSS, more money is freed up for other activities, including social services and projects that affect developers and the larger population alike, and technology grants may be made available over the long term that will benefit OSS projects. These arguments have been made before, time and time again, but reminders serve a purpose to express gratis for past efforts, and reinforce the drive to continue producing great works.
As soon as I couldn't get vim, I downgraded to 9.04 - I mean, come on! How are you supposed to run a posix system without a good text editor? And I had issues with the wireless driver - apparently if you have a Ralink wifi adapter, there's two kernel mod's competing for resources, which you have to blacklist in order to get it working. The insides are still runny, it needs to cook a little longer. I'll check back in when the apt packages cache has had a chance to catch up with user requirements.
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Just by the act of using OSS in government operations is helpful to the community in ways that are indirect but powerful. First, you're helping to preserve the open nature of the government through using technology that can be reviewed on demand by anyone, without having to get permission from a corporation with private interests. Second, by using OSS, you are saving money for your taxpayers by not exhorbitantly paying for upgrades and fixes to remain current. Third, you are representing a model of successful OSS deployment to other government agencies, which may lead to those agencies to switch to OSS in tight budget conditions. Through a long-term leaching effect, as more and more agencies use OSS, more money is freed up for other activities, including social services and projects that affect developers and the larger population alike, and technology grants may be made available over the long term that will benefit OSS projects. These arguments have been made before, time and time again, but reminders serve a purpose to express gratis for past efforts, and reinforce the drive to continue producing great works.
As soon as I couldn't get vim, I downgraded to 9.04 - I mean, come on! How are you supposed to run a posix system without a good text editor? And I had issues with the wireless driver - apparently if you have a Ralink wifi adapter, there's two kernel mod's competing for resources, which you have to blacklist in order to get it working. The insides are still runny, it needs to cook a little longer. I'll check back in when the apt packages cache has had a chance to catch up with user requirements.