Obama wants to know: Why open source?

[phrostbyte]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10147920-16.html?part=rss (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10147920-16.html?part=rsshttp://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10147920-16.html?part=rss)

Obama commissions a report on open source software!

[Chame_Wizard]

beacuse the NSA is the creator of SELinux:popcorn:

[Firestem4]

Obama likes mac http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10148036-16.html

[Chame_Wizard]

Geek-in-Chief indeed:D

[etnlIcarus]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10147920-16.html?part=rss (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10147920-16.html?part=rsshttp://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10147920-16.html?part=rss)

Obama commissions a report on open source software!I look forward to the report's findings being buried under a stack of free Vista and Office disks.


Obama likes mac http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10148036-16.htmlMan, that's a pathetic article. Starts with a finite subject, turns into the columnist's cynical (if realistic) take on the Obama administration.


Geek-in-Chief indeed:D
If he used *nix, I would agree. He's a Mac fan though so he might just be a hipster. He is supposed to be America's, "Cool President". :p

[.arean]

He is supposed to be America's, "Cool President". :p

Clinton set the bar pretty high..

[etnlIcarus]

True, Obama's got his work cut out for him. He's going to have to play a lot of Jazz music and have at least two extra-marital affairs if he's going to outdo Clinton.

[chucky chuckaluck]

He's a Mac fan though so he might just be a hipster.

i doubt it. he has too many people on his ipod that 'normals' have actually heard of. oPod (http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/06/25/barack-obama-the-stevie-wonder-geek-returns-to-the-cover-of-rolling-stone/)

[dmizer]

Clinton set the bar pretty high..


True, Obama's got his work cut out for him. He's going to have to play a lot of Jazz music and have at least two extra-marital affairs if he's going to outdo Clinton.

Let's keep this focused on OSS and how it relates to Obama. If this topic strays off too much, it will be closed, and I think that would be unfortunate as this is a really good opportunity for discussion.

Thank you.

[aeacides]

It's a tedious / complex question, because it implies lots of actual subjects at the same time. The economy isn't going well. If they can support an entreprise to encourage them/save jobs, why they would choose OSS?

Of course with OSS you can hire techs / support. They could also mandate US business like RedHat (instead of Apple or Microsoft - > they fired 5000 people recently).

Anyway, I'm not an expert, just a normal user, but I don't see any advantage of switching all their infrastructure (How much is it going to cost for switching most of their computer/server?) ... Except the fact that they could save money with OSS on a long term base.

I'm definitly a Linux user, but after reading previous articles, I wasn't convinced ... or just confused.

The benefits for the Linux community would be incredible (in term of visibility), no doubt. Like others said, switching slowly their pipeline could be a solution ... since unix based os can easily work with microsoft.

[shadylookin]

well I would say for security. With open source you can go through the source and ensure that a product is secure. With close source you have to trust the company and if you want to know for sure how something works you can't because of trade secrets. To me it just makes sense that the government would want to know that the software it's using isn't doing something they don't want.

[etnlIcarus]

well I would say for security. With open source you can go through the source and ensure that a product is secure. With close source you have to trust the company and if you want to know for sure how something works you can't because of trade secrets. To me it just makes sense that the government would want to know that the software it's using isn't doing something they don't want.

MS has a, "shared source", programme. It basically means that their big clients (like the US gov't) can audit the source, themselves. They'd just be under some kind of NDA.

[aeacides]

well I would say for security. With open source you can go through the source and ensure that a product is secure. With close source you have to trust the company and if you want to know for sure how something works you can't because of trade secrets. To me it just makes sense that the government would want to know that the software it's using isn't doing something they don't want.

Good point, Obama talked a lot about transparency ...

@etnlIcarus -> didn't know ... but it makes sens. Anyway, it could be Ms, Apple, or another Linux dist. and it would be the same at a certain point. They will secure themselves their soft, or add a secured layer somewhere.

[Skripka]

It's a tedious / complex question, because it implies lots of actual subjects at the same time. The economy isn't going well. If they can support an entreprise to encourage them/save jobs, why they would choose OSS?


With the what, trillions of $$$$ worth of "bailouts" by the government--they have to "cut corners" somewhere to pay for it all.

[Valok]

I'm just going to add that I'm quite impressed with what Obama has been doing over the past few days. Just a few short days in office and hes making a lot of good decisions.

As far as open source goes, I disagree with the authors analogy of mandating Microsoft vs. mandating Open Source. Mandating Microsoft would mean only one provider of software, while mandating open source would mean choosing from an almost endless array of options.

[earthpigg]

As far as open source goes, I disagree with the authors analogy of mandating Microsoft vs. mandating Open Source. Mandating Microsoft would mean only one provider of software, while mandating open source would mean choosing from an almost endless array of options.

i wasn't aware that there was only one provider of Firefox or OpenOffice.

google "blackbird browser" and "NeoOffice"

here is where this will save money: instead of hiring a bunch of gov't employees to do a crappy job vetting MS source code for $100k a year or whatever... or let tends of thousands of FLOSS programmers do it for you, for fre.

hire 1 or 2 dudes to consult google to see what security concerns, if any, those tens of thousands of FLOSS developers are worried about.

[oldsoundguy]

What would save money is the enterprise licensing fees! Since most of the US military is already using a Unix/Linux based system, the foundation is there.
In hard economic times, any way to save funds other than dumping people will be looked at very closely.
Several states and many municipalities are already doing this! (Not to mention France, Brazil, Venezuela, India, China and some other countries)

Read a prediction somewhere that MS could lose about 25-33% of this years renewals to some form of Unix/Linux and thin client set-ups .. that is a LOT of money!!

It has already been proven by several municipalities that this CAN be done .. and it saves them on IT staff as a smaller amount of techs can service the network than if it were Windows based.

Not to mention Universities and Colleges in the US .. many are already Unix/Linux in their servers. (and THAT is where Linux makes it's bucks so that it can GROW!)

[phrostbyte]

It's a tedious / complex question, because it implies lots of actual subjects at the same time. The economy isn't going well. If they can support an entreprise to encourage them/save jobs, why they would choose OSS?

Of course with OSS you can hire techs / support. They could also mandate US business like RedHat (instead of Apple or Microsoft - > they fired 5000 people recently).

Anyway, I'm not an expert, just a normal user, but I don't see any advantage of switching all their infrastructure (How much is it going to cost for switching most of their computer/server?) ... Except the fact that they could save money with OSS on a long term base.

I'm definitly a Linux user, but after reading previous articles, I wasn't convinced ... or just confused.

The benefits for the Linux community would be incredible (in term of visibility), no doubt. Like others said, switching slowly their pipeline could be a solution ... since unix based os can easily work with microsoft.

I wonder such an entity as huge as the federal government could surly hire a team of developers to customize Linux/Ubuntu to their specific needs. Big organizations I think probably have the most to gain from open source since they have the power to customize it..

And how knows maybe they will share their improvements with the rest of the world (it wouldn't be the first time - see SELinux).

Even if they hire like 500 developers, I think they would still save taxpayer money over going all out proprietary.

The only thing I see stopping this from happening is a massive lobbying effort on Microsoft's part. :(

[Valok]

i wasn't aware that there was only one provider of Firefox or OpenOffice.

google "blackbird browser" and "NeoOffice"

here is where this will save money: instead of hiring a bunch of gov't employees to do a crappy job vetting MS source code for $100k a year or whatever... or let tends of thousands of FLOSS programmers do it for you, for fre.

hire 1 or 2 dudes to consult google to see what security concerns, if any, those tens of thousands of FLOSS developers are worried about.

I think you missed my point. Microsoft is the only people that make windows, but there are hundreds of open source alternatives. So mandating microsoft mandates buying something from 1 and only 1 place. While mandating open source still gives the person the ability to chose.

[hanzomon4]

This would be awesome... Maybe more projects would get funding and vendor support.