Sun asks Obama to adopt OSS!

[Tomatz]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7841486.stm


:guitar:

[sydbat]

Cool.

[oasmar1]

You do know that Novell, RedHat, Sun and even Cannonical only want the transition to opensource so that they can make money. The company I work with recently switched from Linux to Microsoft servers because even though there is an initial cost, the amount of money spent for support over 2 years was higher than buying Microsoft software and support combined. I am not saying that OpenSource is worse in every situation but there are some in which propriety software can end up cheaper than opensource.

[jimi_hendrix]

i think if he does it then OSS might gain some users...

[smartboyathome]

I would want it too, but here is why I don't think it will happen:

Adopting this will cause more users to look into OSS operating systems. Because of this, there will be more users who like it, and more customers lost from Microsoft and Apple. Since Microsoft and Apple bring in tons of money to the U.S., it would put another crack into the crumbling economy.

[BigSilly]

You do know that Novell, RedHat, Sun and even Cannonical only want the transition to opensource so that they can make money. The company I work with recently switched from Linux to Microsoft servers because even though there is an initial cost, the amount of money spent for support over 2 years was higher than buying Microsoft software and support combined. I am not saying that OpenSource is worse in every situation but there are some in which propriety software can end up cheaper than opensource.

That's an interesting point of view and not one I've heard before. Obviously any company wants to make money - I'm not going to chastise Canonical etc for that. But I didn't realise there was a huge cost difference, and that it was in Microsoft's favour.

[sloggerkhan]

That's an interesting point of view and not one I've heard before. Obviously any company wants to make money - I'm not going to chastise Canonical etc for that. But I didn't realise there was a huge cost difference, and that it was in Microsoft's favour.

IMO it's pretty unusual for MS to be more cost effective on the server side. At my job we use a windows server for 1 thing: windows file shares. All our web stuff is linux based because at a small organization like ours using free solutions like apache, drupal, and django for our website is easier, faster and much cheaper than windows. For us it's basically we have no budget for much besides maintenance and windows server platform license costs are huge. Not to mention my experience with windows server is that it forces you to reboot when installing updates, and that's just not acceptable from a server on a routine basis.


Also, w/regard to the idea of proprietary products creating tons and tons of artificial cost and the idea that it helps the economy so we should leave in place right now: That ridiculous. Maintaining a bad artificial market imbalance will have a larger effect later than it will being fixed now. So essentially your taking the potential for a bit of economic turmoil now and postponing it for a much larger bit later. In the short term if we had proper patent and copyright reform instead of having lots of misguided business plans that take advantage of a malformed marketplace which will be sure to fail when it's fixed, there'd be a mass of people ready to innovate and start in a new direction now.

[RichardLinx]

If OSS does start to get wide use in the mass market, I wonder If any of the products will become closed source and sold at a price. It could happen.. Still, It's pretty cool that Obama is actually seeing that there may be a use in OSS and that FOSS advocates seem to be encouraging him.

[mister_pink]

, I wonder If any of the products will become closed source and sold at a price. It could happen..

No it couldn't. That's the whole point of the GPL, once its open source, always open source.

[Ancalagon82]

Bad Timing. Got enough on his plate right now without delving into geekdom.

Wait till he starts working on his budget.

[Frak]

Well, the government is more or less against spending indirectly go support growth, at least right now anyways. Because of this, it's more likely for him to accept OSS. If Bush were in office, it would most likely be dropped because of the governments loose Keynsian ideals of buying directly into a business to expand growth.

That's my 2 cents anyways. I'm probably wrong.

[blastus]

I don't know about Sun's approach but what I would like to see is an end to the political lobbying against the use of open source software (simply because it's open source) in government from Microsoft and its alliances like the Initiative for Software Choice (http://www.softwarechoice.org/)