I Love my City -- SF Mayor Adopts Pro-FOSS Policy

[earthpigg]

got this article from the San Fran LUG mailing list:

http://mashable.com/2010/01/22/open-source-san-francisco/


Why Open Source is the New Software Policy in San Francisco
...
Open source software is created by the people for the people and as such is ideal for government. To that goal, I am extremely proud to announce today the nation’s first open source software policy for city government.

San Francisco’s new policy requires city departments to consider open source software equally with commercial products when purchasing new software. The opportunities with open source are tremendous: lower costs, greater agility, better reliability, improved security, and increased innovation.

Under the leadership of our City CIO, Chris Vein, and the Department of Technology, we have witnessed the benefits of open source with shorter implementation times and lower costs. We have seen this with my web site, DataSF.org, RecoverySF.org and our 311 integration with Twitter.
...

read the full story at the link above.

does anyone think that perhaps it would behoove Canonical to offer free consulting services for what could very well become a pilot project?

[handy]

Great to hear.

I'm sure Red Hat have their finger in the pie already.

[earthpigg]

I'm sure Red Hat have their finger in the pie already.

i have no objections to that.

the cost-benefit analysis will be something along the lines of paying [vendor name] for support versus hiring their own sysadmins and programmers.

[handy]

Hopefully we will start to see more cities & governments endorsing FOSS.

I too, don't care what brands they are using; FOSS feeds FOSS.

[AlphaMack]

Funny how they're just now realizing the need to cut costs while spending ridiculous sums of money in pursuing a phony case against a former network admin...

[HappinessNow]

got this article from the San Fran LUG mailing list:

http://mashable.com/2010/01/22/open-source-san-francisco/


...consider... 'consider' is the operative word here.

[earthpigg]

'consider' is the operative word here.

if one route costs $0.00, and the other costs $200/machine, you will need to justify why you have picked that one after 'considering' both.

and it may indeed be the case that in selected cases, MS Office (and other non-Free solutions) is justifiable.

one example i can think of is that it probably makes sense to maintain a single MS machine per agency for reliable and full compatibility with organizations outside the city of San Francisco.

[kidux]

Funny how they're just now realizing the need to cut costs while spending ridiculous sums of money in pursuing a phony case against a former network admin...

Can you elaborate, and provide a link? I would be interested in reading about this.

[HappinessNow]

if one route costs $0.00, and the other costs $200/machine, you will need to justify why you have picked that one after 'considering' both.

and it may indeed be the case that in selected cases, MS Office (and other non-Free solutions) is justifiable.

one example i can think of is that it probably makes sense to maintain a single MS machine per agency for reliable and full compatibility with organizations outside the city of San Francisco.Your 'preaching-to-the-choir' here. I am just pointing out that the policy only ask the SF city government to 'consider' Open source software.

[AlphaMack]

Can you elaborate, and provide a link? I would be interested in reading about this.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/security/terry-childs-admin-gone-rogue-708?source=fssr

[pwnst*r]

http://www.infoworld.com/t/security/terry-childs-admin-gone-rogue-708?source=fssr

Funny, I was just looking for that reference. Such a bull**** case it's incredible.