White House Linux Migration Petition

[manzdagratiano]

Hey people!

Folks over at the Archlinux forums have created the following petition:

White House Linux Migration Petition.

The petition has 18 signatures now, and needs 25000 by the end of April.

Considering the urgency for this, I did not bother checking if somebody already posted this here. I would urge all of you to sign the petition (apparently it is NOT limited to US residents only). I would also urge the venerable mods to move this to an appropriate subforum if they feel it will gain more visibility there (and merge it with an existing thread of it does).

I believe this issue is not limited to the US government alone, but is something that affects the global visibility of GNU/Linux as a whole.

By the way, there is another such petition for the UK government as well:

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/32255

[winh8r]

They already know:



http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?...se.gov&probe=1



The cost of migrating everything to a new system, retraining hundreds of thousands of staff, and dealing with compatibility issues would far outweigh the benefit of savings on MS licences. Sad but true.

The real campaigning needs to targetted at schools and colleges, to prevent generations of children growing up and being convinced that there is "only" Windows and there is "only" Office.

If someone develops a Linux distro that is primarily aimed at addressing
hardware/software compatibility issues rather than showcasing design talent then there may be hope. Until then, the governments of the UK and the US will take the advice often repeated on this forum:

"Use what works for you"

I fully support the idea of the petitions but realise that the chances of them being successful on a national level are very slim at the present time.

[keithpeter]

Hello All

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1951299

There is plenty happening outside the Western English speaking world.

I imagine as the 'business apps' become web protocol based then the client OS will be less important. Especially as a generation who are used to interface diversity (smartphones, tablets) move into work.

[manzdagratiano]

The issue is deeper than the initial cost - time and again government systems running on Windows have been compromized by worms/trojans:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_cy..._United_States

This notorious agent.btz worm apparently still exists, plaguing military systems:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...75F5TB20110617

And the root cause of this continues to be an exploitable, closed source OS.

[winh8r]

Hello All

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1951299

There is plenty happening outside the Western English speaking world.

I imagine as the 'business apps' become web protocol based then the client OS will be less important. Especially as a generation who are used to interface diversity (smartphones, tablets) move into work.

It is indeed heartening to see other governments around the world moving

to using open source operating systems, and I agree that the young people

of today are more "interface adaptable".

We can hope that if the young people of today are exposed to Open Source

operating systems now , then they will be more likely to see the benefit

of widespread adoption into the everyday working environment and

hopefully carry this through when they become the policy makers and

decision makers of the future.


manzdagratiano

Regardless of whether the operating system is open or closed source, if

you are in a position of authority, and have a computer network then

there will always be a challenge to that network by someone. Worms and

virii, in the wild are predominantly written to affect Windows because it

is the largest target, therefore the worm/trojan/virus is more likely to

be successful in achieving its intended aim. All operating systems are

equally vulnerable to malicious attacks and exploits in some way shape or

form.If the opposite were true then the US and UK governments would have

ditched MS long ago and there would be no need for a petition.

I get what you are saying, but there have been attacks and takedowns on

Linux servers and networks too. The limiting factors in the

implementation of Open Source operating systems across the board in the

UK and US government are immediate cost and staff training , the latter

will hopefully fade due to the point raised by keithpeter
above

[Dave_L]

Are petitions such as this really useful?

I think you need to look at what MS does to get organisations to use their products, e.g., huge resources, integrated product suites, regulatory compliance. Then compete with them at that level.

[haqking]

The issue is deeper than the initial cost - time and again government systems running on Windows have been compromized by worms/trojans:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_cy..._United_States

This notorious agent.btz worm apparently still exists, plaguing military systems:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...75F5TB20110617

And the root cause of this continues to be an exploitable, closed source OS.

Linux is as exploitable and easily compromised as a windows system.

Besides they have greater issues security wise, like lack of good sys admins or ones with basic skills.

they leak a lot of metadata

aside from if the sys admins couldnt control a malware incident then they have even larger issues.

oh and these petitions are as useful as a chocolate fireguard

[thatguruguy]

Are petitions such as this really useful?

Not even remotely.

apparently it is NOT limited to US residents only

Brilliant. Because if there is one thing that would sway the White House on this issue, it's the opinion of some random resident of Outer Mongolia. Incidentally, if the White House did allow this kind of petition to influence its decision-making policies, the right-wing radio and TV shows would be full of stories about how the White House allows terrorists (defined by right-wingers as anyone who isn't a white male U.S. citizen) guide their decisions. In other words, it would be political suicide.

This whole thing is chock-full of win.

[wirepuller134]

Not even remotely.



Brilliant. Because if there is one thing that would sway the White House on this issue, it's the opinion of some random resident of Outer Mongolia. Incidentally, if the White House did allow this kind of petition to influence its decision-making policies, the right-wing radio and TV shows would be full of stories about how the White House allows terrorists (defined by right-wingers as anyone who isn't a white male U.S. citizen) guide their decisions. In other words, it would be political suicide.

This whole thing is chock-full of win.

+1 if I could click a like button I would.

[forrestcupp]

Even if this type of petition could do any good, the ratio of Linux using constituents to Windows using ones is so low that they would just laugh it off. No one who matters is ever going to see this petition, anyway.

Besides, I'll echo the fact that a change this huge would shut things down and cost so much in manpower and training that it wouldn't save anything. Also, if the government started using Linux, malware hackers would just change their focus to that platform.

Sure, there are other nations changing things over. But the U.S. government is huge and overly complex compared to a lot of other governments that have done this. (and I'm not necessarily saying this as a good thing)

the right-wing radio and TV shows would be full of stories about how the White House allows terrorists (defined by right-wingers as anyone who isn't a white male U.S. citizen) guide their decisions.

No need to bring political stereotypes into this.