Re: Open source and government

[samizdat]

I have to agree that the bitterness and the overly extreme reactions take a lot away from the validity of Edelstein's post. Coming from the BSD world, I'm less dismayed by the "took those ideas and put them in their own projects" issue. I'm happy that the Ferals have improved themselves based on his efforts. As a rabid Libertarian I know how rare that really is!

Being inside the fence at SNL, which is a US DoE facility, my experience is that my open source (FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, Perl and Ruby) solutions are welcomed with open arms, because I produce results. I've been teaching others how to do similar things. Others here have also had good results. Just a few examples among many: the entire router net for our portion of SNL is now running on FreeBSD (Doze scrapped!), and one of my coworkers is busily porting and integrating complex eCAD simulators to run on multiprocessor FreeBSD machines under Linux emulation (Solaris and RHE3 scrapped).

I do spend a lot of time trying to solve problems of legacy systems. You think XP is a pain in the rear? We even still have two VAXen in daily use at the Fab. Shee-it! There are lots of places where it would be tempting to add some client-side processing, but I do not. Using Doze PCs as thin clients has enough challenges, given the stupidities built in to various IE variants.

Some of what TE says is true. Security DOES like the snooper programming they can insert into Doze boxen, but they also came to us realizing that we knew more about the subject than they did when it came to implementing their new "Two Factor Authentication" policies. It is also true that SNL corporate management does have corporate policies that push for software buys from American manufacturers, but the mid-level managers I work for are extremely pleased that I can just d/l and compile new applications without any paperwork whatsoever.

I don't at all agree with him that everybody in government is out for himself. Yes, there are turf battles, but that's far more prevalent at the upper levels and, most especially, the _political_ levels. There's also a huge amount of gross inefficiency, but my experience has been that that's also very prevalent in corporate bureaucracies. Just try to establish DSL service in a new city with out getting screwed and embittered, and you'll know what I mean!

We are in a period where the Feral government is getting bigger, fatter, and grossly stinkier, and I don't see the other US political power bloc as being an answer, either. What I do see also, though, is that we in technology are creating new alternatives faster than the entrenched can tie them up or shoot them down, and open source is a huge part of that possibility explosion.

Rather than being embittered like TE, I'm infused with hope. There are people in government who are embracing open source, in local municipalities, budget-screwed agencies, and outside the US, and they're seeing the benefits of cooperation without coercion. Micro$loth is publicly admitting that their Vista needs a stomach transplant, as well as being stretched on the rack by the EU. I myself will soon start a new job in private industry where open source and silicon will combine to put a new twist on the view out our window. I say, keep the faith, brothers and sisters, for this too, shall pass, and our efforts are a big part of why it shall do so.