Obama Looking At Open Source?

An anonymous reader writes "'The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through Open Source technologies and products.' The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley's most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems. He revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the new administration."

Open source has been "looked at"

In just the Intelligence Community alone, there is great support for open source software and open standards and protocols.

As part of Community-wide tools and services, the Intelligence Community takes advantage of:

- MediaWiki for Intellipedia [wikipedia.org]
- WordPress for blogs
- Jabber (XMPP) for instant messaging
- Zimbra for enterprise email
- Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP to support and provide many of these services
- LDAP backends for single signon and other authentication tasks
- RSS for blogs, social bookmarking, news feeds, realtime information, etc
- Open APIs and standards whenever possible

All of these services and tools are available via a suite called Intelink, and are available to all 16 Intelligence Community components, the military, federal government, and law enforcement and homeland security partners at the state and local levels. They are accredited for use for information anywhere from UNCLASSIFIED to TOP SECRET/SCI, and everything in between.

For the last few years, the Intelligence Community has not only "looked at" open source, but has embraced it with open arms. In fact, the information sharing supported by these tools was listed as one of the major achievements during the tenure of DNI Mike McConnell [dni.gov].

Open source works, and has allowed the Intelligence Community to rapidly provide a secure and robust suite of tools to its personnel, easily respond to changing requirements and requests, and all for far less money and far more flexibly than many commercial solutions. And the Intelligence Community isn't alone.

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

I also work in the intelligence community, and agree that things like Intellipedia and Jabber show a top-down push for open source. But then everywhere I've worked we have Windows machines with Office, MS servers, hell even CENTCOM is going to Vista for some reason. Many of the key programs we use for intelligence analysis are closed-source proprietary programs, like Analyst's Notebook and ArcGIS. Even where there's communal unclass machines, they run Windows XP and Office, despite it being the perfect place for Linux or at least Open Office. There's been some great strides moving towards open source, but we have such a long long way to go.

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

I would say that depending on where you are, there's certainly no question that there is a lot of Windows on the desktop. There are many reasons for this.

The main place where open source shines is in central service delivery...the client is irrelevant. The client piece is more complicated: sure, you can argue cost benefits for running Linux on the desktop, but even on the unclass side, there are still practical benefits to using a commodity OS. Some of it is management, some of it is tools. A lot of it comes back to familiarity of the user...in that setting who doesn't know Windows and Microsoft Office?

I don't think open source on the desktop is the place to start. The place that open source software can make the most impact and positively affect the most people, at present, is on the server and service end of things.

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

Having used a linux desktop for both work and at home now for everything I do for 3 years now (except gaming, in which Windows' painfully slow start up time constantly draws my ire), I have to say I'm pretty pleased with how fast day-to-day operations are, even in Gnome on Ubuntu. Programs open much faster, and with the help of the preload readahead daemon the subsequent times I open Firefox or even Lotus Notes are blazing fast. The fact is once you get the system set up the first time, hopefully with as little pain as possible when it comes to things that tend to not always work out of the box such as wireless and sound, there's nothing else in your way between you and your internet surfing, chatting, music listening, iPod syncinc, and about everything else most people need a desktop OS for. I think maybe some people expect more from Linux than what they expect to be able to do from Windows and perhaps that is what causes such misconceptions.

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

I have migrated several clueless windows users to Linux and I can say from real world experience that anyone can use Linux if all they do is browse the web. The problem comes in when people expect to do what they are able to do on windows and they cannot. This Christmas season the unexpected rared it's ugly head. My Neighbor got an Ipod and she tried to load Itunes to get her cds on her Ipod. No go. She had to call me and I had to dig into forums to get it going with Songbird. Songbird kicks ass BTW. Another user calls me up saying their daughter just gave them a digital picture frame. So they can see their grandkids. Guess what? they tried to load the software that came with it. When that didn't work they were lost and stuck. Another user called me up with a Garmin GPS that they could not update and another with a TomTom GPS that will not update on Ubuntu. Then I have one lady that brought home a perfectly good Lexmark laser printer from work. They bought a new printer and gave her that one for free. Well it won't work on her PClinuxOS. I can tell users till I am blue in the face to do their research before they get hardware for the Linux PCs but I can't control the presents and gifts that others buy them. This is a BIG problem. I keep getting asked "Why won't iTunes work on Linux? It works on windows?" On the flip side, a nursing home near me got 8 PCs donated to them. I got there to install them and they had pirated versions of WinXP with a message "This version of windows is not genuine" etc. I told them to buy WinXP pro for 8 computers at $199.00 each plus AV etc. They balked at the price tag so I put Ubuntu on all the the PCs. They called me 2 months later. They had 2 more WinXP PCs donated to them. But they had Legit versions of XP on them and were pretty clean of crapware so I told them I'll just connect the PCs as is and I did. They called me back a month later complaining about the 2 windows PCs. What was the complaint? The residents "Old people" did not want to use the windows PCs because they were already used to the Ubuntu PCs and said "It was too hard" compared to Ubuntu "Icons were too small" "Cannot zoom desktop"(compiz zoom feature) etc etc. The list went on and on. The elderly residents just could not go from Ubuntu to windows after using it for just 2 months. No one would go near the windows PCs. so I had to go back and wipe perfectly legitimate versions of XP of the 2 boxes and put Linux on those too.

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

"...in that setting who doesn't know Windows and Microsoft Office?"

Well, at least with Office, it may no longer be the case.

While I've admittedly not been using MS products that much the past 3-4 years, in the past when I needed to do a quick word or excel doc, I could do it pretty quickly...like you said, you just 'know' it.

However, at my new gig...I was given a laptop with what I think is Office 2007....the one with the 'ribbon'? I swear, I'm still fairly lost on this thing...it took me an actually bit of research on the web to find the menu for a 'save as' option. I mean, it just wasn't intuitive for me to click that big round dot thing on the top left. I was looking for a normal menu option.

IMHO, this was a huge mistake for Office. I'm fairly computer literate...and it took ME some time to find things. I feel sorry for the secretary that isn't really computer savvy.

So, at this point with what MS did to Office and the complete change of menuing system, with no way to switch to classic mode...it might actually be easier to get people to use OO or something like it that more closely resembles MS Office classic..than current version of MS Office do.

Fortune 500, Government, Big

Open source is pervasive already in large companies and government. Not as pervasive as Windows, but a significant and growing proportion of their infrastructure. The real weak target markets are small and medium businesses and governments, where open source adoption requires a zealot like champion. The main problem here is ISV's which have a great deal of influence over solutions and have no incentive to deploy open source. In fact they get a revenue stream from licensing proprietary software. For example Microsoft gives a 12% kickback for selling their products and a 6% renewal. Most other software companies have similar arrangements. So any open source solution an ISV may present reduces said ISV's profit margin on the deal unless it is made up on increased service fees. But as we all know, Linux and most open source software has a bad tendency to just work and has a lower need for staff than many proprietary solutions. So the only way open source gets into a small or medium organization is if it is customer driven.

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

If that's the case, then please send me all the source code to every Open Source program the "Intelligence Community" uses. I mean, it's truly Open, right?

Don't be daft. It's "open source" in that the client--- in this case the US gov't--- has complete access to the source code, not that every drooling twit with a web browser can download a tar.gz of it from the DOD. The "open" in "open source" has always been relative to the end user.

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

Don't be daft. It's "open source" in that the client--- in this case the US gov't--- has complete access to the source code, not that every drooling twit with a web browser can download a tar.gz of it from the DOD. The "open" in "open source" has always been relative to the end user.

And what's more, when they do make a solid enhancement, they have given back (at least once). Here's a damned fine contribution:

SELinux - From our NSA. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Open source has been "looked at"

If that's the case, then please send me all the source code to every Open Source program the "Intelligence Community" uses. I mean, it's truly Open, right?

When the Intelligence Community distributed to you software under the GNU GPL (v2), they gave you either

1. The source code;
2. A written offer to give anyone the source code (valid for at least three years); or
3. The instructions you need to get the source code [see the GPL for details].

If you want the source, you have the means. Use them, mm'kay? ;)

If the object code you got is under a non-copyleft license (such as the X11, MIT or BSD), no one is required to give you anything.

If you want to learn more, I can recommend http://www.gnu.org/philosophy [gnu.org], http://www.gnu.org/licenses [gnu.org], http://www.opensource.org/ [opensource.org] and http://www.debian.org/social_contract [debian.org] among others.

Open Source doesn't mean you can point at anyone who uses it and say "give me that code". It means that they, in some cases, can point at the people who gave it to them and say "give me the code for that".

I hope I've cleared things up a bit, and keep on lovin' the open code :)

Eh. It was about time

after numerous asian countries, and germany, france, all looking into, and some moving some state governments entirely to open source.

Good ole Gartner

'Meanwhile research firm Gartner has warned that the benefits of open source might not deliver unless properly managed.

"Do not expect to automatically save money with open source software, or OSS, or any technology without effective financial management," said analyst Mark Driver. '

...no... it almost sounds like they're saying that if you want to save billions of dollars you have to do .. some .. (no!) ... work!?!?

Re:Eh. It was about time

Everyone will get it right but the US will screw it up?

Re:Eh. It was about time

And it'll work about as well as the switch to metric, too.

The switch to metric worked just fine for the countries that did it. In fact, the only confusion that exists is a result of the fact that some countries have chosen to hold out.

Yeah.

Next week: Steve Ballmer himself visits the White House...

McNealy?

I was starting to write here that McNealy is an odd choice for this, since he was somewhat dragged kicking-and-screaming to OSS.

But thinking about it, I actually can't think of a better choice. I can understand the administration wanting a "red blooded" businessman to write the paper rather than wild-eyed OSS advocate that might be less than objective about the pros and cons of OSS versus proprietary software. McNealy really does have a broad background... he's run a major business, he's sold proprietary software, and he's made major releases in OSS software.

He's actually a pretty good choice.

Re:McNealy?

Careful consideration and healthy skepticism isn't really "Kicking-and-Screaming".
I myself take open source by a need by need basis.
I will use Photoshop over the GIMP
I use Apache over IIS
I use Linux for a server Mac OS X for a desktop.
I prefer Microsoft SQL Server over MySQL ...

Open Source has the Free as in Beer quality, as well they tend to have ports to multiple platforms, or soon will. Sometimes it is nice to go under the hood and add some hooks to get my job done better.
However there are also a lot of Bad Open Source apps out there which will take me more time to make good that it would be cheaper to get a closed source version and deal with stuff I cant change.

I personally don't like RMS vision of all software Free and Open Source, it has its place and its advantages. However we still need close source applications to drive the market. Running of a support model insures your software never gets easy enough to use without the support. Also close source software has the mix bag of PHB controlling the projects, which sometimes hinders it abilities, and sometime pushes people to do things they just don't want to do. "Oh that interface is difficult to use and not orders in the way that people use the app". Competition is good, competition only works well when we have an well educated consumers who can really balance the pro's and con's without falling into political nonsense.

They are free to use it, of course.

Let's just hope they don't try to "help".

Obama should meet Stallman

I surprised that Obama did not spend more time in his inaugural address on the differences between GPL and Berkely licensing. Oh well, hopefully Stallman will have the time to visit soon and set Obama straight.

A better first step

might be to eliminate IT contracts for sensitive services and communications that have been awarded to foreign companies. Foxcom, an Israeli company, comes to mind. The government should handle its own IT, not contract it out, especially when it involves communications that could easily be used to gain leverage (read blackmail) and shift US foreign and domestic policy further against our best interests than we typically experience.

Oh rly?

From TFA:

...overall it has been estimated that the global loss due to proprietary software is "in excess of $1 trillion a year."

That's the same kind of lame-ass no-evidence silly figure pushing that the RIAA and MPAA uses to sell their Anti-Piracy measures. I love Linux and I'd love to see it spread even more but this way of propagating it is just retarded. You get Microsoft software for your money, be that a good investment or not is your decision. It's clearly not a "loss" it's merely a costly under-utilization of alternatives.

I tend to praise Linux and rant against Microsoft but this OSI guy Tiemann just blew the frame by using the same silly and faulty means of propaganda rhetoric. One thing I try to learn and live by is "Just because THEY do it doesn't mean we have to or even should do it too". By pulling figures out of his ass to make himself look more interesting he's not a single notch better than Microsoft with it's installbase or the supposed piracy figures by the media companies. That is just NOT the way to convince people of the right thing.

Re:The sound you hear

What's next, "Obama decides to eat breakfast" and we all drool and slaver over THAT piece of minutiae?
Obviously you missed CNNs inauguration coverage yesterday.

Re:The real secret......

The USPS is the only Government agency I can think of that actually makes a profit, albeit a small one, $45 billion industry with about $1 billion profit, but it is designed to break even. I still think that it is one of the best values out there. $0.42 and I can send a letter across the country in 3 days.

Re:Well if this economy needs anything right now

Go ahead mark me troll, but have any of you seriously given thought to what will happen if open source were to become the norm and all these people were out of work, being asked to volunteer the skills they once got paid for?

Who says that Open Source has to be free? Seriously. This model is still completely misunderstood. Someone wants a specialized application for whatever ... they pay you to write it. You publish it under a license and share the code. That way you get money AND free input from the community. Sure there will be competing products that base on your code but look at the distro vendors. SuSe, Canonical, RedHat they all use more or less the same code and sell their specific very individual solutions.

I can imagine what would happen if programmers were no longer bound to huge companies by NDAs and Non-Compete agreements and all code was open: We'd get a shit ton of awesome code to work with and all the brilliant results stemming from there.

The difficult part is to change the perception of open source from the one like yours "Everything is free as in Beer and the brewer goes broke" to "Everything is free as in speech and you get paid for the quality and sustainability of your work". I wouldn't mind having companies go broke that re-release the same product year after year with little to no improvements. If there are other companies that do the job better and improve over time I guess it would only be fair. The current market is based on monopolism and power struggle between the monopolies. That's what has to change for FOSS to succeed and we need to start in the heads.

Re:News at 11:

President Obama inquires as to whether to use white sheets or beige sheets

Martha Stewart has been asked to prepare a report on that subject for the
new administration.