Comments on: Obama wants to know: Why open source?

President Obama is asking Sun Microsytems' chairman to fill him in on the benefits of open-source software.

[Johaness53]

Let us all wish Obama best luck with the new changes. We all know that non open source softwares rely mainly on obscurity rather then on security. Eg. latest news about IE admitting severe remote exploits with their browse.

Hiding codes does not do any good for anyone in the long harm. It freezes the entire market development and opens for few cartels and few rich people out there. Open source will make all humanity richer both with development, cash and values!

Johaness
Open Source, Perl, Content Management System
http://www.web-app.net

[t8]

Open Source can save a lot of money if implemented right. You also don't have the worry of licensing requirements. It is a no brainer. Take Open Office for instance. Both MS and OO do documents well. But Microsoft will charge you the earth for their version and hold you responsible for their EULA. Whereas OO is free and requires no management with regards to EULA and how many copies you wish to use. Open source tends to be written well too. i.e., less bloat because they are not implementing secret file formats and non-piracy features.

[Hansonmen]

Change is great. Let's use the bailout money to get rid of all those useless PC's and ship them off to the recycling centers in China and give everyone a new Mac. And while we're at it lets mandate that every year all Americans must trade-in their old car for a brand new shinny one. New new new, that will solve all our problems.

[jammeruk]

In my opinion the Obama's question ?Why open source?? is misplaced. Really the question is how can we become more efficient?

I don't think you will ever get everyone to agree on the open source debate, but it really doesn't matter. Standards should drive the software industry - whether it is a Microsoft or open source platform that it is running on really becomes a secondary debate.

[cracm]

it would be awesome if obama implements an open source tax so open source authors can easily obtain grants

[kenstech_com]

What an IDIOT. The President doesn't know about Open Source? Come on! That just shows how clueless and out of touch he is...Oh wait, this is OBAMA we are talking about.

What a GENIUS! The President is smart enough to ask questions about a technical issue that he doesn't know about. That just shows how clued and hip he is.

Ken
www.kenstech.com

[Fire Balls]

What's funny here is that people really think open source is cheaper.. it's not. Yes the upfront cost may be but over the long run it's not at all. The cost of having to pay up to 10 time for support and maintenance as you would with a window system makes the cost of them much greater (see this http://news.cnet.com/8301-13639_3-10129373-42.html?tag=mncol ) The Royal Navy is moving to windows saving the tax payers up to $32 million over the next 10 years. Hmm... and this is over Linux. There are also schools, states, and government offices moving to an all windows environment saving lots of money.

[punterjoe]

I think our new President is wise enough to see that we don't have to choose between the cathedral and the bazaar. There's ample room for both, as long as "free" software is protected from the intellectual property shark's war of attrition and obstruction.

[maxlharris]

So, here I am, government employee. No, really, I work for the Department of Labor, in Chicago, in Financial Management. I have a couple of problems with this open source discussion.

1- The average age of someone employed by the federal government is about 44. While I know this doesn't seem particularly dinosaurish, you have a lot of folks who got in somewhere between Kennedy asking people what they could do for the country and Reagan. Especially in DC, where the tech decisions are made. It took a lot of them this long to get marginally competent at MS office. And you want to go all OO.org on them? Me thinks you are going to make up and TCO advantage that Open Source software has with lost productivity as the IT people are swarmed with continual questions. I understand their pain. I support a system for about a quarter to a third of the DOL. It is a death by a million cuts as people cannot learn.

2- While I'm not saying MS is gold or anything (first, we don't use 2007 or Vista... we are 2003 (mostly) and XP at DOL), but we have a lot of custom built systems already. Accounting systems, for instance. That handle the distribution of most of our $10.1 Billion appropriation (the largest part is salaries, but after that, nearly everything flows through one accounting system that will move to a customized Oracle Financials later this year). If you are going to transmit all this vendor information around, and all the employees' bank account info around, and their other PII, do you want a customized solution or do you want an open system? Let me rephrase that: Would you want the nuke codes on an open source machine? Do you really trust the "better security" of open source with the nukes? I didn't think so.

[supoman]

The truth of the matter is no matter how it boots up, if you can still get to a browser window then it really doesn't matter what the os underneath is. Google has proved this. Many of the apps in my company are browser based now as I imagine they are at many other companies. Stop throwing money away with Microsoft. Firefox runs better on Linux anyhow.

[snorfler]

...hrmmmm, let's see....we're arguing about the do's and don'ts of adopting open-source in the US.....the same country where folks *insist* on driving the most fuel-inefficient vehicles on Earth.....no wonder that countries more interested in efficiency are driving open-source adoption at the governmental level.

Ask the government of France, who replaced thousands of servers. Too bad that Britain got in bed with the MS way of thinking.....then again, they did exactly the same thing with the adoption of NutraSweet (ie. took G.D. Searle's lab data at face value with no testing....I suppose that Americans are not the only ones prone to accepting bribes.)

...in any case, irregardless of all the hot air being blown back and forth on this topic, the points remain:

1. Windows only plays nice in a data centre when it's the *ONLY* OS going. (Ask any SAN administrator about having to hide LUNs from Windows to prevent them from being rendered useless to UNIX)

2. Windows is unable to scale to the same level as *NIX, and no amount of sympathetic consultants jumping up and down can change that.

3. Windows is (and will REMAIN) a *DESKTOP* OS. Some businesses may deploy it on their back end, but large important data farms etc. will always be some flavour of *NIX (including z/OS, ie. IBM mainframe). Anything else is either irresponsible, or for data that is transient / unimportant.

4. I defy anyone to explain how the technology that not only runs the Internet (*NIX, Perl, Apache, and so on) but is also singularly reponsible for its inception/propagation is somehow unfitting for inception in business.

Add to this the ease of installation / integrations: boot *one* CD/DVD and 20 minutes later have a functioning domain controller + secure mail server + web server + CIFS file server + NFS file server + industry standard database + network monitoring tools + rich scripting environment and so on and so on.....AND PAY NOTHING FOR ANY OF IT.....*or*...pay massive licencing costs for proprietary software. No brainer, no?

Talk of 'administration costs' are also disingenuous, since companies who intend to stay in business will hire expertise as needed. (Replace software licencing costs and multiple Windows/Exchange admin salaries with a couple of *NIX sysadmins...bam. Too easy....money saved.)

In closing, as has been seen at Boeing, Ford, and just about any other large manufacturers (ie. businesses where cash *shouldn't* be an issue) Linux pops up far more often than MS-boosters would have you realise. Companies that develop software in-house for their own internal purposes are able to archive software versions along with the *exact* development environment they used to create them. (Try successfully doing that on a large scale with proprietary OSes and their licences.)
Try updating your Windows kernel only, or only certain apps, or customizing the OS's internals as needed....good luck with that.

"There are none so blind as those who refuse to see."

[donnie0526]

I lost you when you used "irregardless". You may have something valuable to say but you lack of ability to speak intelligently. Not to mention the lack of objectivity.

[terisita]

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[donnie0526]

Anyone else sick of this tired, worn out topic? I'm a long time nix/winders user/admin. I started using nix in early 80's along with VMS, PrimeOS, RSTS, etc. Most of you prolly have no appreciation or real experience to speak of intelligently.
OPEN source implementations always fail. Entities must have and be able to retain long term, ongoing, distinctive competencies. That is exactly what "partnering" is all about. The premium paid to MS, SUN, IBM, RedHat, etc is compensation for their investment in providing this continuity.
Something obviously missing in these posts/rants is the fact that ?open source? software development and maintenance requires IT org?s establish a long term commit to their technology decisions. Find me a nix slacker that is committed to anything beyond his lunch with 3 pints of Hefeweizen and I'll hire one.
Having a better product and being a better tech dude isn't in play in these decisions. The day of nix dominance has never materialized and never will. The OPEN source discussion is dead. Congress passed law in 1999 (SCMI, Service Center Modernization Initiative) which requires all Federal agencies implement a "common computing environment" that is still on the books. Literally hundreds of millions have been in invested in eliminating the legacy SENDMAIL and other home grown nix deployments. Providing consistent IT deployments across all Federal agencies is its goal. Even Obama will steer clear of this nightmare.
Heck, most Federal agencies are still struggling to migrate to the Windows 2000 application platform. In the public sector world, to migrate an agency email solution, it takes 28 contractors and three years to do the same as a privately run staff of five over six months.

OPEN source? It aint happening in this lifetime.

[snorfler]

"Something obviously missing in these posts/rants is the fact that ?open source? software development and maintenance requires IT org?s establish a long term commit to their technology decisions."

...and I suppose that Windows doesn't?

Nice try, troll. :)

[mvbsoares]

Question: Obama wants to know: Why open source?
Rapid answer: creation of qualified jobs and the feasibility of micro, little and medium enterprises for services.

Best regards.

[donnie0526]

Absolutely. Your comment only emphasized my point. That is exactly why enterprises continue to invest and migrate to MS based platforms. MS continually makes the necessary investments to ensure continuity. Too bad DEC, Prime, HP, SUN, IBM, and others who initially began establishing nix based app services didn't continue to dump big $$$ into their platform.

Read with open mind. Like i said, you (nix softdev) don't need a better product. What is needed is a better strategy. No doubt Ubuntu is a better OS than XP but it will never be adopted on a wide scale. Nobody to punch out when <expletive deleted> hits the proverbial fan.

[spicerunner]

All President Obama is saying is he will not mandate open source. Software should be evaluated based solely on it's merits. If open source better serves government needs than commercial software, let it win the battle. If not, let it loose.

If open source versus commercial software is a battle, then it should rage without external influence and let the best win.