mod'ed up "interesting" :)
On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 11:56 AM, bill[y] <[email protected]> wrote: > > As a U.S. Treasury employee this is my take. First off, the U.S. > federal government is beyond huge. Though it's frequently referred to > as a single unit, day to day it doesn't operate like that. Each branch > has a number of agencies and each agency has bureaus. There are > numerous mandated rules and laws that agencies are suppose to adhere > to, such as FISMA security standards and Section 508 accessibility > rules. But there are different levels of freedoms within each bureau. > Each organization is free to operate within these laws. Now, what > President Obama did earlier this year was establish the Open > Government Initiative (http://www.whitehouse.gov/Open/). This is not > to be confused with "open source", but it's origins appear to be > rooted in the same spirit of freedom and open source is, at a minimum, > becoming more talked about and accepted. At it's core, Open Government > is an attempt to make U.S. government operations transparent. This > means that massive amounts of data are becoming publicly available for > consumption by the general public (http://data.gov). I suspect that > creative minds could build some applications on top of this data and > end up collaborating with agencies, similar to an open source model. > This is also trickling down to the state level, too, and there are > some app writing contests available - one for the state of N.Y., I > believe. Note that folks like Google and Adobe are all interested in > Open Government which means helping agencies achieve the goal set > forth by the president. This may (or may not) involve open source. > But, my personal opinion is that the spirit of open government, > sharing, and transparency, does speak to open source software. > > The main concern today is still security. If your product is handling > anything other than public information, it will need to pass some > rigorous tests, usually at the expense of the vendor, but that's to > the vendor's advantage. > > best, > bill > > On Oct 27, 12:50 pm, Sean Corfield <[email protected]> wrote: >> Some US government departments have recently been given / adopted a >> mandate to move to open source. At CFUnited, a govt employee came up >> to the Railo booth, very excited after hearing Joe Rinehart mention >> Railo as open source... he was currently writing a proposal to >> cross-train his CF team to PHP and rewrite all of their CFML apps in >> PHP because of his department's mandate. Having seen Railo in action, >> he realized he could keep his CF dev team and code and still go open >> source. >> >> So, yes, there are moves afoot in (some) US govt departments to adopt >> open source so both OpenBD and Railo could gain market share within >> the govt based on that! >> >> Many govt departments worldwide seem to be moving to open source (at >> Railo we see it in Europe and APAC as well as within the US). >> >> Sean >> >> On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Vince Bonfanti <[email protected]> wrote: >> > I thought this was interesting, not because it's PHP/Drupal, but >> > because it's a high-profile use of open source within the federal >> > government: >> >> > http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10382893-264.html?tag=newsEditorsPi... >> >> > I know there's a lot of ColdFusion (and other CFML engines) within the >> > federal government--maybe if there's a big push towards open source >> > this creates an opportunity for OpenBD? >> >> > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Open BlueDragon Public Mailing List http://groups.google.com/group/openbd?hl=en official site @ http://www.openbluedragon.org/ !! save a network - trim replies before posting !! -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
