On 7/17/06, manny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Well, DOST 7 went OpenBSD, and they are more secure becaus eof it. And it
> cost them a whole lot less than if they went with proprietary software.
> And the BSD servers require very little maintenance. Just guess how much
> the government would have saved if it went proprietary...
>
Yeah, well DOST has employees that maintain the OpenBSD systems -- the
employees cost money to keep. Although I do understand that the
savings come at the price of accountability and "someone to blame when
it all goes wrong", it does make sense on a case to case basis. But
saying _all_ software that the government will require should be open
source is taking it a bit too far -- and I'm just being pragmatic
about it.
At the moment, not all the open source solutions make good enough
software for government needs -- eLGU project, tried but didn't
impress me, no open source traffic management/monitoring system (yet),
no open source weather forecasting software (yet), no open source
seismic activity tracking software (yet), not even good enough open
source geographical information systems at par with ArcSoft and IDRISI
just to name a few. Being pragmatic about it says: okay, let's use
proprietary software while there aren't any cheaper alternatives for
us the meantime -- now when someone else creates open source versions
or alternatives, then perhaps we can asses them then.
I'd like to contribute to an open source traffic management/monitoring system. It's one of the major problems that I want to help in fixing it (or alleviate the problem at least).
Anyway, I agree that the government should not require open source on all computers. But I do want them to conduct a case study and analysis if it would be better to use F/LOSS for computers that are used for clerical work and basic office use. From the results, they could then choose whether to recommend or favor F/LOSS systems over proprietary software.
They could save a lot of money just from those computers.
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Orange and Bronze Software Labs
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Email: dean [at] orangeandbronze [dot] com
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