US Government asks for paper on FOSS
This is possibly a huge story for the whole world.
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.
“It’s intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software,” he said.
“Open source does not require you to pay a penny to Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or any proprietary vendor any money.”
How cool is that? Scott, being asked by the incoming administration, ON THEIR FIRST DAY IN OFFICE, to discuss the benefits of FOSS and Open Standards for Government use.
If the administration start to deploy and recommend FOSS, the knock-on effects around the world could be enormous. Michael Tienmann, (President of the OSI) suggests that
… while some departments already use open source technologies, overall it has been estimated that the global loss due to proprietary software is “in excess of $1 trillion a year.”
He claimed that the conservative cost for the US is from ” $400 billion (£290bn) and upwards.”
Oh boy, how I’d love to be a fly on the wall in Steve Ballmer’s office right now. I bet the chairs are flying like a swarm of locusts…
Tags: Government, Open Source
They asked the wrong person. They should have asked Jonathan Schwartz or RMS. 😉
Probably yes, but at least they asked! That’s a bit step in the right direction.
/me thinks… Microsoft: “but we’re open source too”
lol.
But it doesn’t appear as though President Obama is quite so gullible as his predecessor.
First and foremost,love the blog!
It is good to see more and more people are turning to Open Source Solutions!
I have made it my personal mission to change the way my friends and family see Linux as a whole,or any free OS for that matter.
Currently i have turned 18 into converts!
Keep up the good work
John
Hi John,
thanks for the kind words. I’m glad to hear about your mission and conquests!
Alan
Thanks Alan,
Many more to come.
In the process of recommending FOSS to the primary school i work at!
One of the children brought in a USB drive from home Containing the Conficker worm!
I scratched my head for a while as i had only just applied the patch to all 450 school computers.