Sorry for some reason Thunderbird isn't showing my previous post and I
see on google that IMHOTEP responded....
Here is the response
Open Source software can be a great thing, however, IMO, it takes an
organized and disciplined company/organization to properly and safely
use it. Having been exposed to many different aspects of the government
and how things are run, I would not recommend open source as they, in
many cases, barely have enough time and resources to be organized enough
to keep closed source running well where they are told exactly what they
need to do.
Well, as someone who worked for the Government for years, I will say they
are often *more* disciplined and organized than 99% of the corporate World.
And Yes, most government agencies are already using open source/open
standards....and those number are growing.
Im
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I worked directly for Corporate America (Fortune 5) for about 10 years
and for the last couple of years have been doing consulting in one of
the largest IT service companies (Fortune 15) for corporate America
(generally Fortune 100 or larger with 20k+ seats, usually I work with
100k+ to 200k+ seat customers) and the US Government which varies in
size vastly depending on the division. From the many engagements I have
seen, your numbers are way off to the point of ridicule.
As a rule the government is far more unorganized than pretty much ANY
corporate customer I have dealt with. I far prefer going into a
corporation than a government/military engagement because of how bad the
government/military things are generally run combined with how things
are funded. It isn't generally the fault of the engineers/admins, it is
almost always a managerial/bureaucracy issue. The last engagement I had
to go look into a mail environment that never should have gone down was
down for a week because of completely dorked processes and organization
and didn't get straightened out until we came in and started giving step
by step do this and then this instructions.
I have no experience with the Chinese government but from my experiences
with the UK and German governments I would say that the US isn't that
different from other countries in that regard.
As for the German government move to linux, that hasn't been a chatty a
subject since about 2004 when they were getting ready to do it...
Outside of the mainstream I have been hearing that things aren't so
green over there for them which explains a lot of the silence.
The only way I see the US government as a whole will successfully
pulling off Open Source for the platform is if everyone gets together
and works out the standards and then one body is responsible for
dictating what will be run and how and manage the whole patch strategy
as well as prepare and certify the patches for internal use. That isn't
going to happen, the various divisions of the government are like a
bunch of wolverines fighting in a paper sack.
joe
--
Joe Richards Microsoft MVP Windows Server Directory Services
Author of O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition
www.joeware.net
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