[SATLUG] [Fwd: San Antonio Open Source Research]

[Travis H.]

On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 09:49:24AM -0600, Justizin wrote:
>  * The US Military, esp the USAF, relies heavily on F/OSS, although
> as far as I know Windows is still the "official" OS, and it is a
> policy violation to install GNU/Linux, or was at one time.  Some other
> folks on the list can talk to you about this in more detail.

A birdie told me FreeBSD and Linux are okay now.

> in recent years, has always, afaik, had a great concentration of F/OSS
> customers as well as relying primarily on F/OSS for internal systems.
> When I left, we were fighting a lot about using Windows in the
> IS/Engineering floor, so you might talk to Tom Weeks or Travis H. (?)
> about that.

They intend to migrate to a totally virtual intranet environment;
I suspect (and pray) it will be open standards-based (i.e. works with
any browser).  Until then us Linux guys have to sign a waiver saying
we won't pester IT with our Linux problems (duh)...  other than that,
we could run Plan 9 if we really felt it would help us do our job.
The main systems we interact with can be used with Mozilla/firefox/konqueror/opera.

>  * Lightwave, a proprietary software company, as I understand it,
> relies on Free / Open-Source software for much of their business.

That's also the name of a product by a company called Newtek, who
may use FOSS.

> >I am especially looking for information about the benefits of switching to
> >Linux with application to San Antonio.

http://www.kmfms.com/alternatives.html

> motto of globalization.  Many foreign countries refuse to use
> Microsoft products because they feel that our government could have
> some influence over MS,

An unofficial source told me that some NSA folks work full-time on
the MS campus.  I can't confirm that, and if I knew for sure I might
not even be able to repeat the rumor.  However, I think NSA would be
an improvement over MS employees.  They actually have a clue, and
have laws forbidding them from doing certain things (when they are
adhered to), and have no financial interest in collecting personal
information and reselling it.  MS is a convicted monopolist, and
perjured themselves with impunity during the DoJ case, even doctoring
their videos, and getting caught, and apparently the government thinks
that's okay if you are a Fortune 1 company... par for the course with
this administration methinks...  however if *I* perjured myself and
presented doctored evidence of my innocence and got caught, you can
be damn sure there'd be consequences....
-- 
"Cryptography is nothing more than a mathematical framework for
discussing various paranoid delusions." -- Don Alvarez
<URL:http://www.subspacefield.org/~travis/> -><-