Diary of a Network Geek

Open Source Government!

I wish it were the US government, but at least Australia believes in the Open Source movement. According to this article on AustralianIT, areas of the Australian government are “encouraging” Open Source pilots where possible. Apparently, in an effort to save money and reduce future hidden costs, officials have gotten behind the idea that Open Source may, in fact be better. Well, at least they’re comparing closed-source options to Open Source options on a fairly regular basis. It’s a start, at least, in the right direciton.
I sure hope they’re finding solutions out there!

Or, is that the “Isn’t it ironic” department?

Well, it’s a little of both, actually. In two related stories from Australian IT, we get a closer look at the off-shore industry. It seems things are heating up for those poor “oppressed” people who are “reallocating” resources offshore. First, they’re not getting absolutly every job they can, so they’re protesting and claiming that a true free-market economy will decide where the jobs should be. No, really, I’m not kidding, here’s the article. They’re protesting the fact that the Australian government is restricting how many government, and government contract, IT jobs can be sent offshore. Hey, that sounds like the will of the people to me. And, isn’t that what a free-market economy is all about?
Maybe the problem is that China is going after India’s customers. After all, a shrinking market with higher levels of competition is a scary thing. So, when someone undercuts your price and starts to gain a significant portion of your market share, it’s scary. And, according to this article, that’s what’s happening. But, hey, the free-market ought to take care of that, right? Oh, right, at the expense of someone’s job. Well, as long as it’s not one of their jobs. Yeah, that seemed ironic to me, too.

Let’s talk “license”.

It looks like SCO’s attempt to extort money for alleged proprietary pieces of Linux code is slowly failing. At least, according to this article on AustralianIT, which says that the Australian government is basically just ignoring them. They apparently got their Linux solution via IBM, so they just refer any issues to IBM. Which, frankly, makes sense. Besides, IBM is already bringing suit against SCO for, well, basically for being stupid, I think.

The more I read about stuff like this the more I think the way to go is Novell and SUSE. An integrated solution, right down to the desktop, that has a better, less expensive licensing program than Micro$oft and has global support. Seems like a better option to me. But, what do I know? I’m just a Network Geek.