Government use of Open Source and Linux

[Linux Frank]

Okay a nice successful implementation of Linux in government (UK)

http://www.theregister.com/content/4/30089.html

Just so as you can all keep your pro-linux beliefs up to date.

[Calum]

i am pleasantly surprised. i knew some publicly funded charities (like the samaritans) were changing to linux, but i thought that the actual civil service was staunchly up microsoft's ass (the brits seem to like shoving their heads up the ass of any americans who happen to be around), but it's good to see somebody's thinking for themselves in whitehall.

[TheQuirk]

the brits seem to like shoving their heads up the ass of any americans who happen to be around.

This makes a wonderful visualization.

"Hey, is that an American?"

"By golly, I think it is! Lets go!"

[Calum]

you'd be surprised how close to the truth that is, when it comes to the british government anyway (which is what we were talking about) but i think that's dangerously close to the no go area for this forum... no politics, no microsoft...

[ButtDog]

Plenty of American non-porfit oganizations use Linux to fuel thier servers, and their businesses.

Of the government agencies that I know of, the FBI implements their own form of BSD (they pay some of the contributors to construct encryption techniques, and to re-write the system), and most of the labor unions use certain version of BSD to run everything that they are doing. Go to www.unionroofers.com, plug it into netcraft, and you will see that they are running FreeBSD. Actually, enter in any name of any trade.

I also believe that the CIA is using a version of FreeBSD (although, from what I know, it is heresay.)

I don't know how it is in the UK, or by standards anywhere else in the "free" world, but if you have programmers that comprise the top echelon, albeit M$ guys or BSD guys, the US government has them working....paying them huge, and it is all closed source.

Netcraft will lie to you (like the US government)

[Void Main]

Actually Netcraft doesn't lie to you. Now some of the systems they report on might lie to Netcraft. But I wouldn't know anyone who would do such a terrible thing. :)