Your Tax Dollars Buying Open Source Software 182
Roblimo has a story over at NewsForge about DevIS, a software company that relies on Free and open source software to not just weather but actually do well in the current software economy. Part of the reason may be that the company doesn't preach software philosophy; they just find that combining well-tested (and mostly GPL'd) software tools is the path of least resistance when it comes to building Internet applications. Most of their work is for the Federal government; always nice to see public dollars supporting public software. Can anyone point out other good examples of similar businesses?
How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If your question is, how does this activity support companies that can't create a sustainable business model for their open source software product and/or service (not suggesting this describes Apache), well... it doesn't. I don't necessarily know that I want my tax dollars heading that direction anyway.
If your asking, how does this support the open source software movement in general, well, lots of ways. Open source developers are likely to contribute to and enrich the public code base, since they use it to create their own software, even if they are creating something so specific or odd that their particular project isn't really adding to the public pool of code. I've never met anyone using open source in their professional life who wasn't an enthusiast and contributor to noncommercial open source movement, so the simple fact that an employer is putting food on the tables of open source enthusiast programmers will tend to enrich the movement. And it all gives open source legitimacy and a toehold in the government.
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're supporting open source by using it, and possibly submitting bug reports or fixes that you find in the process of using it. As for actual financial contributions, that's probably not happening.
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:5, Insightful)
For isntance, if this increases apache's user base by even 1% and adds a layer of legitimacy do you really think apache will see nothing from this? Sure if the govt stamped thier money with "tax dollar" on it apache would see none but thier income would still increase: A larger user base will do that. It will increase developers, the more popular the software the more people who will want to write for it.
Next is open source as a whole. Large portions of the Govt have been really deriding free software (while large portions also support it). That makes a dent in the over all adoption of open source apps (the govt says it's unsafe so it must be). Publicity of a somewhat trusted body means more people willing to try some of it, if what they get works well (and apache does) it makes it much easier to switch them. Stuff like this really helps the pointy hair type fell more confortable with a switch.
And in the end publicity will generate MCUH more money than a direct line through this company ever would.
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:2)
So long as developers need to eat, pay rent, wear clothes, drive cars etc, then I'm afraid that ultimately, the only was to support them is to give them money.
And in the end publicity will generate MCUH more money than a direct line through this company ever would.
Tell that to VA Linux' shareholders.
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:1, Interesting)
1. Don't confuse "open source' with GPL. Derivative
works from GPL must stay GPL, which is not always
true for the other favors of open source licenses.
2. As a professional Linux developer, I know
very well that the most companies using Free Software
are, for the most part, users that don't give back to the
community. They are leeches! And of course there
can be some vage indirect benefits to the Free Software, but
lets not spin this out of control: the benefits are in very general
indirect. This is not what in English we mean be "contributing".
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Ummm, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever! Are you thinking GPL??? Just cause software might be open source, depending on the license, it doesn't mean it'll be re-released as open source.
Take the less restrictive (err.. non-restrictive) BSD license as an exmaple. Anyone can take that code, close source it with all rights and make million$!
GPL on the other hand, whole different ball game.
You should either...
1.) Get a clue!
2.) Be specific on what you mean, GPL vs BSD vs MIT vs
3.) Get a clue!
4.) Troll on elsewhere!
5.) Get another clue!
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source software can be supported by someone by the mere word of mouth that it is being used.
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"WEATHER"? TIMOTHY, YOU ARE AN ILLITERATE RETAR (Score:2)
Re:How are public dollars supporting it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Tax $$$ for Free Software? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Tax $$$ for Free Software? (Score:3, Funny)
Public money supporting OS (Score:4, Funny)
Does RMS' welfare cheques count as another example?
Re:Public money supporting OS (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Public money supporting OS (Score:2)
fuck, i'd love to mod you
to the lowest level of hell
Yahoo! too (Score:4, Informative)
Similar businesses... (Score:3, Insightful)
In seriousness, I REALLY hope such business do not include line items for free software on their bills to the government. (Microsoft's lackeys in Congress could have a field day with that.) Rather, all costs should be related to development, implemenation, etc of solutions...that just happen to utilize free software.
Re:Similar businesses... (Score:4, Informative)
It is fairly well spelled out in the article, "DevIS does not "Sell Open Source." It sells solutions and applications that meet specification laid down by clients. Often, in the case of Federal sites and online database applications, those specs have to do with accessibility and security, but as long as they are met, Gallagher says, no one really needs to care about what's on the back end as long as whatever it is does the job and can be easily maintained after it is built. If the most cost-effective solution is Open Source, great. If not, Gallagher is not dogmatic. He points out repeatedly that Open Source and proprietary applications can coexist on a server and work together without any problems, and that if his clients require a proprietary application for a specific purpose, that's fine with him."
I realize that was an attempt to be funny about the $600 toilet seats, but that shouldn't be taken lightly. I've worked with a lot of people that were defense contractors at some point in their life and they get really touchy when people start saying blanket statements about things like this. Just because a few people/companies were guilty of this doesn't mean that they all are crooked.
Re:Similar businesses... (Score:3, Interesting)
That kind of overspending, overspecing, and all the layers of boilerplate documentation and red tape are the Bread And Butter for the fat-assed companies that provide it.
Sorry. The $600 toilet seats may just be anectotal, but they're evidence of a big hustle scene that Stinks.
Re:Similar businesses... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Similar businesses... (Score:1)
You mean the toilet seats have to be capable of repeatedly launching payloads into space? Doesn't that make the LEO really nasty?
Re:Similar businesses... (Score:5, Insightful)
A word about defense contracting, any product you supply the government most likely has a detailed MIL-SPEC (Military Specification). One of the many DFARS (Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement ) you contractually agree to is documentation of your compliance with any and all specifications. So consider the lowly toilet seat.
There is probably a MIL-SPEC related to acceptable materials - now you need to test and document the source
Is it on an combat aircraft - then there are MIL-SPECs relating to the explosive combatibility, breakability, and maximum static charge buildup allowed.
When you start to look at all of the required documentation and testing, and the time involved the price gets up there - especially when the lowley $20/hr technician can be billed to the government at $90/hr ($20 + 300% Overhead + allowable Profit ~7% (of the gross!))
As a point of refernce the MIL-SPEC for a 13in antenna for use in the 420 to 460 megacycles per second range is 7 pages long, and references 10 other MIL-SPECs as well.
The really sad thing is that Home Depot probably has a better profit margin on their toilet seats than General Dynamics did.
Get Fscking Real... (Score:3, Interesting)
Most defense contracting is a rubber stamp process. Contractors get the MANDATORY yearly price increases, freely given by the gov't, then you have companies tack on extra in fees with little or no real accountability.
If Lockheed builds your F-16, you get the parts from them. If, for some reason, the price on an F-16 widget goes up 200% in one year, this is rarely challenged. The process to do so costs almost as much.
As a Navy boss once said, "Yeah, they got us on this one, but we'll get them on the BIG ones..." This was for a part that was elevated over 1000% in less than three years time. Total cost was over 10 million dollars. Big ones... Right.
Re:Similar businesses... (Score:1)
Re:Similar businesses... (Score:5, Informative)
My father worked for GD in Ft.Worth, He told me about a $300 screwdriver a sub-contractor made. The reason for the outragous price was that they charged for all of the R&D time to design the thing and the time it took to frabricate it. When you take into account the machine time and the cost of the design work I'm amazed they could do it that cheap. Thats not to say that the Gov. dosen't get overcharged for things, just that it might not always be as bad as it seems.
I've built special tools back when I worked as a line mechanic. I made $25.00 per hour flat rate, if I spent 2 hours making the tool it cost me $50
I've always seen the toilet seat example and wondered what the whole story was. I figure that it was a price based on a small number of seats that were designed for a specfic location like an aircraft. Required to meet Mil. Specs. and one from the local Home Despot wouldn't work. For the price I'll bet it's Aluminum (Brrr) and with a short run, mostly hand made.
Security Enhanced Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this company "better" because it redistributes OSS for cash? I see that as a necessity of making the software truly free, not as anything that can particularly help us.
M$ has been using OSS to make money for years, but where's their parade?
sarcasm! (Score:2)
mod parent as funny or retake English 10
Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly it's the fortune 500 corporate america that has yet to embrace common sense and as they still feel the need to live by the "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" mindset which some see as a way to survive. Large corporations have very differnt forces driving them.
Re:Right MOD PARENT UP (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Right (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry, you get "+1; Insightful" for the overall message, but "-1; Catch-Phrases" for major paradigm shift
The Editors.
Re:Right (Score:5, Funny)
Sadly it's the fortune 500 corporate america that has yet to embrace common sense and as they still feel the need to live by the "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"
IBM is selling them Linux!
IBM supports Open Source (Score:2, Insightful)
IBM is not selling them Linux (Score:2)
Re:IBM is not selling them Linux (Score:2)
I work at a large company that is converting an existing e-commerce app to IBM WebSphere. I pushed for Linux, IBM pushed for AIX.
I work for IBM, and I know a sales guys who push nothing *but* Linux (well, actually Linux on IBM hardware and under IBM software).
However, no company has a completely consistent viewpoint on any topic, and certainly no company with 400,000 employees will always deliver a consistent message. In addition, it's entirely possible that the IBM sales guys in question did have some IBM engineers look at the situation and there were good reasons why AIX was a better choice than Linux, right now, for your application.
I'd rather see... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:2)
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:1)
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:5, Insightful)
Labor: $500,000
Hardware: $1,500,000
Software Licenses: $3,500,000
or
Labor: $500,000
Hardware: $1,500,000
Software Licenses: Free
you forgot one... (Score:1)
Proprietary Vendor:
Profit: $500,000
Labor: $500,000
Hardware: $1,500,000
Software Licenses (profit for someone else!): $3,500,000
or
Open Source Vendor:
Profit: somewhere between 500,000 and 4,000,000
Labor: $500,000
Hardware: $1,500,000
Software Licenses: Free
If it comes to a bidding war for a fixed priced project, the OS vendor should easily win and make more profit. The client pays less, the vendor makes more profit, and the tax payer saves money (I won't even get into government security:). If you do fixed price projects with proprietary software, someone else is eating your lunch!
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:1)
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:1)
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:1)
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:1)
Meanwhile, in the real world, the only thing that ever, ever, ever helps the economy is production of value. Paying money to produce something that is already available for free, is not production. Moving money around without getting anything for it, is not production. But somehow when the politicians start running around , pumping their arms, shouting, "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" people think the politicians are doing them a favor.
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:4, Interesting)
exactly why doesn't the work these guys do to produce solutions count as production? and how is a complete solution to a specified problem(need) without value? Open source is a large collection of unrealated works. Production in this context is turning the raw material (OSS) into marketable products. Think about the difference between iron ore and punch presses and cars. I think you would call a building a car production no? How is taking the raw material of OSS and making it into a solution different if someone needs it?
If you are making the point that only things like real estate and gold have real value ok. But in the everyday world of common idioms. People pay for the things they need. And value is a measure of satifaction with the solution.
my $.02
Re:I'd rather see... (going WAY off topic here) (Score:3, Interesting)
From an economic standpoint, waste often is good. For instance, in retail products, more packaging means a more expensive product, and therefore increased revenue that produced it. Time wasted on contracts is often paid for by the principal -- translating into profit for the contractor. You see, waste increases the flow of capital in nearly every case. Of course, that doesn't make it right, just economically desirable. The social and environmental costs are tremendous, though, and far outweigh the economic benifit - IMHO.
And now to move back on topic. What you seem to be missing here is that many companies include open source software in their solutions. They don't charge for the inclusion of that software, just for the custom stuff they developed to work with the OSS stuff. Their customers are paying for custom solutions that build on this software, not for the (open source) software itself.
Here at the company I work for, we are developing web software that uses Linux, qMail, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and ColdFusion. We don't charge for any of those licenses except for the ColdFusion. We'd have to charge more if we went with Netscape iPlanet and Oracle.
So, we save money for our customers by saving on the cost of those liscenses. As for the ColdFusion, well, all of our developers are proficient in it and few are comfortable with the OSS app languages such as PHP and Perl (my personal preferences). Perhaps one day...
Re:I'd rather see... (going WAY off topic here) (Score:2)
If you pay me $4000 instead of $2000, the fact that I have that extra $2000 instead of you may end up having an effect on the economy, but whether that is good or bad, depends on how well I use that $2000 compared to how well you may have used it.
Then suppose it costs a printer $1 in raw materials to make a glossy colorful cardboard box, which they sell to me for for $5. I package the widget in the box and ship it to you, and you unwrap it, and get $0.10 worth of pleasure from seeing the pretty box, which you then throw away. $0.90 of capital has just been lost.
A more dramatic example of waste harming the economy was in the news a while back. Suppose an expensive office building is destroyed by terrorists. An insurance claim is filed and paid, and a while later, there is a great construction project to build a new office building. Lots of money is moving around, workers employed, taxes paid, etc. But surely the economy was nevertheless harmed by the destruction of capital (the office building), no? The value of the new building, minus whatever was lost to waste in its construction, might outweigh the value of the previous building, but probably not.
Waste almost(?) always involves the destruction of capital; that's why we call it waste. If it isn't destructive, we call it something else, perhaps "added value" or something like that.
Verily, I understand this. I flamed NineNine for not understanding it. It seems he would prefer that you hire extra people to reimplement those free tools, or buy commercial alternatives, in order "to grow, pay taxes, pay employees, and pay investors." I say it would be a waste to duplicate that effort, and you already know what I think of waste.Not for long (Score:5, Funny)
Communists are your friends (Score:4, Funny)
Update your lingo, man... (Score:2, Insightful)
mmm... $ (Score:5, Funny)
Why do I always feel like I'm waking up from a nightmare?
Re:mmm... $ (Score:2)
Best Misappropriation of tax dollars ever!
whitehouse.gov and cl-httpd (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov used to run cl-httpd, an open source web server written in Common Lisp. I just checked the link and it's dead now, but according to NetCraft, www.whitehouse.gov is running an unknown web server on Linux.
Re:whitehouse.gov and cl-httpd (Score:2)
I'm willing to bet its the "Dyslexicon Web server"
The real question here... (Score:2)
It's easier to use OSS in outsourcing (Score:5, Informative)
What's harder is when we have subcontractors on site and we try to convince them to use these things internally. They're concerned that the subcontractors will move on and they'll be stuck with something they don't understand or know how to support. I suppose this is a valid concern, but a little education would go a long way to alleviate this.
Right now, I'm working as a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin [lockheedmartin.com] on a NIMA [nima.mil] contract. They still use Sun and SGI servers, but they run Apache, Tomcat, and Samba, as well as many GNU tools.
I don't give a FLYING FUCK! (Score:4, Insightful)
*
I do care (Score:5, Insightful)
Making a buying decision solely on the openness of the software is probably a bad ideal. But open source has alot to offer that needs to be weighed against the advantages of proprietary software. In particular open source helps limit risk, if all else fails you can take the source and contract with a competitor to fix or change it. Too many software purchasing decisions are simply "Which software provides the best balance of functionality now for payment now?" completely ignoring future costs and risks. That's an equally foolish way to purchase software.
Re:I don't give a FLYING FUCK! (Score:2, Funny)
That's if you read the article...
You haven't have you?
Don't give me that look.
OSS is perfect for this type of business (Score:5, Informative)
Projects like Struts, stxx, Lucene, JFreeChart, AspectJ, etc allow me to add tons of functionality without having to do anything. In only a few hours, I used Lucene to add the ability to search the entire database. Even better, when the client is willing and usually is, you can release any changes/fixes/improvements back into the project. My boss is convinced open source is going to be key going forward.
If you want to have a job programming open source software, this is a great field for it. BTW, thanks partially to the success of this contract, our next job ad features the preferred knowledge of open source technologies.
Re:OSS is perfect for this type of business (Score:1, Flamebait)
Go ahead, mod me offtopic.
To quote the original poster:
Which is why no "consultant" should be allowed to work. Ever. Anywhere.
You all are missing the point.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tax Deductible Donations == Subsidy (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to restate the obvious, but if you donate some of your own money to a qualified 501(c)3 organization such as the Free Software Foundation, then, at least in the USA, you may deduct it on your tax return from your gross income.
So in that sense, the government is subsidizing open source software at whatever your marginal tax rate happens to be.
They're subsidizing a lot of other organizations that way, too, such as mortgage creditors, but I feel that the public investment in more and improved free software contributes more to the overall productivity of the economy [I'm sure realtors and home builders would dispute me].
DARPA funded OS robot software: Player/Stage (Score:3, Interesting)
P/S is used by research labs all over the world, as well as by several DARPA funded projects in the US. The program manager (an official agent of the Man) has always been extremely cool about the OS nature of the project. He immediately understood that by staying OS we could pool the resources of hundreds of researchers, most of whom were not being paid by DARPA, to solve a pressing need for network-friendly robot interfaces and re-usable code. A good deal for everyone.
Re:Mod parent down (Score:1)
Simple (Score:5, Interesting)
I could go on and on about the benefits of open source, but we have all heard that arguement before, so here is just a real brief recap:
1. OSS is cheaper then proprietary, or free
2. Because it is open source, you can always have in-house people maintain it or hire someone else too. This longevity of the same product will save the tax payers even more money by avoiding upgrade cycles.
3. Because it is open source, you can integrate it into future projects easily.
4. Because of 2 and 3 above, you as a government entity are not chained to a single closed-sourced vendor with no control over products purchased with the public reserves.
Re:Simple (Score:2)
Open source has nothing to do with your company having someone in house that can maintain your product/service. For example, MAS 90 is absolutely closed source, yet companies that sell and implement it provide maintenance as well as customized (modular) solutions.
How does something being open source make it more likely to be integrated with other projects easily ? A program that is written badly is still bad, whether open of closed source.
For how long? (Score:2)
President Bush: Let me get this straight, tax dollars that isn't going in our pockets?
Bill Gates: Unbelievable right?
President Bush: Even though I can not pronounce their name *giggle* hasn't stopped me in the past *giggle*, i'm still going to add this Deeev-ess to the Axis of Evil.Bill Gates: and make them run Windows? *fingers crossed*
President Bush: Yeah i'll make some sort of anti-terror law about free something or other.
The Goverment invented OSS -- sort of...... (Score:5, Interesting)
By law any software produced by tax dollars is available to a citizen for the cost of distribution. Classified stuff is obviously not available.
But if you want a copy of that Cobol program that calculated your income tax on a nice new 6250BPI tape just ask.
All of this predates GNU, copyleft and OSS by many years. So the government (Al Gore anyone?) can take credit for Open Source.
Re:The Government invented OSS -- sort of...... (Score:3, Informative)
NOT true! By law, any work created by the government is public domain, but a work for the government, even if paid for by the government, is not necessarily put in the public domain. That is one reason they are trying to get civil servants to write less software, and contractors to write more software (so that they can 'commercialize' the contractor made software.)
I work as a contractor, doing research and writing software that is paid for by government sources. Even though my company (typically) signs off the rights of my code to the government (it can be useful, but not really commercializable; just lots of research related code), it is QUITE a pain to get that code made available for public use (and it is NOT public domain, thanks to the wording of the law (title 19, or some such thing))
No proof of claim. (Score:1)
I sware I'm not speculating, but if you read your history you will discover that I am correct. However, that is merely on what I am claiming and I can't point you to any reference supporting my claim. You have done the same. So, feh!
My grandmother drives a Volvo (Score:3, Funny)
Hey! Some of us like money, american muscle cars, tits, red meat, guns, AND Open Source thank you very much
Don't forget about the MS tax on schools (Score:2)
Re:Don't forget about the MS tax on schools (Score:2, Informative)
No! [k12ltsp.org]
Example in the Netherlands (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know whether it's because it saves a lot of money or that it's an idealistic point of view, but it certainly is a good example
Neelix.
Re:Example in the Netherlands (Score:1)
Or maybe they don't want to get hacked every other day!
As logical as Deersoft being baught by NAI (Score:1)
NAI could have used the technology behind Deersofts software, SpamAssassin for free! But they still bought it.
How wierd. How do companies justify this stuff?
Re:it is all about control (Score:2)
Re:As logical as Deersoft being baught by NAI (Score:2)
It's a bit like this - if you want fresh shellfish, you can go to the beach. Spend an afternoon digging, and you'll have a bucket of cockles. If you want me to get the bucket of cockles, then I'll want paid for it - the cockles didn't cost anything but I did have to go and get them. You do get them cooked, though.
Another example might be the diagnostics output on car ECUs. I can read, for example, Citroen suspension fault codes from the Hydractive suspension ECU, and tell you what's wrong with it, for which I will want paid (mine's a Guinness, thanks). Normally, Citroen garages spend a lot of money on special tools to read this. I built my own - they're incredibly simple. Even though I made the special tool myself, I still want paid *for knowing how to use it*.
Does "barely getting by" = "success"? (Score:2, Interesting)
With 30+ employees (I'll assume 32.5 employees) and $4 million in revenue, that's $123,000 per employee.
Business owners know that your typical employee costs around 150% of their yearly salary. With that in mind, only $82,000 of your original $123,000 per employee is left.
But, wait! You haven't paid for their computers yet. Or the office space. Or the guy that empties the trash cans. Or electricity. Or the Internet connection (hey, browsing pr0n takes bandwidth, and bandwidth costs money!). And a million and one other things that we don't ever think about. Running a business COSTS MONEY.
I'll pull a number out of my and shave off another 25%. That leaves $61,500 per employee.
There's more! You damn well know the managers and executives are paying themselves a lot more than the slaves ^H^H^H^H^H^H developers.
At the end of the day, the developers are probably getting a well "below average" paycheck, and the company is probably barely getting by.
This is success? By some measures, YES.
BUT...forgive me if I'm NOT impressed. They probably won't be able to keep every employee busy 100% of the time (and you still have to pay idle employees -- at least, I assume they're salaried rather than hourly). If rough times hit this company, I'm willing to bet they don't have enough money in the bank to get by for long.
-Teckla
Great. More government welfare and incompetence (Score:1, Troll)
The software speaks for itself! (Score:3, Insightful)
So what if a "web services" company is using open source software for the government. Open source has always been at the centre of web applications since the first script kiddie made a web site using Perl.
My own company has made banking applications using open-source technologies for years, no one's written an article on us.
The point is really: their is some good free open source software out there, and we (as it's supporters) must continue using, improving and recommending it in all our projects. The software will speak for itself!
That's an easy one... (Score:2)
Private Business Too! (Score:3, Interesting)
What's been great lately, private companies are making use of open-source Win32 libraries, and are actively contributing to the pool of Win32 open source applications.
For examples, look at Indy [indyproject.org] and Turbopower [turbopower.com]. There's hundreds more...The main reason, in my mind at least, is that the MPL (Mozilla Public License) has opened up new ways of ensuring intellectual property remains secure, while allowing companies to make use of and develop open software as well.
BNT and WDI (Score:1, Interesting)
Ant, Axis, Tomcat, Xerces, Xalan, Log4J, probably others.. from the Apache project are core components.
The system uses MySQL for its own persistence purposes (it can run on almost any SQL db, but we prefer MySQL)
Also, some experimental/newer components use Castor for XML marshalling/unmarshalling,
the JCSP package (Java Communicating Sequential Processes), JUnit for test first development.
When time permits or the need arises, I try to make useful contributions to the open source projects whos code we use. (finding bugs, making patches, etc..), which I think is the best way for developers to help open source software projects.
Butane.
Kitware - VTK, ITK, CMake (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Kitware - VTK, ITK, CMake (Score:2)
Please stay on topic that you've got (paid) the order to develop open-source systems. Had it specified the type of open-source license?
I just have a suspition that someone just wanted to take money for the contract, comply the order to develop the open-source software and than (after the contact is completed) hijack (fork to close-source) the code in own proprietary purposes. BSDL is very friendly for such cases, isn't it?
Companies are Not Homogeneous (Score:3, Informative)
I work for Lincoln Laboratory and almost every project we do is for the DoD and is paid for by the federal government. The lab is broken into divisions then groups. My group not only uses windows and employs 2 Windows tech support people, but we also have our own solaris network that is bigger than the windows one and 1.5 full time admins.
My group is not alone, many others are similar in the group.
Just because a company uses Windows, doesn't mean they are devoid of *nix, and vice versa.
MITRE Corporation (Score:2)
lame (think sonar), MySQL, samba (smbtar fixes, largefile fixes in client), octave and linux-wlan-ng.
Moreover, our infrastructure teams use OSS extensively. They have a corporate printing system built from LPRng, samba, openldap, and apache. Tons of perl glue. We have some wicked cool scripts for unix desktop users that automagically pick the closest printer to the user as the default.
also, we love RMS (Score:1)
Us MITRE techies are committed. (In more way than one...)
Bug who get's the money? (Score:2)
But do the programmers who spend a lot of time on it see a dime?
Apple (Score:1)
Something to think about (Score:2)
Your software is excellent, while the open source software is very good. When you innovate the open source team just copies what you did.
Now every year you pay taxes thereby supporting the open source guys and paying to make the competition better.
Do get me wrong I think open source has many advantages, but lost in the shuffle and hatred for MS, many small companies get run out of business.
Issues with open source in commercial world (Score:4, Informative)
One issue we confront is that you have to have software tools that play nicely with all the legacy and Microsoft systems out there. Customers aren't going to throw out their existing investment in infrastructure. The open source model almost by definition guarantees that it is actually great for integration with the proprietary world. In fact, Python is especially so [zoteca.com].
The other issue is convincing our customers to "give back to the community." At first they almost always say we have to own the IP. Then we explain to them that they aren't software companies so there is no value to them in that ownership. Then they worry about their competitors getting their hands on it (this isn't an issue obviously with government clients, but they still have hesitations.). In the end of the day, we always manage to educate them on the benefits they will derive in releasing as much as possible back to the open source community. We usually add a clause in the contract which gives them the right to exclude code from being open sourced, but they rarely invoke it. In more commercial environments, there may be proprietary ways of doing things embedded in the software, but that kind of stuff isn't usually amenable to opens sourcing in any case.
Bottom line: open source development is a business both in commercial and government sectors.
Computer System for space programs (in Europe). (Score:3, Informative)
This might not been well received by SUN & co, since space programs have always been a fat niche market for them, but I think that they realise that if it wasn't Linux it would have been Windows (which also is gaining market share in this field, anyway), and they prefer Linux because they can still try to win back the customers.
Now, the space program money comes from tax-payers. I doubt free software programmers will see any of it, but companies like SuSE are getting more work, and this is something. Also, experienced Linux programmers can more easily find a job in the field (if they can stand it).
Re:The Federal branch of the United States (LLC) (Score:3, Interesting)
Hehe! Funny stuff.
No, your rights can be revoked after "due process of law". See the Fifth Amendment.
They can take your property away too (after giving you "just compensation" of course).
So you should say, "What were we before the 5th Amendment?"