MS attacking government use of "open source"

Gerry Creager N5JXS n5jxs at tamu.edu
Thu May 23 07:21:38 PDT 2002


It's apparently going to be an interesting battle.  One of the Open 
Source proponents active in this is a retired USAF NCO, who's been a 
computer security consultant to the Pentagon (independent consultant, 
not a Beltway Bandit employee) since he retired, and is a strong enthusiast.

He's been heard to say that the IE and Outlook bugs are significant 
enough to have MS software declared a bona fide security risk...

gerry

Bob Drzyzgula wrote:

> All of us using and supporting Linux in government
> probably need to be somewhat concerned about this. The
> Pentagon at least seems not to have been swayed so far,
> but it's gone far enough for them to pay Mitre for a study
> of the question. I'm not sure that all agencies would
> be this steadfast.
> 
>    "Microsoft Corp. is aggressively lobbying the
>    Pentagon to squelch its growing use of freely
>    distributed computer software and switch to
>    proprietary systems such as those sold by the
>    software giant, according to officials familiar
>    with the campaign."
> 
>    ...
> 
>    "Microsoft has argued that some free-licensing
>    regimes are antithetical to the government's
>    stated policy that moneymaking applications
>    should develop from government-funded research
>    and that intellectual property should be
>    protected."
> 
>    ...
> 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60050-2002May22.html
> 
> --Bob
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-- 
--
Gerry Creager -- gerry at cs.tamu.edu
Network Engineering
Academy for Advanced Telecommunications and Learning Technologies		
Texas A&M University	979.458.4020  (Phone) -- 979.847.8578  (Fax)




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