[SGVLUG] Open source under attack in the Senate?

[Christopher Smith]

The notion that you can legislate this with a series of bureaucratic
rules is just... insane.

Agencies are tight for money, so they have an incentive to avoid
wasting it. It doesn't always play out that way, but the solution to
that is to have good management in the agency, not more rules. I have
little doubt that almost any programmer at the NSA would do a better
job at deciding whether to build/extend/buy than a rule written by the
majority of the senate.

--Chris

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Doug <dougvargas at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Yeah, it seems that this isn't so much about the government wanting to shut down involvement in FOSS projects as it is them wanting to save money and engage with the public and/or with private industry. The gov has no problem with the nsa building foss tools as long as they're significantly different from existing tools, and if they aren't they should be integrated into other foss projects. I guess the gov sees it as a waste of money to develop tools that already exist, foss or otherwise. It seems like the nsa is just annoyed because they think their project can stand on its own and most people seem to agree with that.
>
> Christopher Smith <cbsmith at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>For the record, they are pushing to use other open source products. But still... This will not end well.
>>
>>--Chris
>>
>>On Jul 18, 2012, at 8:52 AM, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
>>
>>> OK, that's a terrible headline, but it does seem that the Senate
>>> is trying to shut down government use and participation in
>>> one particular open source project because a commercial
>>> product serving the same need is available:
>>>
>>> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/nsa-accumulo-google-bigtable/
>>> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/18/0238241/nsa-mimics-google-angers-senate
>>>
>>> Please have a read.  Maybe we should get together and write our
>>> senators on this.



-- 
Chris