Okay, it’s good but, it’s still Open Source and let me explain this a bit if I can. I’ve spent the past 7 years working for the US Federal Government and have been preaching open source the entire time I’ve worked there. Well, we have scored a MAJOR victory. We knew it was going to come when U.S. President Obama talked about wanting open source initiatives in his plan. [1]
Well, it has started. The Federal Times (A small press dedicated to U.S. Federal Agencies) wrote that the GSA (General Services Administration) has approved Google’s package of cloud-computing applications and is the first cloud to be certified by the hard hitting Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). [2]
The U.S. Federal Government has relied on Microsoft for years. Maybe, just maybe this is the beginning of a wide new world for the U.S. Government and Open Source.
[1] http://my.barackobama.com/page/-/HQpress/111307%20Innovation%20fact%20sheet.pdf
[2] http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20100727/IT01/7270305/
I know google isn’t microsoft, but I’m not sure why this is a win for open source? Gmail and google apps are closed web-apps, no?
Please don’t think I’m being overly critical of this move, but I just don’t see it as being very exciting news.
I had the same reaction as @Jim Campbell.
Obama said a lot of things.
A win for Google and loss for Microsoft is a win for Free Software. Anything that erodes the MS Office userbase is a good thing.
“A win for Google and loss for Microsoft is a win for Free Software.” Not quite. What FLOSS code contributions have we seem from the Google Docs/Gmail/etc services? Probably none. So, again, how is this a win for Open Source? People moving from one proprietary service to another is not a win. Just because that other proprietary service provider also does some Open Source stuff does not mean everything it does is good.
Maybe I didn’t make myself as clear as I wanted to. While, Google Apps in themselves are not OpenSource the Google cloud is not limited to a handfull of closed apps. This open the door to the open source projects that Google has to offer as well.
The reason that this is a win is that the U.S. Federal Government is finally giving someone other then Microsoft the time of day. This is the real win. Baby steps my friends, baby steps.
Yet again a good written post coming from you. Thanks!