[NBLUG/talk] #se7en -- http://windows7sins.org/

[Lincoln Peters]

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Jordan
Erickson<jerickson at logicalnetworking.net> wrote:
> What is the possibility (and what would actually be involved) in
> changing those govt. requirements? I mean jeez, this is the govt. we're
> talking about, can't they hire competent Linux folk to take care of
> things and support it? Those laws were most likely created when there
> *was* no open source - if you have the right team, they can fix any
> problem - and would probably save a few tons of cash in the process.
> Reform is a good thing, especially these days. Not easy, but it just
> takes a squeak to get the grease.

I can't speak for the state of California, but I know that the
Department of Defense makes heavy use of Linux already (in fact, the
NSA wrote most of the original code for SELinux).  However, government
tends to be very slow-moving, bureaucracy can get rather tribal at
times (I've had to support some pretty bizarre, over-complicated
setups that can't be replaced because a certain government agent or
agency is too emotionally invested in it), and let's not forget the
amount of influence a lobbyist with a big wallet can have over
virtually every step of the process.

And if that weren't enough, most of the technical people the
government seems to hire (at ALL levels) don't exactly seem to be the
brightest.  I recently ran across a machine that was custom-configured
for a certain branch of the Department of Defense.  It's a Dell
PowerEdge 2950 server with 32GB of RAM, with a custom
security-enhanced build of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, but in the
process of securing it, they installed a 32-bit kernel and turned off
PAE.  As a result, only 4GB of RAM is available on that machine.


-- 
Lincoln Peters
<anfrind at gmail.com>