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You’re making the assumption that only private, one-man programming shops will can or will provide support for Linux. It’s a fun argument to make, but it’s a false one. Red Hat, Novell, IBM, and plenty of other companies have the capacity to provide support on the solutions they sell.

This is exactly what I spoke against, people who think implementation cost is nothing more than the cost of not buying Windows.

Let’s just ignore the costs of implenenting a new system, porting over to finding new applications to replace the windows-only ones, converting any documents not compatible with the open source versions of an app, training people to use the new os, downtime, configuration, etc etc shall we?

Clearly the ONLY implementation cost is not buying Windows…. riiiiight…

Windows and Office are in heavy use in the majority of both home and office systems, chances are anybody who signs up for a job working with systems already knows how to use them. Linux completely operated differently, and requires far far more complex knowledge to skillfully operate, or fix anything that goes wrong.

And if there has not been an incentive yet in the Linux community to make it standard to have apps work form distro to distro then there would already be one. The government isn’t magically going to make such a thing possible. Face it, Linux is fragmented.

Imagine the matinence cost of constantly fixing something that breaks down in Linux and having to hire a coder to change the source because you can’t use your contract with Microosft or Sun or whoever to get them to fix it for free.

Your thinking is far too wishful and whymsical, as well as ignores anything negative with Linux.

Show me one “Linux worked perfectly for me” story and I will show you 25 “Linux didn’t work with anything” stories for each one.

Unless every programmer strictly follows standards, eventually down the line it will be difficult to follow the code and possibly easier to just start over.

I also can’t see the government allowing somebody to developer something in closed-source for them, thats like the government agreeing somebody to build a state of the art facility and not monitering the building at all in case he slips in a backdoor.

Implementation costs? Make it so the next reinstall of Windows is now an installation of Linux.

Training? The costs would be comparable to those of implementing Office 2007 because it too requires training. As for the OS, there could be an initiative to create a standard System Configuration Tool (Control Center or whatever) that would let you jump from distro to distro. Plus, when 7 arrives, people will also need training, don’t you think (especially if the point of departure is XP).

Maintenance cost? Surely you jest! Imagine the costs of maintenance going down simply by not needing as much antivirus software as you need today.

Making systems speak to each other? Think Yahoo! Pipes and you’ll get how easier it would be to communicate between agencies or branches.

Most importantly though is the fact that American Workers will be encouraged to participate on this, no doubt, creating a wealth of job opportunities.

But there are gobs of special-purpose systems operating within the government. These closed-source systems might not have any support if the original manufacturer closes shop, which might require a full-blown bid process on a replacement system. If those kinds of systems can be implemented using open source software, any number of capable developers can review the code and make updates or improvements.

The DoD has been using open source software for a long time:
http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/20/cz_eb_0620linux.html
And they’ve recently set up their own software repository:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=347
(This was news to me, too. Cool!)
The NSA wrote most of the Security Enhanced Linux extensions which are now widely adopted.
http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/
Research labs use open source software.

There’s a lot more to open source software than just “Linux on the desktop”.

Over the long term, I believe it to be the case that open source software can successfully drive down support costs. A contract might be awarded to a systems developer/integrator to design and implement a specific package. If that contractor later closes shop, or if they’re found to be in violation of the terms of the contract, another developer/integrator can be hired to maintain the existing system. The replacement will have access to the source, and minimize disruption in operations.

No, this won’t work in every situation, but neither am I advocating the wholesale adoption of open source software across all segments of the government. As I said in the post, I think the administration — federal, as well as state and local — would do well to consider open source software in general in order to identify those areas where it can provide specific benefits.

People only seem to factor in the cost of not purchasing closed source software, never considering the cost of implementation, training, and matinence of such software, especially the switch over from a closed source system. They only seem to factor in the cost of buying software that the majority already have expirence with and use.

Open Source software in general is far more difficult to use than it’s closed source counterparts and far too fragmented.

You think its annoying that Windows 7 will have about 6 versions? (Although honestly the average consumer will only really see about two). Enjoy choosing from the literally hundreds of Linux distributions…. good luck getting everybody to agree on one and which desktop manager to use, as well as making sure everything works.

If they really want to reduce costs, make it transparent, and make ti easy for everyone to use like they claim, then sticking with the currently implemented closed source system would be the way to do this, not starting over with a closed source system that is anything BUT transparent and usually lacks support for half your hardware, editing config files for hours is not what most people consider transparent.