Andrew Plato wrote: >They can already do these things. The state could, for example, buy a >ton >of Netscreen firewalls (as an example). After a while they could >decide that Netscreen is a pain in the arse to deal with. So they could >call >me up and I could come out and help them make their netscreens work >better. > >Why do I or the customer need source code to do this? We can >support the products as is and all is peachy. > Because I'm not talking about commodity software like firewalls (which I've said about six times). I'm talking about large, custom-built software like the Portland water utility system. The Netscreen example is irrelevant. >But commodity products have one huge advantage over custom built stuff: >they're >everywhere. Training is widely available, and knowledge is easier to >come by. > That is also irrelevant. It is not about commodity vs. custom. Sure, use commodity where ever you can. But tell me, where does one buy a commodity driver's license management infrastructure? Thought so :) The State needs to go custom when building large State infrastructure, and my ONLY argument is that the State should mandate open source licensing of the resulting system when they procure custom systems. Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. Chief Scientist, WireX http://wirex.com/~crispin/ Security Hardened Linux Distribution: http://immunix.org Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 01:02:44 PDT