Lockheed Martin's Melvin Greer, Senior Fellow and Chief Strategist, Cloud Computing, noted that the contractor community's development of internal expertise in using open source software will help the government in its adoption of OSS. “When Vivek Kundra, the U.S. Chief Information Officer, unveiled his 25-point implementation plan for IT reform, one of his top initiatives … Continue reading Lockheed Martin on Open Source and the Cloud
Obama, McNealy, and Cognitive Dissonance
Gene Quinn's recent post titled "What Happened to the Obama Open Source Initiative?" criticizes, in turns, open source software, Scott McNealy, the Obama administration, and "business newbies" who want to use the open source software model. Early in the Administration, President Obama asked Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, to prepare a report on … Continue reading Obama, McNealy, and Cognitive Dissonance
A Truly Open VistA
The VA has released a draft RFP to create a new open source project around their electronic health record system, VistA. This is a landmark event for both the VA and the open source community. The need for cheap and robust EHR systems is clear, and the VA has one of the leading platforms. VistA’s … Continue reading A Truly Open VistA
The Hazards of Open Data Exceptionalism
The prospect of funding cuts for e-Gov initiatives like data.gov, USAspending.gov and friends is worrying. Everyone should join the Sunlight Foundation's effort to Save the Data. At the same time, this is a good opportunity for reflection. There's no doubt that the proliferation of Open Government websites has been a great first step for transparency … Continue reading The Hazards of Open Data Exceptionalism
Johanna Blakely on Free Culture, Fashion, and CentOS
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf [I'll start this by reiterating that these are my own thoughts, and have nothing whatever to do with Red Hat.] This presentation is great overview of the counterintuitive influence of intellectual rights laws on the fashion industry. It's also cogent argument against the fiction that innovation only happens in the context of property. It's … Continue reading Johanna Blakely on Free Culture, Fashion, and CentOS
Adding feeds to rss2email via Firefox
I posted a while ago about giving up Google Reader in favor of rss2email. There are many wonderful things about getting your news feeds via email, but subscribing to new feeds in rss2email is a little clunky. Ideally, you could click on that handsome RSS icon in the status bar of your browser and have … Continue reading Adding feeds to rss2email via Firefox
Future Proof Your Software Practice With Open Source
Here's a presentation I did for Washington Technology. I don't remember doing this, but it's nice that they recorded it in the very open ogg format. Future Proof Your Software Practice With Open Source
Remembering Roger Lane
Roger Lane passed away last week. I knew him as the impossibly level-headed and fair-minded mourning father of Jodie Lane. Although we had common cause in the months immediately following her death, we didn't talk much. He was concerned with his and his family's healing, and I was preoccupied with the reform efforts. We didn't … Continue reading Remembering Roger Lane
Good design is hard on all of us.
Tim Lee is, for my money, one of the most reasonable and thoughtful tech policy essayists we have. His latest, "Open User Interfaces Suck" got my attention, because he hits me right where I live. In his usual, respectful, level-headed way, he claims that open systems (like the open source development process I love so … Continue reading Good design is hard on all of us.
Citizen and government collaboration: let’s work it out.
Over the last couple years, many of us involved with open source in government have had discussions about what it means for citizen coders to become involved in state, local and federal efforts. There are all kinds of legal, ethical, and logistics questions that haven't been answered. Everyone seems to be solving them individually, but … Continue reading Citizen and government collaboration: let’s work it out.
a technology job is no excuse 