Friday, September 19, 2008

How can I save the government some money?




We just spent a lot of the government's money to buy software tools and licenses in the hope of building better applications for less cost.


Some of the dollar figures would make your head spin and caused us to analyze other options. One colleague countered every proposal with a freeware option. How about Subversion i/o Perforce? Why don't we use Notepad++ i/o CodeCollaborator?




'free' as in speech versus 'free' as in beer



There is hype from government agencies to use open source and I've seen more projects use Linux operating systems. However, our program is heading the other way. In the interest of streamlining operations and maintenance costs, our data center is 86'ing the SUN servers and adopting a Windows Server standard on Dell and HP servers.



In the same craziness (good logic gone bad), we have to replace perfectly good COTS software interfaces because the original vendor is defunct. We have Information Assurance policies that require each software product to have a current maintenance contract. If you can no longer find a maintenance contract for the rather inert powerhouse program, Corel Draw, then you may be forced to buy/integrate a newer application into your process like Adobe Creative Suite 3.



So the gov't is not interested in free (as in beer) tools, how about free as in speech? The ITAR (Int'l Trade and Regulations) is one deterrent from allowing government agencies to use products compiled by foreign entities. There is inherent security risk in not knowing the details of a compiled application. It doesn't seem that government agencies are promoting the use of freeware for use on government networks or to develop government applications.



In essence, all that the government is promoting is open standards. We are looking for applications using standards-based interfaces that are substitutable and will integrate with other vendor's products. The government is downgrading proprietary products which typically have high licensing fees and high switching costs.



process explorer mark russinovich

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