|
|
| NASCIO Conference Info ~ by Marbux |
 |
|
Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 03:50 PM EDT
|
Over the next few days, Microsoft will have an opportunity to hear what a
group of customer "heavies" want. The National
Association of State Chief Information Officers kicks off its annual
Conference tonight in San Diego. NASCIO membership includes the CIOs of all
50 U.S. states.
If others are interested in attending, conference details
are on the NASCIO web site, but it is a pay-to-get-in event. The event runs today
through Wednesday. One panel discussion on the agenda
for Monday (1:45-3:00 p.m.) may be of particular interest to Groklaw
folk:
Open Source: Is it Really a Free Lunch?
One of the big pluses touted by Open Source advocates is the zero cost
acquisition of Open Source software. But at the end of the day, will
deploying Open Source software be free over time, cost the same, less or
more than proprietary software in your enterprise? If you are considering
employing Open Source in any part of your enterprise this is a must-see
session to understand the economic impact Open Source will have on your
Total Cost of Ownership. Your take away will be real life experiences of
those who have taken the journey and documented all that they have
learned.
Moderator: Peter Quinn, Chief Information Officer, Commonwealth of
Massachusetts
Panelists: Gary Edwards, Founding Member, Oasis OpenDocument
Terry Savage, Chief Information Officer, State of Nevada
Bill Welty, Chief Information Officer, Air Resources Board, State of
California.
Peter Quinn is the director of Massachusetts' Information Technology
Division who recently caused a stir by rejecting Microsoft's XML formats and
adopting OpenDocument XML as a standard for executive branch procurement of
software.
An interview with
Gary Edwards ran last week on Mad Penguin and was linked from Groklaw's News
sidebar. I personally found it revelatory on OpenDocument-related issues
despite having subscribed to OASIS.org newsletters for more than two
years.
Although not commonly known, all 50 states and local governments nationally
plus the Feds are working on an integrated time line to develop standards
for file formats, driven by requirements of E-SIGN, the Electronic Signatures in Global
and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001, et seq. NASCIO is the primary
organization being used to coordinate those efforts. You can bet that
Microsoft will be at the NASCIO conference and that the feedback it obtains
there may well affect Microsoft decisions about supporting OpenDocument.
|
|
|
|
| Authored by: MathFox on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 04:01 PM EDT |
It's an honour to invite your postings unrelated to the article, but related to
Open Source and the Law here. If you have links to external articles, post in
HTML and follow the instructions in red on the "post a comment" page.
---
When people start to comment on the form of a message, it is a sign that they
have problems to accept the truth of the message.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: MathFox on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 04:10 PM EDT |
For Marbux this time. ;)
---
When people start to comment on the form of a message, it is a sign that they
have problems to accept the truth of the message.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 04:11 PM EDT |
Anyone happen to know how much it costs? I couldn't figure it out from the
website[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 04:21 PM EDT |
Does anyone know of a complete CIO listing (with contact info included)?
It would be usefull to have a centrally available list of the CIOs so that
citizens could contact their own state's responsible party to offer some input.
This is a democracy!
In fact, a list for all countries and jurisdictions would be helpful for each
and every respective citizen to use to be able to thoughfully use in order to
convey their concerns.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 04:56 PM EDT |
I hope a few regulars are going to be in attendance.
---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: overshoot on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 05:07 PM EDT |
| Although not commonly known, all 50 states and local governments nationally
plus the Feds are working on an integrated time line to develop standards for
file formats, driven by requirements of E-SIGN, the Electronic Signatures in
Global and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001, et seq. NASCIO is the primary
organization being used to coordinate those efforts. You can bet that Microsoft
will be at the NASCIO conference and that the feedback it obtains there may well
affect Microsoft decisions about supporting OpenDocument.
Microsoft has
already lost this one, because as soon as the focus shifts away from the tool
(MSOffice) to the product (data representations) they lose their
"hostages."
The reason is this: MS has never fully documented their
file formats. In fact, according to the recent WSJ inside view into their
processes, they don't even have internal specs -- the code is sovereign [1]. An
external specification that they have to meet to get Government business would
take away control of their "product," even if it simply codified what they're
already doing.
Which won't happen, either. Thanks to centuries of
open-bidding laws on the books, Government agencies can't just specify "data
must be compatible with whatever Microsoft Corporations ships." The DOJ tried
that under Janet Reno, and the United States Supreme Court smacked them down for
it.
As soon as the various Government agencies woke up to realize that
office software did more than produce printed copies, Microsoft lost their lock.
The one thing that the governments need most -- defined document formatting
that they control -- spikes Microsoft's upgrade treadmill.
[1] This
explains a lot about their reluctance to comply with the EC orders, BTW: the EC
said, "disclose your protocol specifications" and MS said, "we own that code."
The EC probably didn't comprehend that to MS, the code is the protocol
spec. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: tiger99 on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 05:14 PM EDT |
| .... I wish I lived in the US. It would be fun occasionally attending one of
these meetings, or for that matter a good episode of one of the SCOundrel
trials. But on the other hand, PJ and those who do attend and write reports do
a great job of keeping us informed. And Dan Bricklin's recording of the
Massachussets thing was fantastic. So despite not being able to be there, I am
looking forward with great anticipation to this. I wish we were more open in
the UK and had public meetings to debate serious issues more frequently. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 05:15 PM EDT |
| http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode15/usc_sec_15_00007001----000-.htm
l
(d) Retention of contracts and records
(1) Accuracy and
accessibility
If a statute, regulation, or other rule of law requires that a
contract or other record relating to a transaction in or affecting interstate or
foreign commerce be retained, that requirement is met by retaining an electronic
record of the information in the contract or other record that—
(A)
accurately reflects the information set forth in the contract or other record;
and
(B) remains accessible to all persons who are entitled to access by
statute, regulation, or rule of law, for the period required by such statute,
regulation, or rule of law, in a form that is capable of being accurately
reproduced for later reference, whether by transmission, printing, or
otherwise.
....
(e) Accuracy and ability to retain contracts and other
records
Notwithstanding subsection (a) of this section, if a statute,
regulation, or other rule of law requires that a contract or other record
relating to a transaction in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce be in
writing, the legal effect, validity, or enforceability of an electronic
record of such contract or other record may be denied if such electronic record
is not in a form that is capable of being retained and accurately reproduced for
later reference by all parties or persons who are entitled to retain the
contract or other record.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 06:01 PM EDT |
If the officials of this meeting don't supply a kit then someone should be in
the parking lot with a table to hand stuff out...
Is there a technology expo/floor show (vendors) at the same time in the same
location? If so, then K12LTSP.org and other open source booths shouls be there
too!
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Pseudonym on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 07:50 PM EDT |
Nobody ever claimed that Open Source is free-as-in-beer, or even cheap. Open
Source is free-as-in-speech.
Open Source and Open Standards don't mean
you don't pay money. It means that you are not tied to a vendor who refuses to
fix bugs on time, who refuses to add the features you want, who refuses to
support your existing hardware, and who forces you to upgrade when they want you
to.
It may even cost you a little more if you have to migrate and retrain
your people. Nobody claims otherwise. But in return, you get to call the
shots. You get freedom. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: k12linux on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 07:52 PM EDT |
A local (to my state) municipality runs virtually it's entire city covernment IS
systems on Linux. Last time I visited them they were supporting everything
(desktops, networking, servers... everything) with just 3 people. And one of
those pretty much just handled departmental administration stuff (not computer
admin.) They reported that their annual budget is less than 1/2 of the average
for cities their size.
When a new departmental manager comes on board and wants to switch to Windows
(because it's what they know, not because it's needed) the IT ppl give them a
breakdown of the known costs (Windows licenses, new PCs, etc) needed to move
from Linux. So far nobody has wanted to spend that much money out of
"their" department just to change the OS they use.
Some of the things they are doing and able to do make a person step back and say
"Whoa.. why aren't all government entities using Linux?"
If the people attending this conference have the same kind of results to share
it should really shake up MS big time.
---
- SCO is trying to save a sinking ship by drilling holes in it. -- k12linux[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 09:05 PM EDT |
for the closed session between the CIOs and corporate CLCs following the Open
Source discussion on Monday. This must be a hot topic to be scheduled like this.
It will be the MA tech council meeting all over again. Microsoft on one side and
Novell, IBM, Adobe, et al on the other. How delicious!
Wonder who MS will send in for this one since it is one CIO per state and one
person per CLC?
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 16 2005 @ 11:54 PM EDT |
There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Open Source is "free as in libre", but that doesn't mean it will be
"free as in $0 dollars" to use it in your business (even if you
obtained the software itself for $0). You're deploying this software into a
complex IT environment with lots of servers and hundreds or thousands of user
desktops. Of course it will need configuration, maintenance, support, and some
security patching. You'll need IT experts to do all this and they at least, are
not free.
Some things to consider are:
(1) What will the TCO be for the open source software, as compared to the
alternative software choices you could deploy? Will it cost more or less to
support than a particular proprietary alternative? Remember to include ALL the
yearly license fees, support contracts, etc., for both the open source and the
proprietary choices.
(2) If your business becomes dependent on this software, what are the risks
that it won't be available in the future when you need it? For this, open
source has a clear advantage--if the vendor goes belly-up, you can use in-house
experts (or hire some) to keep the software working. Since you have all the
source, they can make any necessary changes. Proprietary software has the
disadvantage that if the vendor disappears, the software will probably be
abandoned and you won't be able to make any changes to it.
(3) Can you do your own risk analysis or security maintenance on the software?
With open source, your in-house experts can review the software's innards
looking for bugs, security holes, etc. You can modify anything in particular
that bothers you (e.g. disable certain features which worry you from a security
point of view). You can even develop your own security patches for the software
in-house, if you need a critical vulnerability fixed and the vendor doesn't
supply the patch you need in a timely fashion. With proprietary software, you
can't do any of these things--you're totally dependent on the software vendor.
(4) Lock-in and openness--if you choose proprietary software with secret data
formats, from a vendor known for its repeated and ongoing efforts to "lock
in" customers to its software using any available means, you are going to
be heavily dependent on that vendor in the future, and they will be able to
manipulate you into accepting things that are bad for your business, because
your data will be all locked up in their formats and the "pain
threshold" to escape from their software will be too high. Contrast this
with open source software that uses standardized, open data formats. Your data
is always accessible, you know the format so you can write tools to do whatever
you want with it in the future (e.g. migrate it into a different format 10 years
from now). You even have source code that implements the reading and writing of
this format already, because it's part of the open-source software you're using!
Open source has a huge advantage over proprietary software here, in that it
lets businesses keep *control* of their data, whereas the proprietary
alternatives try to wrest the control away from you and co-opt it for
themselves.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: blacklight on Monday, October 17 2005 @ 08:17 AM EDT |
If the various agencies of the Federal government want to find out how to deploy
Open Source technologies on a large scale including how to get them to coexist
with Microsoft Windows, there should be a wealth of technical expertise they can
mine in the armed forces, the NSA and the national labs, for example.
At this point in time, I doubt that the big name public universities such as the
University of California, the University of Illinois and the University of Texas
- I doubt that they can operate without Open Source. The individual agencies of
the individual states should be able to rely on their public universities for
their need of Open Source expertise.
American business is gradually getting used to Open Source and adopting it, but
the freeloader factor that in large part motivates this adoption makes me pretty
jaundiced about it. However, it is this adoption that results in the stress
testing of Open Source products in millions of additional production
environments - And feedback from the stress testing of these products can only
improve their quality, to the benefit of all. I would suggest that those
American businesses who save a mint on Open Source should consider contributing
back some of their savings in cash or in kind to their favorite Open Source
projects.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: DaveJakeman on Tuesday, October 18 2005 @ 07:12 AM EDT |
Gary
Edwards, one of the panelists, has already posted a couple of very
insightful related comments on Groklaw.
Let's hope there's more to come.
Welcome, Gary.
---
Should one hear an accusation, first look to see
how it might be levelled at the accuser. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 18 2005 @ 11:25 AM EDT |
"Open Source: Is it Really a Free Lunch?"
No but it is a lunch where everyone is invited and can bring their own food if
they want and even share recipes on how they made their food. This way no one
starves and we all have a good time. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
