Mark,
On 28/12/11 13:31, Mark Elkins wrote:
Are you willing to supply some more info about this because as far as
I know HMG still want to use Open Source? For example I am organizing
a series of internal HM Government events for Senior Civil servants on
Open Source as Chair of the BCS Open Source SG (OSSG). The first of
which will take place in February 2012. Therefore your experience
sounds like it would be of interest to the HMG staff I am dealing with
setting up these events. In other words they want to know examples
about barriers to adoption of Open Source by HMG.
One of the main issues in this department is the insistence on security
accreditation and the push to use CESG approved products. The problem
with OS is that you need time and money to submit the product for
evaluation and gain some meaningful EAL certification; individual
projects cannot afford this. SUSE enterprise and RedHat Enterprise are
listed there albeit older versions as those organisations can see some
benefit of funding this. I wanted to pilot a system on Ubunutu LTS with
SE and use MySQL (or Postgres) instead of MSSQ; you end up spending a
great deal of time showing how it can be (1) secure (2) supportable.
We are in a laughable position where people will, when faced with a need
for a routing MTA in a DMZ, select exchange and have to put in 2 ADs and
and exchange box just to provide the MTA; just because "you never get
sacked for usign M$".
I am interested in your BCS events and if you send me the programme I
will forward it to the "Enterprise Architect" civil servants for info.
Just for the record I've looked at this recent statement about Open
Standards and feel its more about getting the statement bullet proof
as opposed to actually dropping intention to make greater use of (Free
and) Open Source.
Or also allowing the vested interests to lobby it more to water it down
- perhaps I am cynical.
Cheers,
Simon
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