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I don’t think the government is big fan of open source either. They mostly worry about support.

• eru 16y ago
  Indeed. I was only talking about the original comment's argument, not about the reality of government.
• daviding 16y ago
  They are warming to it, especially when it is offered by solid companies who can provide the support. The 'services not licenses' business model of a lot of OS suppliers actually works quite well with Govt IT. The downside is that the existing players are huge (due to large contracts) and hard to dislodge. It is getting better though (I spent some time building http://apps.gov http://apps.gov if you want a sort of overview of the type of 'free market' that is trying to be provided to federal agencies here).
• protomyth 16y ago
  Technically, to the US government Windows is open source.
  • eru 16y ago
    Yes, but that doesn't mean they get a community of people pouring over the source code.
    • protomyth 16y ago
      For the US government, a community isn't nearly as important as having someone to blame. Same seems to go for a lot of companies, unfourtunely.
    • gaius 16y ago
      That "community" goes by the name of The NSA.
• spot 16y ago
  The two are intimately related. With open source, you can always get support even after the company has ditched the product.
• duffbeer703 16y ago
  I don't think you know what you are talking about. Google "dod open source".