Oregon Government Supporting Open Source

amountlad writes "In a pair of articles released today on N4N.org, Oregon continues to lead the way in government open source adoption in the USA. The Oregon State University's Open Source Lab will host a Government Open Source Conference in October. The GOSCON has strong support from within the state government. The State's Department of Administrative Services released a white paper detailing their use of Asterisk for audio conferencing for more than 500 conferences a week. The set-up includes a web-based interface for judges to manage recording the hearings. In doing so the State joins Metro, a Portland area regional government which uses Asterisk along side its Beowulf Cluster."

I wonder...

[Black Parrot]

...whether proximity to the state of Washington has anything to do with it.

Open source + no hardware innovation: reusability?

[Sheetrock]

Before the advent of the automated recording and transfer process the OAH Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) conducted hearings using their PBX built-in conference features and recording using a desktop phone recording system. While functional, the system was not able to grow to match the OAH's needs. By utilizing a combination of existing conference bridge infrastructure and open source software, DVS was able to provide a feature-rich centralized solution for minimal expense.

One of the great things about open source is that it offers a way for business and non-business organizations and individuals to leverage the power of existing equipment for very little additional expense (to wit, additional peripherals or upgrades necessary to run the software) rather than investing the money into a solution they're just going to have to throw away shortly down the road.

With the increasing price of oil, I can't help wondering what the face of computing is going to look like five or ten years down the line. The average computer uses as much as seventeen swimming pools worth of coal to run on any given day. Much of this is spent on wasteful peripherals we could do without, such as fancy 3D graphics cards or optical mice, but even more is being spent on processing power well beyond the needs of the average user.

Inefficiencies in microcomponent fabrication mean that a great deal of the electricity that goes into your computer is given off as heat. Techniques such as reversible or quantum computing hold much promise in the future for putting more energy into computation but today it is up to the consumer to safeguard the environment.

In a way, the argument is the same as with vehicles -- most people don't need a SUV or a top-of-the-line system but many choose to get them to compensate for inadequacies or because of marketing -- but with computers at least it is impossible to argue you are "safer" for having a faster system. Indeed, you are more likely to run viruses or worms without realizing it because you don't notice the hit in operating performance.

I've noticed that, between the advances in open source and the levelling off of true innovation in hardware design, I've been holding on to computer equipment longer and longer these days. Oh sure, I have to fix a power supply here and a fan there, but besides slack engineering standards from software companies there is little reason to keep up with the hardware treadmill... and at least one compelling reason not to.

Re:I wonder...

[poopdeville]

No. As far as I can see, OSU's program is just run by enthusiastic faculty. The state government is interested because of constant budget shortfalls.

Open Source

[CSHARP123]

What You Will Gain from Attending: Hear from and meet Industry Experts on the forefront of the industry Gain a clearer understanding of what Open Source is Hear about how Open Source is used today at the state and local government level Gain exposure to case studies in summary of systems and applications in government Learn about Intellectual Property and other Legal Issues Listen to a panel of experts provide diverse perspective on public policy Participate in interactive sessions with their peer organizations Network with their peers

Looking at the list, I was thinking, education is first step. Not many managers know about linux (even if they knew, they may be sacred of using some unknown OS). These kind of seminars should help them. Instead of charging money for these, why not linux vendors(like RedHat, Novell and others) offer these things for free.

Re:I wonder about Microsoft's opinion of this?

[pixel fairy]

they tried that with the oregon school district, and also demanded "one million dollars" (a year) (which they couldnt afford)

pulled a new smile out of thier slimy assholes when an army of volunteers showed up to convert the district to linux...

Re:Not ALL of Oregon Govt.

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised.

Drop by your datacenter and see what your techs are using.
(Well, walk up carefully and quietly or they'll scurry away before you get too close...)

At our Agency (in the State or Oregon), we use open source mostly for web services and security tools.

We have alot of Apache around. Mostly set up and working before we casually mention to management that it is open source.

Although, being a Novell shop, it's much easier now that we can say we are ordering another fully supported Novell server.

But I've tried the Linux Desktop and OpenOffice route with no success. I did get managers to come to a demo of StarOffice, but only because it costs money. :-)

Interesting tid bit. Oregon is setting up a centralized Data Center (don't get me started on this one), but the manager they hired has history setting up a datacenter which used, in his words, "Quite a lot of open source" back in the dot com era. And although the business drifted away, he was impressed with open source.

So, who knows...

State or Oregon IT worker...
 

Re:Not even close

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, as someone who was closely involved in the school system in Oregon at that time, what happened was the schools started to use OpenOffice instead of MS Office, and to retaliate, Microsoft threatened to sue for EULA infringment (not all copies of Windows in use were legal, at least in my district), since an investigation would have been disastrous at that time (due to the illegal copies). As a result, the school system spent all the money they had saved by using OpenOffice on making their systems 100% legit. Microsoft still got the money, but you can bet that the next time a new MS Office around, they'll have lost Oregon schools out to OpenOffice.

Re:Whats up with the flamers?

[killjoe]

It's an organized effort by Microsoft, MS employees, Consultants and other vendors who sell MS products to spread FUD about open source here on slashdot.

Don't take it too hard though, you should see the kinds of things they say over at gotdotnet. Over here they try the old "I really like linux but it's not ready for your grandma" or "I am not a Microsoft fan but XP never crashes" approaches which are designed to be less confrontational.

Inevitably they will all call you a zealot if you disagree with them though. To them anybody who has a different experience with linux or who does not like windows is a zealot.