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July 16, 2009
Open Source Software - Government Agencies Starting to Use
Article on how the US Postal Service and others in government are beginning to embrace less costly open source software alternatives in an effort to trim costs. In one case it also involves migrating from Solaris to SUSE so not just the mainframes impacted.
Agencies open up to open-source software
By GCN Staff
Jul 15, 2009
The U.S. Postal Service is the latest government agency to embrace open-source software in an attempt to lower its information technology operating costs by standardizing its mainframe-based tracking system on the open-source — and less expensive — Linux operating system.
The Postal Service is moving 1,300 Sun Solaris midrange servers to a Hewlett-Packard Linux environment, using Novell’s SUSE Linux on the mainframe and distributed computing platforms to forge greater interoperability between the two environments.
Other agencies that are using open-source software include:
The Homeland Security Department, which is funding a program that will help federal, state and local agencies better understand their options for using open-source software.
The Defense Information Systems Agency, which is planning to open source a suite of programs that it developed for administrative tasks. The agency has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the Open Source Software Institute to help release the source code of the programs.
The Defense Department, which launched the Forge.mil Web site earlier this year for developers to work on open-source software projects specifically for DOD.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which has established a Web site for open-source projects developed by center personnel for mission needs.
Posted by Staff at July 16, 2009 01:55 PM