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| U.S. Gov't Still Penguin Shy | |
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2:00 a.m. June 12, 2002 PDT
(page 2) In the Department of Transportation, Linux is used "on a dedicated communications server at the Coast Guard," according to Bill Mosley, a public affairs specialist at the Transportation Department. Mosley stressed, however, that "the DOT is moving towards Windows 2000 and Window XP for most applications." So is the Navy. It plans to use Windows 2000 in its next-generation aircraft carrier, expected to be finished in 2008. The Department of Justice uses Linux in a limited capacity. A Justice Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said: "The department's information technology needs are currently met through various operating systems including Linux. However, Linux is used to support only a limited number of operational systems within the department today. Several IT program managers are testing Linux for possible future use." The Department of Commerce admitted using Linux extensively -- but only on its Web servers. "Linux is gaining ground like wildfire," said Tom Pyke, chief information officer for the Commerce Department. "We're finding that Linux does a good job for servers that have primarily static pages." The Department of Commerce has over 40,000 computers and 360 Web servers. It has an annual IT budget of $1 billion. By far, the biggest factor driving Linux in the Commerce Department is an open-source licensing agreement that makes the source code freely available and allows agencies to use the software without any fees. "Our interest is primarily in performance and cost for server function," Pyke said. "The two of those together contributed to our decision to use Linux." Other countries seem more enthusiastic than the United States. The German government said two years ago it would rethink its use of Microsoft products and turn more to open-source offerings. Red Hat, which sells a widely used version of Linux, counts the European Commission and agencies in Germany and France among its customers. Open-source software is a generic term applied to programs for which the source code is available -- but it may still cost money. Free software is a subset of open-source software, and generally means that the software is available to use at no cost, subject to license agreements like the GNU General Public License. The Linux operating system, sometimes called the GNU Linux operating system is free software. << Back 2 of 2
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