Transparently Securing the Homeland
July 22nd, 2003In a thread at MacCentral entitled DHS had little choice but to sign Microsoft deal, one articulate poster had this to say about why the Department of Homeland Security should have considered open source (as an alternative to Windows):
The transparency of open source is what provides its security. The idea is to throw daylight on flaws so they can get fixed. Of course you don’t need to be a Democrat (although it helps) to realize that information openness is not exactly the Bush Administration’s forte. This Administration has such polarized contempt for anyone who doesn’t already agree with them that they rarely make any effort to objectively demonstrate the truth or functionality of anything they’re doing. I also suspect the government loves to be able to count on its contractors (and vice versa) for mutual ass-covering in the event of screwups, and they can never have that kind of relationship with the open-source community.
Well said, stranger.
July 22nd, 2003 at 8:56 pm
Loathe though I am to stick up for the Bush administration, to ignore a possible, reasonable explanation would be to entertain the very contempt the “stranger” describes.
At the moment, I think that a general concensus of the open-source “movement” is one of a loosely-woven, global network of geeks and hackers (the positive connotation). That’s probably not terribly far from the truth, though the open-source bandwagon is parked in some lofty corporate IT departments. Still, the government has to weigh things against future adaptability and reliability, and maybe they don’t think that the open-source model has proven its reliability.
It’s just a thought. I’m no expert, and, honestly, I don’t agree with what I wrote. However, it’s conceivable that that’s where the DHS is coming from, and, if so, there’s logic at the base.
July 22nd, 2003 at 10:57 pm
As right as rain there’s probably some kind of logic to it, but it might not be correct or at least well-informed. Unix has been around for 4 decades where it’s prospered and adapted, whereas Windows basically matured in the 90’s and become the ubiquitous/patchy security risk that it is.
And I can’t help but think that security is the most important thing to consider when you’re the Dept. of Homeland Security, which makes me wonder if this administration knows something that everybody else in the IT world doesn’t.
But so much for conspiracy theory, this isn’t freakin’ Slashdot! Thanks for the post.
July 23rd, 2003 at 4:53 pm
The truth is out there. No, over there. A little to the right. Yeah, that’s it.
For some reason, the Unix angle (not necessarily open-source) completely escaped me, not unlike those times when you find the spelling of “cat” to be odd. Maybe it’s a matter of the perceived “sexiness” of the computing product.
July 23rd, 2003 at 6:32 pm
Yeah, I’m not being entirely accurate with that last statement. I’m sort of thinking of Linux as Open Source Unix, which it is. But what could be sexier than Mac OS X? The eye of the beholder…