[PLUG] Oregonian letter, HB 2892

[Steven A. Adams]

On Sat, 2003-05-03 at 11:15, Jon Jacob wrote:
> I thought he made some interesting points.  However, it did leave me
> wondering about several things.
> 
> 1) How pervasive is OSS in the State offices?  He never gave details
> about how many servers, desktops, or whatever run OSS versus those that
> don't.

Theses numbers are available on a department level. For example, DAS
will be able to tell you what they have but is not likely to have the
numbers for DHS. 

I can tell you that our department has several Linux boxes running OSS.
I can also tell you that the largest platform in my department contains
an engine that is dedicated to Linux. This engine has the capacity of
running a maximum of 30000 Linux servers and there is documented
evidence of like platforms, in other states, running 8000+ Linux
production servers (see oss.software.ibm.com/linux390). Our first
opportunity, if successful, will replace roughly 300 workstations with
OSS clients. All of this has the blessing of state IS and Business
management. Production CVS and other infrastructure service requests are
coming in rapidly.

> 2) He is an assistant sys admin, and therefore may not have an eagle eye
> view of all systems.  With this in mind, he states it may cost more
> money to mandate something that many sys admins already do.  If they do
> use OSS, this is a good point; however, since he never explains how
> pervasive OSS is in the State government, we never get a clear picture
> of how much would be spent vesus how much would be saved.

I am a Senior Systems Admin with the state and I don't look at what unit
has which OS. We tend to look at what fits best for the business need
and deploy that OS and app. Also, I know of no "Eagle" that watches over
all departments and counts what OS or Application is installed and
compares the numbers (this is not to say that an "Eagle" does not
exist). The state departments and agencies are big on working standards
that they can maintain and manage. Finding the number of devices using
"Standard A" and those using "Standard B" should, I guess, be possible
although, considering the volume, this would be a daunting and expensive
task.

> 3) Finally, he states that the definition of OSS that the bill provides
> is very "restrictive".  Is this true?  I have not seen the definition of
> OSS provided in the bill.

It would be interesting to see what the bill ended up looking like after
amendment. Is there a link to the finished bill?

> Basically, his overall argument is "let the admins decide".  Not really
> a bad argument, however the role of government is to make policy and
> part of this policy is to run efficiently.  Those who advocate OSS want
> the State to make policy that is uniform and clear.  If all admins do
> what they want without direction, we would be left with systems that do
> not work in concert and are very inefficent.  So, I am somewhat
> sympathetic toward the idea of input from the admin, but to advocate no
> policy on the matter leaves the State wasting money where they could
> actually be saving it.
> 
> Just some thoughts, for what its worth.

Let the admins decide is not going to make it here. The task is actually
to prove that an OSS solution works, is manageable, stable and cost
effective. The task then shifts to selling the solution to the business
units that have to use the product in their daily operation. All of this
is about the same as it is in private sector corporations.

-- 
Steven A. Adams <stevea at nwtechops.com>