[PLUG] the plight of Beaverton Library

[Kevin Theobald]

Rich Shepard writes:

 >   I accessed the Multnomah County library with a Web browser just a couple
 > of weeks ago. For whatever reason, telneting to dyna from a virtual terminal
 > didn't want to work. The browser did.

I don't know about dyna in particular.  Obviously it's a dumb
terminal-oriented system, right?  Did you use a VT100 emulator?
That's what most of them expect.

BTW, I sent an e-mail to the library (librarymail at ci.beaverton.or.us)
suggesting they consider switching to Linux (appended below).  It was
a general address (off their website -- they don't know about munging
addresses) so they told me they were forwarding it to their tech
planning group.  If anyone else is inclined to write, don't mention
this letter or they'll write it off as a campaign.

Kevin

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I'm a resident of Hillsboro who regularly uses the Washington County
libraries (Shute Park, Tanasbourne, and Beaverton).  While visiting
the Beaverton library yesterday, I saw notices about the computers
being down due to the worm attacks.  I would like to suggest a way to
improve the security of the library's computers, as well as cut costs.
That is to migrate its computers from Microsoft Windows to Linux.

As your IT department probably knows, the recent worm attacks
exploited a vulnerability in the core Microsoft Windows operating
system.  But this is not an isolated incident.  View any of the
websites devoted to computer security, and you'll see the vast
majority of the security advisories pertain to vulnerabilities in
Windows systems.  There are many reasons why Microsoft has such a poor
security record, too many to go into here.  But suffice it to say that
people running Linux and Unix machines with a modest amount of
security knowledge have not had any problems.

Another reason to switch as many machines as possible to Linux would
be enormous cost savings.  The Beaverton library has dozens of
computers just for public use, not to mention the ones used by the
staff.  Most of these machines are just used for browsing and perusing
the library catalog.  These functions can be performed just as well by
systems based on free software (Linux or FreeBSD, for instance),
saving thousands of dollars in licensing costs in a single library
alone.  Furthermore, switching to Linux can lead to hardware savings
as well, as it is much easier to strip a Linux machine down to only
its essential applications.  This means that Linux clients can
typically run fine on older hardware which would not be fast enough to
run a current version of Windows.

An additional savings of Linux would be eliminating the administrative
costs of license bookkeeping.  As Oregon's schools found out last
year, Microsoft likes to spring surprise audits on large
organizations, knowing that given enough machines, they can usually
find a few in which the paper licenses have been lost, in which case
they can use the threat of a lawsuit to coerce a new licensing deal
which is favorable to them.  Are YOUR licenses all in order?

I know several people in the Washington County area who would be
interested in studying what could be done to lower the library's costs
while improving its security.  Please reply to this e-mail if you
think you would be interested.

Sincerely,

Kevin Theobald
Hillsboro