[lug] IP: Open source in government

[J. Wayde Allen]

I don't see much difference between deployment of Linux in the private
sector versus the government sector.  The same fears, misunderstandings,
and conservatism exists in both camps.  People are people.  However, it
probably does depend on where you look.  I'd be willing to guess that
statistically, you are just as likely to find Linux on the desk of your
Congress person as you will on the desk of a corporate CEO.

The government has actually provided a number of fairly significant
contributions to open source projects.  Don't forget the network driver
development done by Donald Becker at NASA.  Without this, your Linux box
would have a hard time talking to the net.  Then there was the development
of the Beowulf concept by the same group of people at NASA.  Let's see,
what else ... how about the maintenance of numpy
<http://www.python.org/topics/scicomp/numpy.html> by the Computer Science
Team, X-Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  These are just
a few examples, there are a good number of others.

Linux is used in a number of laboratories here at the DOC in Boulder.  
The high power RF calibration service's data analysis package is written
in Perl for instance, and ITS <http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/> has a good
number of Linux systems deployed in a number of areas.  The most recent of
these being a CVS server that was configured setup last week for the RSMS
software development team
<http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/home/programs/rsms/>.

- Wayde
  (wallen at lug.boulder.co.us)