What Linux has to offer governments
February 2, 2005
Linux software provider Red Hat has initiated a government practice and announced a new government customer, the U.S. Department of Energy.
Red Hat has plenty of existing government customers, and the creation of the new practice demonstrates Red Hat's optimism in continuing to sell into this space.
It's an optimism bolstered by actual product development. The next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux will include Security-Enhanced Linux, or SELinux, on which Red Hat has collaborated with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
The reasons for government to be particularly fond of Linux are numerous.
Linux is associated with cheaper total cost of ownership (TCO), and the standards on which it is built are attractive to governments who want to make sure their software stays relevant and supported.
There's another reason, points out analyst Dan Kuznetsky of IDC. "Governments outside the U.S. are concerned that there are features and functions buried in [proprietary] software that they don't know about."
Microsoft and Sun have acknowledged this issue and taken some steps to address it.
For example, Microsoft has agreed to show government customers the source code; but, as Kuznetsky points out, "People want to know that the code they've been showed is the same code on the disc."
Solaris, for its part, is not yet available in an open fashion, "and they've said they won't open up some things having to do with their IP," according to Kuznetsky.
This makes Linux all the more attractive to government entities interested in transparency.
But, in the long term, it's the economic opportunity that looms largest, especially for governments outside the U.S.
"You can acquire technology without worrying about hard currency problems," concludes Kuznetsky. "Just download it. Then, if you ask developers nicely, they'll show you how it works. It can jumpstart an economy."
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