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Date:      Fri, 24 Aug 2001 11:54:00 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Ed Alley <alley1@llnl.gov>
To:        tedm@toybox.placo.com
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   RE: Is there a .org lobbying to all governments for FBSD?
Message-ID:  <200108241854.f7OIs0703471@jordan.llnl.gov>

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On 23 Aug Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> wrote:


> I'd like to see some regulations that require that any regulations passed by
> special interest groups be tossed - such as this proposed one.

> What is wrong with just evaulating the government workers purely based on
> how quickly, efficiently, and cheaply the results of their work are, and quit
> trying to stuff a bunch of directives down their throats as to how to go about
> doing their jobs?  I couldn't care less if they used Windows, IBM Software
> (like the Lotus Notes you used) FreeBSD, Linux or SandBox Software from
> Uglilaialand,
> as long as I don't see a bunch of my tax dollars thrown down the toilet.

Thank-you Ted for the above comments. I was going to stay away from it
myself (note the .gov in my e-mail address). We here at LLNL are buried
in regulations (security and otherwise) where it is becomming more and
more difficult to perform our jobs as the years pass.

To address the open source issue: We are very aware of open source
software. In my division we have some nice 2 and 4 processor Linux boxes
with lots of memory and disk running big production jobs. I don't know
how may Linux and FreeBSD boxes we have just running as work stations.

The problem we have is not that the OS is good and cheap but that the
apps are not written for us. We typically run large old legacy codes
that use Fortran and run in parallel if possible. The good optimized
compilers with good parallel interfaces are just not out there. There
are some but we usually can't run them fully optimized because of
bugs in the optimization. There just aren't enough users banging
on them to get them de-bugged. We just aren't a big enough user
base.

To sum up: The labs are very much aware of opensource. However,
as things stand now we need to get our jobs done and that means
sometimes using a more expensive but more reliable route
at least for now. Things are moving slowly in the open source
direction, however.





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