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Canada could save millions by developing its own operating system instead of relying on Microsoft Windows (theconversation.com)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I’ll probably take shit for my comment, so preface: I use FOSS and self-host a lot of stuff at home, my Elbows are Up, and Fuck M$. Now then…

Yeah, the federal government could give up MS licenses for the public service and switch to OpenBSD or Linux and use LibreOffice. Excellent! Big savings.

Now then, how about all the ancient databases and applications used by the CRA and regulatory agencies. Will they keep working or will they need attention? Downtime is not an option.

Then there’s weird things like lab equipment and remote devices that provide earth sensing data for weather forecasts and probably tsunami warning for all I know.

Every one of those things needs, at least, thorough consideration and many will need specific attention from developers who are familiar with some pretty old tech. The public service does not have that capacity on hand. Contracting (expensive) private sector companies is a given.

I haven’t even mentioned the requirements for handling protected data or liability. Who does the government sue for damages if there’s an unpatched exploit in OpenBSD?

Anyway, all the above can be addressed. Nothing’s impossible. But the estimated cost-savings are not realistic. Like, at all.

You may now tear me to shreds.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    You're not wrong exactly, but I think you're perhaps assuming an unnecessarily absolutist approach. If there are legacy systems that need windows, keep windows for those legacy systems. What you're describing are exceptions, not the norm. The vast, vast majority of public service computers could just as easily be running Linux.

    As for who the Federal government sues, that's why you go with an enterprise release like Red Had or Ubuntu. You find a company that you're happy to work with, you pay them maybe 25% of what you're paying MS right now, and in return you get a full support plan with clearly defined SLAs.

    This isn't so much "Nothing's impossible" as it is "It's really not that hard." These are solved problems. Plenty of governments have already switched over to open source.

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  • [–] 2 points 23 hours ago*

    Fair critique!

    A less all-or-nothing approach could be to migrate Members of Parliament and departmental executive down to management… maybe even support staff. That group makes decisions based on the products from operational folks. So they can deal with a basic office suite. There’s a big savings there.

    At the operational level, things would get expensive because of the specialized and in-house software for which there are no alternatives except Windows.

    I don’t know enough about IT to comment on the feasibility of supporting that scenario.

    I didn’t catch this in the content posted by OP, but I thought it would be interesting to mention: GCTools. It’s a suite of collaboration and document management tools. I think they’re all open source. ^But ^I ^don’t ^know ^anyone ^who ^uses ^them.

    Edit: Can’t superscript. Fuck it

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  • [–] 1 point 22 hours ago*

    Just curious without knowing anything about the Canadian public IT system but are those ancient databases seriously running on Windows, or why would transitioning away from Windows impact their operations? As for transition, of course any transition is difficult and takes effort and careful preparation.

    If Downtime is not an option, I am not sure how well the state is served by operating critical infrastructure on a system that the potential adversary has a prominent kill switch to it.

    Regarding liability, well, I don't know how things are in Canada but the state doesn't sue if it is responsible itself and it can protect itself from liability if needed for cases where there is no grave neglect for example (or even for cases with grave neglect, that is a political question not for me to decide). Not saying that is necessarily a popular option but it is certainly an option.

    PS: Isolated systems running on Windows are a non-issue for example. Other systems would need to be migrated according to a transition plan that can be more or less ambitious.

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