Re: The concern will be... @Velv
I seem to remember back in 2000, when the US DoJ was trying to force a split of Microsoft in two for OS and Applications, there were rumours about MS having a contingency plan to move out of the US, rather than complying with the order.
Did we not see MS laying off a number of US developers a few months back? Was this associated with additional developers being hired in other countries? Maybe MS are putting in a contingency for such a move.
Isn't starting rumours fun!
Whilst I would love to see the US Government go Open Source, it's not as simple as just installing it on the machines. A huge amount of user, desktop and server administration in large organisations absolutely relies on MS Policies and Active Directory to function. So much, that the size of most estates cannot be managed by the people employed without it.
For all that an OS like Linux is highly configurable using mechanisms like RPC, it pains me to say that this is not as slick or sophisticated as Windows. There are tools that will do something similar, but because of one of the strengths of Open Source, choice, there is no single dominant tool that can manage all Linux variants well (I know that something like Puppet will be mentioned in follow-up comments, but it's still evolving IMHO). Pretty much everything required can be done using Open Source, but not well enough to allow a like-for-like replacement in large organisations trivial. And that is even before you take into account user training.
Realistically, it would take a multi-year program, tied into the hardware replacement cycle to migrate an organisation away from Windows.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
