DNC & Obama: Linux not Part of “Change”
“If you’re not completely appalled, you haven’t been paying attention.” - A well-known bumper sticker
Well, that’s not entirely relevant to what I’m about to talk about, but I think it’s a sweet bumper sticker. This blog is a conglomeration of disparate ideas between which I draw vague connections that may not necessarily make sense to you. What I mean it to say, is:
If you don’t know Jameson is a third-party advocate, you haven’t been paying attention.
That’s my disclaimer anyway. I’m about to rip on the DNC web development team (and then pick on Obama, why not?) Tonight Obama gave his nomination acceptance speech at the DNC. When I remembered this was the case, I thought “oh sweet! I better go to the DNC website and watch it at once so that I can stay up to date with the world around me.” Little did I know what a disappointment I had in front of me.
Instead of Keep[ing] It Simple, Stupid, the DNC web developers have decided to break playback on Firefox 3. At least, I hope that’s the problem. They might actually be doing a client OS check and just throwing a tantrum if it’s not proprietary. Obama gets a lot of tag words thrown around him like “grassroots,” or what have you. Idk. Politicians need to take a firm stance against proprietary software and to stand up for Free Software; especially ones who the entire world are watching.
Switching to Free and Open Source Software would eliminate software licensing costs, greatly reduce maintenance costs, and increase productivity of government software systems. Here’s the sad reality, demonstrated in a sequence of events. The United States Government:
- Disappoints you with corrupt morality, an unjust war, an abrasive foreign policy, no serious response to Global Warming, and a long laundry list of other horrible stuff that would keep you up every night if you hadn’t found a way to shut off from the world at least a little.
- Levies taxes to raise funds for the above. They need money to invest in “state of the art” computer systems which will make their job easier. Hopefully things will get better, then.
- Wastes your money on software licenses and writes poorly engineered software with expensive maintenance costs.
Wulp, that’s all for now. Obama, McCain, who cares. Support FOSS, that’s where the real change is.