CivicActions CEO Henry Poole and Security and Compliance Engineer Marc Jones were interviewed by GCN about how government can effectively deploy open source technologies.
Excerpt:
“The most important thing when selecting a [free and open-source] project is picking one that aligns with your business goals,” said Marc Jones, an attorney and longtime systems architect in state government. “You do not want to pick a project and then realize you now need to invest a lot of effort into modifications to meet your needs. In that respect, it is very similar to acquiring proprietary software.”
CivicActions CEO Henry Poole, however, argued that open source can and should be an end goal for government. “Public funds are paying for the public good,” he said. “Having that code be publicly available, in my opinion, is the right thing to do, just from the point of view of the taxpayer…. You really want to move your acquisition strategy to paying for new technology, not paying for something that already exists.”
Read the full article: How to be smart about open source
