[Info-vax] [OT]: DoD stuff. Was Re: 2013 OpenVMS Boot Camp

[Paul Sture]

In article <alo6m7F5shfU2 at mid.individual.net>,
 billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:

> In article <nospam-280778.17471716012013 at news.chingola.ch>,
> 	Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> writes:
> > In article <alifpsFsgb3U1 at mid.individual.net>,
> >  billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:

<snip> 

> >> That would be the responibility of the manufacturing contractor, not
> >> the DOD.  A deal with Boeing or General Dynamics is not with the
> >> government.
> > 
> > OK, I didn't realise that.
> 
> Most people don't.  The government buys very little at this level on its
> own.  In every case I was involved in they ended out getting mini's or
> mainframes from a contractor who kept responsibility  for the maintenance.
> So it would be the contractor on the hook to DEC/Compaq/HP and  not the
> government at all.  The PC world has changed a lot of that, but not at
> the real computer level.  PC's are bought from DELL and have the same
> warranty as everybody else.  Software is bought from MS and has the
> same warranty (or lack thereof) as everyone else.

It's been many years but I do recall sales folks giving presentations to 
the British MoD themselves rather than contractors.
 
> >> 
> >> Open Office (MS Office-like)  --  iintersting.  :-)
> > 
> > I am surprised they are looking at OpenOffice, 
> 
> It probably comes bundled with whichever distribution the contractor is
> pushing.

If the proposals were formed when Oracle still had ownership, that would 
be Oracle.
 
> >                                                  since everyone else I 
> > know has moved on to LibreOffice.  
> 
> Everyone?  I know of no one who was using OpenOffice (myself at the top
> of the list) who has changed or even plans to.

I should have said "every former OpenOffice user I know has moved on to 
LibreOffice"
 
> >                                     The main developers of OO had some 
> > sort of fall out under Oracle's stewardship and at the last look it was 
> > being transferred to the Apache lot, and progress was slow.
> 
> It is already a fully functional product that easily competes with
> MS Office.  I would need real reasons to change.  Politics don't fall
> under that category.  If you are going to be affected by politics you
> might as well get out of the Open Source world.
> 
> > 
> > RE: the current warnings about Java as a browser plugin:
> 
> That affects everyone equally.  Homeland Security over here says to
> just turn java off.  :-)

Yes I know. :-)

> > 
> > IIRC OpenOffice in earlier distributions had Java bundled with it, 
> > though that got separated out and became a separate download.  Until the 
> > latest version LibreOffice would scream the first time you ran it unless 
> > Java was present, nut it worked perfectly fine without Java with the 
> > exception of the database stuff and perhaps some accessibility stuff.
> > I just upgraded LibreOffice to the latest version last week and it no 
> > longer protests about the lack of Java.
> 
> Well. considering all the people using PHP I really fail to see the
> concern over Java security.  That's like buying $1000 locks for the
> door while leaving the windows wide open.

I thought that PHP vulnerabilities came from poorly written code rather 
than PHP itself.  Yes, I know that's debatable if you consider how easy 
it is to write insecure PHP code :-) 

PHP CERT advisories in reverse date order are here:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/betcpvp

-- 
Paul Sture