[plt-scheme] Re: Change the World

On Mar 22, 2005, at 17:21, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
> Technically drscheme and friends belong to PLT, Inc. -- Matthias

That's good.  I understand perfectly that the best product service 
available anywhere is from the people on this mailing list.  A 
government person would tell me he doesn't do mailing lists.  He wants 
contact info for a company so he can tell someone to call that company, 
get the latest CD (or download S/W and burn a CD), run the installer, 
put the CD on a bookshelf, mark its part number down on a manifest, run 
a test, and leave before rush hour.  Actually, for serious stuff, the 
S/W would have to be on a list of things that some official body had 
looked at with a microscope and approved.

Since I'm going to FSF meetings this weekend, and asked for government 
input that would make free software more acceptable, I was handed these 
requests:  supportability; security ("working to follow and comply with 
FIPS 140 would go a long way in making it more acceptable in 
government"); software that is proven "tried and true and in no way 
experimental;" documentation, installation guides, administration 
guides, help guides.  [PLT has no problem with most of this.]

The same person who started with "As you know, I am not an open source 
advocate," ended hopefully, "I would like to learn more about open 
source."

Geoffrey
--
Geoffrey S. Knauth | http://knauth.org/gsk