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Oracle Says Open Source Has No Place In Military Apps

Simon Sharwood | The Register | October 15, 2013

Unless it's open source from Oracle, of course

Oracle has popped out a white paper that may well turn some heads, because it contains robust criticism of open source software.

Titled “The Department of Defense (DoD) and Open Source Software” and available here as a PDF to those with Oracle accounts or here in Dropbox, the document's premise is that folks in the USA's Department of Defense (DoD) could think it is possible to save money if they “... avoid buying commercial software products simply by starting with open source software and developing their own applications.”

The paper goes on to explain why that's a bad idea and why paying Oracle for commercial software is a much more sensible thing to do. The foundation of the arguments is that developing applications based on open source software has hidden cost, mostly in labour...

Read more in the full article.

Comments

by Peter Groen on October 18, 2013 - 10:32am #

Strange, misleading paper by Oracle

A very strange paper by Oracle. Bottom line, though, seems to be their acknowledgement that most vendors now include ope source software in the solutions they offer when bidding for contracts. VA has had tremendous success with use of its award winning VistA system for decades which is used now in about 2000 hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, etc. in the U.S. and around the world - see http://www.openhealthnews.com/hotnews/vista-rivals-epic-and-cerner-major... I was puzzled over the mention of $16 billion wasted on iEHR. I don't know where that figure came up. Maybe it was a possible projected worst case to replace VistA and CHCS/AHLTA. There was not $16 billion spent on iEHR, so its a misleading statement by Oracle... which wants DoD to buy Oracle products and services.