[salem]

It would be pretty irresponsible for them to standardize on a single source vendor for this, so what are the alternatives? WinMo? Plus the government already has a long history of investing R&D into securing linux-based systems.

[r00fus]

The alternative is to support multiple platforms. Standardizing on a single platform is as foolhardy as standardizing on a single company. Even open platforms have defacto owners/controllers (Java anyone?).

[Odin9]

Government and multiple platforms. That's cute. I guess you've never worked an IT job in the government before.

[rdtsc]

> It would be pretty irresponsible for them to standardize on a single source vendor

What they typically do is write the specs to an existing product sometimes it is laughable really, you can tell exactly the product they mean without them actually mentioning its name. That is one way to put out bids that on paper look open and not tied to a particular vendor but in practice they are.

The other way is to do a pie in the sky kind of write-up. We want something that does everything and we're requesting quotes for it. That is silly as well.