Day 47 and 48 - Open Source Evangelism

Yesterday was a short day since the Afghans all leave after lunch. We left a bit early as well knowing that we weren't going to be able to take Friday, our one off, as usual. I came back to the barracks and had a bit of a nap. I really wish the U.S. would consider instituting the siesta. A 60-90 minute nap around 2pm is just awesome. Although mine didn't start yesterday until about 4pm, and it went a bit longer :>).

This morning I had a meeting at 0900 to talk with the NTMA and IJC C-6's regarding the Afghan Mission Network. A bit of organizational and acronym definitions are in order. ISAF, or the International Security Assistance Force (this link also), is commanded by a US 4-star General. Now it is GEN David Petraeus. He has two 3-star commanders under him. One for NTMA, or the NATO Training Mission Afghanistan (NTMA), and one for the ISAF Joint Command (IJC). We fall under NTMA, which is commanded by LTG Caldwell. Our job is to train and equip the Afghan Security Forces (Army and Police). IJC is commanded by LTG Rodriguez and handles the tactical day to day fight. We met with both the Directors of Communication today to help work out the details of the emerging Afghan Mission Network. This will be the classified and unclassified computer networks for all the Afghan Security Forces.

Whew. All that being said, one big topic of discussion has become "how do we help set up the Afghans so they can sustain everything as we draw down forces and funding?" We're looking at everything from renewable energy to recycling. Recently, I've been aghast at what our plans are for the IT infrastructure support. Basically, we're imposing/modelling ourselves onto the Afghans. Our hard working IT folks are designing infrastructures that are totally Microsoft dependent. This is OK until two years from now when they have to pay the licensing fees and get locked into the never-ending upgrade juggernaut. We're basically saddling the Afghans with a multiple million dollar per year licensing burden. As an alternative, I've started evangelizing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Those of you that know me know I'm a huge FOSS zealot. I've been doing my best to introduce the NMAA CompSci department to Linux, Open Office, Vayatta, MySQL, Java, and the like. In fact, I'm presenting a faculty development workshop on FOSS later this week.

In addition, I now have the job to develop an information paper for LTG Caldwell's Deputy on the pros/cons of Microsoft vs. FOSS. I pitched it to him today and he seemed to like the idea. All the European Officers that have been present in the last few meetings were highly supportive of the idea as well, in fact most of the people I've pitched have been really receptive. The biggest doubters are the legions of IT folks whose job it is to implement the solutions though, and Microsoft is the only answer they know. It looks like I have good top cover, but a steep up hill battle. How liberating would it be as a nation to be able to start from little to no automation and go straight to FOSS?



In between morning and afternoon meetings, we had a bit of time to kill in the green zone, so we decided to head over to the US Embassy and join the Tali banned Cigar Aficionado Club. I'm now a coin carrying life member. It's a group of mostly expatriate civilians contractors and Embassy employees that get together every other week. They have great support from some of the local cigar shops with donations and sponsorship. I even won the grand prize in the raffle, a nice humidor! It's funny what a bunch of guys will come up with when you take away their booze...