U.S. Turning to Open Source? Obama Names Chopra CTO
Will Aneesh Paul Chopra, newly appointed U.S. Chief Technology Officer, promote open source? Time will tell. At least he has the support of some of his friends in the field.
President Obama has appointed Virginia's Secretary of Technology Aneesh Paul Chopra as national Chief Technology Officer (CTO), according to a White House announcement. Together with Chief Information Officer (CIO) Vivek Kundra, Chopra should leverage technology to reduce health care costs, raise his strategy for technology innovation in Virginia to the national level, and generally promote technology in the U.S. to create jobs and protect the homeland.
It will be interesting to see what plans Chopra has for Open Source. He is first and foremost a politician. While in the Virginia Cabinet, he was a particular advocate for health care reform in which open source played an increasingly important role. In a speech in January, he had advocated for an Open Government concept.
In any case Chopra has received encouragement after his appointment from friends in the open source community. Among them are Mitch Kapor, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Mozilla Foundation, who supported him on Twitter, and publisher Tim O'Reilly, who called him a "great choice" in his blog. Also testifying on the new man in the White House's behalf is Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Sun's Scott McNealy. But as is often the case, past all the promissory hoopla, we'll see if Obama's choice is ultimately a good one for free and open software.
Issue 268/2023
Buy this issue as a PDF
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
Escuelas Linux 8.0 is Now Available
Just in time for its 25th anniversary, the developers of Escuelas Linux have released the latest version.
-
LibreOffice 7.5 has Arrived Loaded with New Features and Improvements
The favorite office suite of the Linux community has a new release that includes some visual refreshing and new features across all modules.
-
The Next Major Release of Elementary OS Has Arrived
It's been over a year since the developers of elementary OS released version 6.1 (Jólnir) but they've finally made their latest release (Horus) available with a renewed focus on the user.
-
KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta Is Ready for Testing
The latest beta iteration of the KDE Plasma desktop is now available and includes some important additions and fixes.
-
Netrunner OS 23 Is Now Available
The latest version of this Linux distribution is now based on Debian Bullseye and is ready for installation and finally hits the KDE 5.20 branch of the desktop.
-
New Linux Distribution Built for Gamers
With a Gnome desktop that offers different layouts and a custom kernel, PikaOS is a great option for gamers of all types.
-
System76 Beefs Up Popular Pangolin Laptop
The darling of open-source-powered laptops and desktops will soon drop a new AMD Ryzen 7-powered version of their popular Pangolin laptop.
-
Nobara Project Is a Modified Version of Fedora with User-Friendly Fixes
If you're looking for a version of Fedora that includes third-party and proprietary packages, look no further than the Nobara Project.
-
Gnome 44 Now Has a Release Date
Gnome 44 will be officially released on March 22, 2023.
-
Nitrux 2.6 Available with Kernel 6.1 and a Major Change
The developers of Nitrux have officially released version 2.6 of their Linux distribution with plenty of new features to excite users.