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United States Government Operating Systems Software Windows Politics

Submitting Federal Proposals Requires Windows 60

Posted by Hemos from the stupid-vendor-lock-in dept.
Petronius Arbiter writes "The US federal government is requiring that proposals for grants etc be submitted using a common system at http://grants.gov/. That's a good idea, except that effectively, you must use Windows and Explorer. See To operate PureEdge Viewer, your computer must meet the following system requirements: Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP... PureEdge on Grants.gov will not run within the Firefox browser. They do have a Citrix substitute for non-Windows users. However the site goes on to say "Note that a limited amount of users can access the Citrix Server at any one time... Finally, you will find the best time to work and submit an application via Citrix is during off-peak hours, usually between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m., EST. Finally, if your organization has more than 10 non-Windows users, they want you to add a dedicated Windows box to handle the traffic. For National Science Foundation clients, this is a big step backwards. NSF has had an excellent online system, http://fastlane.nsf.gov/ for years. Fastlane has no bias towards MS. However, by federal edict, NSF people must also use grants.gov."
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Submitting Federal Proposals Requires Windows More

Submitting Federal Proposals Requires Windows

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  • This is certainly a huge oversight/blunder by the government ... and I imagine that with enough outrage by contractors they'll create/implement a Linux/Mac version of the software. In the meantime though, it doesn't seem like such a huge inconvenience to have a single $200 Windows computer sitting around just for this purpose.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by SaDan ( 81097 )
      I used to support a small research company (30+ employees), and we only had one Windows system in the entire building for situations like this. Didn't take too much to maintain.

      I can see how it would affect smaller research groups, or individuals doing research (why spend money on a system you won't use for actual research?). I think it's a dumb move to require a Windows system to deal with government issued grants and funding.

      Maybe someone should get a grant to fix this system, so it's open to all? ;-)
    • While I understand your point, thats not really the issue here. The problem is the govt is so freaking corrupt when it comes to contracts that they award a contract for an extremely incompatible program.

      I know, some will scream at me that "most" people have Windows so its "not a big deal", but just the fact that you are not required to have windows to get a grant is just not right.

      One day pork-barrel politics and favoritism with end... an of course one day pigs will fly too.

      Thats just my two cent
      • I know, some will scream at me that "most" people have Windows so its "not a big deal", but just the fact that you are not required to have windows to get a grant is just not right.
        I'll be there standing shoulder to shoulder with you as I continue to fight for the rights of all Amiga users. I think we all know we have the superior operating system yet these Winders people continue to dominate!
        • This is real funny - but on a side note, I wonder how much usability in this age you could have from such an ancient platform

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )
        just the fact that you are not required to have windows to get a grant is just not right.

        I'm guessing the "not" I've noted should have been "now".

    • Re:Oops ... but is it really so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15, 2007 @12:50PM (#17615092)

      You've obviously never bought computers for a large organisation. Try multiplying by at least a factor of 5.

      Secondly, anything that makes people get up from their desk and workstation and move to another computer on another desk, log in and start working there - away from their files, email and dead-tree data - costs time and money for no good reason. Taxpayers' money.

      Then factor in the support costs associated with a whole different OS. And the time lost near deadline days when several people want to submit proposals at the same time. And ensuing arguments which have potential to reduce productivity over weeks and months to come and generally make the workplace that little bit suckier.

      All for no reason.

      If you like, factor in that 3 of the allegedly required OSes are unpatchable (Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0) and therefore a security risk and add in arguments between the irate scientist digging out their old crufty Windows box because the damn goverment's damn stupid web site is broken and the network support people who won't let it on to their network.

      And then the arguments that start because some bright spark (possibly with grant money and clout) demands a dual boot (i.e. impossible to remotely support in any large organisation) workstation because they now need both Linux and Windows to do their work: Linux to do the actual work and Windows to get the funding.

      All because there is no desire either to stick to standards or implement cross-platform solutions, or even to think about the users running scientific workstations on real OSen not having bloody Internet Explorer. (Grr.)

    • Or a virtual machine, running inside VMWare Player.
            But the idea is that right now, government is supporting the Microsoft monopoly by interdicting other software.

            There should be a better system (maybe some laws) in allowing access to government pages - maybe legislated like the system for people with handicaps.
    • Submit a grant proposal for fixing the problem.

      Suggestion:

      Start with a command-line tool. Make it portable plain C99 or even ANSI C, 64-bit clean of course. Write an interface spec describing the grammer of stdin and stdout.

      Write some nice front-end wrapper software for GUIs using GTK and Cocoa. The GUI does socketpair, fork, and execve to control the command-line part. If the command-line part needs to keep running as a co-process, use the select or poll call to control it. Most likely, select or poll is b

    • Re:Oops ... but is it really so bad? (Score:4, Informative)

      by je ne sais quoi ( 987177 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:29PM (#17615674)
      I am a researcher that falls under this, my labs are mac/linux wherever possible. I scrounged a surplus PC to run this software. It sure is annoying that my tax dollars went to pay for such a thing though. This is not the real travesty though... the real travesty is that the National Science Foundation already has a much better system than grants.gov for submitting grants called fastlane, its all webforms and no extra program necessary. If even automagically creates pdfs for you if you wish. Their web-site works with Safari and Firefox too. The rumor is that NSF will have to ditch its easy to use and well designed grant submission software for the POS that grants.gov is.

  • One OS to rule them all, (Score:5, Funny)

    by AlanS2002 ( 580378 ) <.sanderal2. .at. .hotmail.com.> on Monday January 15, 2007 @12:24PM (#17614688) Homepage
    Three OSs for the Elven-kings under the sky,
        Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
    Nine for Mortal Man doomed to die,
        One for the Dark Lord in his dark throne
    In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.
        One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them all,
        One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
    In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.

  • "PurEdge Viewer" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spiritraveller ( 641174 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @12:26PM (#17614718)
    The PureEdge Viewer is a small, free program which will allow you to access, complete and submit applications electronically and securely on Grants.gov.

    I guess those great minds in the federal government have never heard of HTML forms and SSL.

    I wonder who got bribed for this crap.

  • Actually this is illegal. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jdawgnoonan ( 718294 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @12:45PM (#17615020)
    Publicly available government sites are required by law to function in more than one browser. I work with government web-sites and if anyone wanted to make a big deal out of this they could.
  • Isn't the government mandated to provide access to their internet sites to everyone, regardless of disability? Not saying that using non-Windows products is a disability, but it could affect those who do have them. I'm not knowledgeable of text-to-speech or other input systems, but I bet there are a few systems out there that run on Linux or some other non-Windows system so as to cater to their owner (such as a parapalegic, or someone with muscular problems).

    If this is the case, then this means that grants.
    • You can access their websites just fine with the browser/OS of your choice. If you had RTFA, you would know that the PureEdge document viewer application, not the websites, require the use of a Windows system.

      And why is everyone so surprised that the government uses the OS that is most widely used worldwide? Is it that much of a shock?

  • This is old news (Score:5, Informative)

    by larkost ( 79011 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:11PM (#17615456)
    For those of us who have to support researchers this is old news. In fact the sumssion fails to mention two important facts: PureEdge (now under a new name since IBM bought the Canadian company) has a beta version of the viewer out for Macs (still nothing for linux), and grants.gov have already announced that they will be replaceing the PureEdge solution within the year.
  • Can it be run under WINE?

    Why not just run it on a Win 9x virtual machine?
  • Headline: "Submitting Federal Proposals Requires Windows"
    Blurb: ". . .They do have a Citrix substitute for non-Windows users. . ."

    So. . . you don't actually have to use Windows?

    If enough people subscribe to Slashdot, will they hire a real editor?

  • Grants.gov is switching to Adobe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ProsperoDGC ( 569875 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:20PM (#17615548) Homepage

    The government has recognized this problem and is switching their e-forms client from PureEdge (now owned by IBM and called Workplace Forms) to Adobe Reader. They awarded a new contract to General Dynamics IT late last year (switching from the original integrator, Northrop Grumman) and will be rebuilding the whole thing while maintaining the existing form sets and whatnot. The new Adobe forms are scheduled to be available in early April; see this FAQ [grants.gov] for more information.

    I wrote about this whole thing on my own site [typepad.com] and on my company's blog [tcg.com]. It's been a major problem for some research universities in particular, who have a loyal Mac community. But I think Grants.gov's on the road to fixing it.

    (Full disclosure: Our company was part of a bid to win the contract that was awarded to General Dynamics. Our team proposed a different approach that would have yielded the same outcomes but we're not part of the GDIT team.)

    • I think that that's even worse. I've banned Acrobat from my business, it's so bad. I fail to see how running Adobe Acrobat is any better than running IE.

      • I fail to see how running Adobe Acrobat is any better than running IE.

        But we aren't talking about running Adobe Acrobat, are we? We're talking about PDF files. PDF is an open file format, and there are plenty of other viewers and creators out there. My OS of choice even uses it as its native printing/previewing format, and not an Adobe application in sight...

        Of course, PDF isn't perfect, and as another poster says it's possible to write PDFs that aren't terribly portable. But it's still a long, lo

  • It's synergy, you see... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:31PM (#17615718)
    You use a bloated OS to get money from bloated government. I don't see the problem.

    Man, here comes another flamebait mod. :( We truthsayes have it rough.
  • CraptiveX is what keeps me from going completely Linux at work on my desktop.. There's a browser-based bug system that only runs CraptiveX and it fails to load under crossover.

    Glad to see my tax dollars at work :(

  • How does this happen? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Qubit ( 100461 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:49PM (#17615990) Homepage Journal
    As someone wrote in another comment, "Who got bribed to use this system?".

    In this day and age there should be no excuse for government organizations (fed, state, and local) to implement platform-specific interfaces like this, but it seems that articles like this pop up on /. every other week. It is neither expensive nor technologically difficult to create websites to accept grants (or to accept anything else from the public) while using existing, widely-supported web standards.

    I know that there are watchgroups like Amnesty International who police the actions of governments WRT human rights issues -- is there a need for a watchgroup to monitor the technology/websites of the US government to ensure that they are not off in a corner with a single vendor, wanking off?

    Why is this so difficult?

    A friend of mine in Washington (state) spent a couple of weeks trying to create an interface between his program and some behemouth-of-an-LMS that cost the feds hundreds of thousands of dollars. If the LMS had just supported a *standard* for interfacing with other programs, he probably could've hacked it together in a couple of days, but as it was, I don't think that he could ever get the interface working properly.

    Widely-used, royalty-free/patent-free standards. Is it really that difficult?
  • This is a blessing in disguise, really. Anything that makes it harder for the U.S. government to give away my money is good by me. If only they could remove the online processes entirely, that would be even better!

    Of course people will cry "This money is going for important research, and stuff that does good for society". Even if I accept this to be true, and even if I accept that a free-for-all beg-for-money system is more viable than a system where government officials decide who to give money to without

    • Re:Blessing in disguise... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @02:16PM (#17616390)

      This is a blessing in disguise, really. Anything that makes it harder for the U.S. government to give away my money is good by me.

      This contains the implicit statement that this does make it harder to give your money away. I don't think this is true. Grants usually get plenty of submissions. This does two things, it changes who gets the money excluding mac and Linux using researchers and it motivates organizations to buy Windows so as not to be left out. Neither benefits me.

    • then making it easier to apply for a grant just gives the people who have to evaluate grant applications way more work having to evaluate more frivilous grant requests.

      Suppose the government says that anyone applying for a grant must not have had sex for the past month. This has the same effect, of making it more difficult to submit grant applications for many - but not all - researchers.

      But do you really want sexually-deprived people taking your tax money in preference to sexually-active people? No, mainly
      • But do you really want sexually-deprived people taking your tax money in preference to sexually-active people? No, mainly because this has nothing to do with what research they're doing and what the usefulness is.

        Of course you are correct. It would be much much better if the requirement in order to get a research grant had something to do with the what the grant was about. That IS what would happen if the requirement was put in their by design.

        I am calling this a "happy accident". Do I think all researchers

  • NSF systems is nice for me from old Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sunhou ( 238795 ) on Monday January 15, 2007 @02:20PM (#17616440)
    I run RedHat 8.0 (with a window manager from RedHat 5.0) on a 4-year-old machine in my office; I use LaTeX to prepare all my grant proposals, and produce PDF output. I can get through most of my proposal submissions to the National Science Foundation via their FastLane system, although my university requires me to fill out an Excel spreadsheet. I suppose I could do it under OpenOffice, although the spreadsheet doesn't really work right in the old version of OO I'm running.

    So I have a copy of VMWare with Windows XP in it, which I use mostly just for doing my grant budget spreadsheets.

    FastLane lets me upload my PDF files which make up the bulk of a proposal, and fill out some forms in the web browser (mozilla, since I couldn't get FireFox running on this old version of Linux, it needed some newer C libraries or something). FastLane is really quite platform-independent, it works great for me. Our university built an in-house system for doing the internal side of grant proposals (getting approvals from one's chair, dean, etc. and having the university Sponsored Programs office approve the budget); they basically copied FastLane's style, so it can also be done from a web browser under pretty much any OS people are using around here.

    I did submit a proposal to the National Institutes of Health last year, and had to use the stupid PureEdge software. It was a pain, but it did work under VMWare. I still wrote the actual project description in LaTeX under Linux, and just imported the PDF output into PureEdge.

    I'll be unhappy if, as some people here have hinted, FastLane goes away and we're all required to go through grants.gov.

    As other people have mentioned, yeah it shouldn't be "too easy" to ask for a pile of money from the government. But like other things I deal with (such as fighting for tenure), you expect a certain amount of difficulty, but sometimes people go above and beyond to make sure things are really more difficult than they need to be. I know I do that on many occasions too. :-)

    (As for why I run such an old version of Linux, I've customized this old window manager in some ways that I haven't been able to find out how to do under a modern version of Gnome/KDE; when I finally find a way to, I'll likely upgrade. But that's another story.)

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