[Coral Snake]

Actually governments should not be running classified programming on ANY commercial or "community" OS as far as I'm concerned. That goes for the whole lot, Mac OsX, WinXP,
BSD and Linux. They should rather design an OS and program suite totally of their own and "eyes ONLY".

[Wonder Warthog]

"They should rather design an OS and program suite totally of their own and "eyes ONLY"."

According to an article I've seen recently, they either are, or have already done that. Guess what--it was/is based on Linux source code. And in that case, it appears that the GPL you worry so much about isn't a problem for them as they are not re-selling the modifications, but using it internally.

I also seem to recall that they plan on releasing some of the security modifications back into the Linux community (again under the GPL).

[TheEngineer]

Actually governments should not be running classified programming on ANY commercial or "community" OS as far as I'm concerned. That goes for the whole lot, Mac OsX, WinXP, BSD and Linux. They should rather design an OS and program suite totally of their own and "eyes ONLY".

If you think the operating systems designed by commercial entities have problems... you probably wouldn't after seeing what a government-designed replacement looks like.

I'd predict it to be slow, buggy, insecure, expensive, and user-unfriendly. The only redeeming feature is that it would be behind schedule - and perhaps never be completed. :-)

[Golden Eagle]

Actually governments should not be running classified programming on ANY commercial or "community" OS as far as I'm concerned.

Absolutely correct, and since I know this is currently going on, it is one of the main reasons I am against Linux in government use in practically all circumstances besides testing.