US Department of State and Linux

[Bob George]

Carl Parrish wrote:

> I'd suspect any mozilla based browser would work. (and if not its easy
> to make it look like its coming from a Windows box). For the most part
> (many of you know how I fell about the code written just for windows)
> [...]

Whoa, I may have mis-stated my concern. I know that many browsers can be 
made to look like another by the technically savvy as I mentioned with 
Konqueror (the browser the author of the original message used). I've sent 
a separate note on that back.

On a larger scale, it does concern me that the US Government is paying for 
pages to put together that are proprietary enough to require (or at least 
look for) a LIMITED range of browsers. With a big ol' beefy box and a 
modern browser, it's not a problem, but a lot of folks are using NS4 (which 
didn't work out-of-the-box). There's also the overall concern of adherence 
to standards and accessibility (S501). If there were some compelling reason 
to use the proprietary technologies, I might be more understanding.

Anyhow, anyone know how to help point out the error of these ways? I don't 
expect everything to be written to accomodate Mosaic necessarily, but they 
should (strive to) accomodate the widest audience of Citizenry. And at 
least adhere to standards to accomodate those without glitzy browsers.

- Bob