Adrian Short wrote:
2009/4/8 John Bywater <[email protected]>:
This is an important subject, so let's try to be very clear. Open source is
*not* the be-all and end-all of anything. Nothing is, since there is No
Silver Bullet....
*snipped very long meta-analysis*
Indeed there is no silver bullet. No-one other than Mr S. T. Rawman
has suggested that there is. Quite the contrary.
The way I see it is this. Rightly or wrongly, well or badly, a bunch
of councils are being given a million quid of public money to write
some software.
No-one knows what it's going to be like. But even if it turns out to
be half-arsed, open source means that anyone can use that half arse if
it suits them or append the other half of the arse if it doesn't with
the minimum of fuss and expense.
I think that's a sound enough proposition for a 30-day petition. The
radical re-engineering of government software development and
procurement might have to wait until next month.
Yes, but why can't we get it right first time? :-)
Anyway, it's not really radical, it's pretty much mainstream software
industry stuff. Grady Booch was just passing on what he'd extracted from
Bill Gates, the Oracle Guy, S. Jobs, and about 47 others, he said.
Attempting to marginalise what is already mainstream won't wash!
Meta? Very long? :-) I don't think so.... But I won't say too much more:
That million quid is probably small beer compared with the total spend
on software development in UK local councils. If so, it would appear
that they are spending this money specifically to provide an opportunity
for councils have a go at sharing such developments: the actual software
development might be secondary to the broader exercise of directly
addressing aspects of their common domain, and circulating the results?
In any case, would you start a new project with somebody else's
half-arsed open source code base? Most would advise starting over....
Certainly, the quality of the project titles indicates they have already
been circulating analysis somehow, even if just in the application
process. Hosting these applications raises further possibilities for
sharing. Would each developer council host their own app? That would
realise economies of scope between the three different levels....
At any rate, those articles I linked to are from 2003 - it's time to
change the record. Of course public developments should be underwritten
by a public license (and we should continue to demand they are) but it's
probably neither sufficient nor absolutely strictly necessary. At the
same time, there are other equally important tendencies which we would
all benefit from having in general circulation. Open source doesn't have
all the answers, but at least open source is listening.... I don't have
all the answers either, but I've got a large sheet of paper. :-)
J.
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