begin quoting gossamer axe as of Fri, Oct 28, 2005 at 08:41:54AM -0700: > What's even more "stupid" is there are hundreds of Defense Contractor > businesses out there (I work for one of them) and the Government dictates to > us what we run for software. It used to be that the government mandated WordPerfect, and then it switched to MSOffice. I've heard some opinions that it was from pressure "on high" and other opinions that it was the zillions of contractors who used MSWord that "encouraged" the switch.
Anyone working with the DoD in the WP heyday remember the switch and the reasons given? > Example, for one contract, which we got 0 work from so far, we were forced > to change our accounting software to Deltek software. The company had to > invest over 100,000 in this software just to be awarded the contract. This > goes on quite a lot, not necessarily for a Mom and Pop Pipe shop (also > contractor) but for the bigger business like the one I work for. That's good for Deltek, I imagine... Seems like it would be a good idea for any government-mandated software ought to be provided to the customers under blanket license. (Open data formats and protocols would be better still. . . but there's a strong culture of "make the minimum requirement my machine". Last project, even though it was all clean Java -- ran under M$Windows, OS X, Linux, and Solaris (that I tested)-- the "minimum requirements" specified a grossly overpowered x86 box running a recent version of MSWindows.) > I do the LAN Admin stuff for this division, and I tried to convince them > that using more Open Source software was the way to go, but unfortunately > it's been a slow process. They want to set up email servers in each division > (in case our Corporate office goes down which it does frequently during > hurricane season). I tried to tell them that running Exchange under windows > wasn't the answer...Linux was a better option for a small email server...I'm > still trying to convince them of this, hopefully they'll listen to me. Give 'em a variety of options. Throw in an expensive SPARC Sun box running Solaris to give 'em a high-end price-point. If they're shy of going with Linux because it's "cheap", and the choose the Sun, you'll still be ahead of the game in that you won't be running Exchange, and you should be able to use all the same mail servers you have under linux on the new shiny kit. Sometimes, cost *is* the issue -- but it's not something that's being minimized. (We all grump about people who are penny-wise and pound-foolish!) Back in the days of the Video Toaster, there was apparently a correlation between bumping up the price for the system and managerial acceptance... -Stewart "Budget justifications don't always make intuitive sense" Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
