On Saturday 28 Jan 2012, H.S.Rai wrote: > On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Andrew Lynn <[email protected]> > wrote: > > This is important as it is becoming difficult to tender services > > which can be easily deployed with FOSS: though Govt. rules > > eventually require a lowest quotation to be accepted, in a two-bid > > system, SME's often lose out to large enterprises due to their > > lacking the deep pockets that absorb the cost of preparing a > > tender or qualifying their expertise through a proof of concept. > > Essentially most large enterprises use proprietary software. and > > use turnover and a long client list to win contracts. > > > > We will be able to use such a registry to qualify bidders levelling > > the playing field and enabling FOSS players - who are largely SME > > or even freelance - to compete. > > Very relevant issue raided Andrew. We do need to join hand and be > commercial successful. > > As for as original email is concerned, why not make a wiki page, > where we can add our names, and those who don't like it, Guru can > update from the emails he received. > > Such list is need of the hours.
Playing Devil's Advocate here (though I do believe these issues are critical). At ILUGD we've discussed this scheme ad nauseum, and while it's excellent in principle, there are numerous practical bugs that we couldn't find any solution to, and hence never implemented such a structure. Firstly, how does the buyer decide between multiple competing bids for the same service from multiple FOSS consultants? Not all consultants are born equal, and quotes for the same service may vary by an order of magnitude or more. The typical buyer is not savvy enough to rate one consultant over another in terms of quality of service, reliability, ability to maintain a long-term relationship, understanding of business requirements, delivery on time, etc. We don't want a situation where buyers choose a consultant who turns out to be incompetent, and get soured off FOSS forever. Further, given a consultant who picks up an order, how does the buyer enforce timely delivery of the product/service as per requirements? This is the reason most large project awards call for bank guarantees, often up to as much as 10% of the contract value. No SME is going to be able to provide this for any reasonably-sized project. Finally, would there be any process for qualifying consultants? If not, what would stop companies like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and HP from joining the list? Once they're in the list of consultants, the chances of projects being awarded to the smaller outfits would drop to zero. I'm afraid I don't have answers to any of these questions; however I do believe they need to be raised and discussed and reasonable, practical solutions found before implementation of such a scheme begins. Regards, -- Raj -- Raj Mathur || [email protected] || GPG: http://otheronepercent.blogspot.com || http://kandalaya.org || CC68 It is the mind that moves || http://schizoid.in || D17F _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
