On 7/15/06, Rogelio Serrano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 7/15/06, manny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
>
> > At any rate, I don't see still why government should only use free
> > software still when proprietary "source available" _locally developed_
> > software does the job as well if not better than open source software.
Cost? guaranteed access? specially if government has enough support
people? We have a problem with one of the sdks we are using. its the
only one we can afford and the vendor is dragging their feet and we
have no choice but to delay deployment. the vendor is in east europe.
we have never met him face to face. we are not even sure if he stole
the software from someone else.
Guaranteed access? If it's stipulated in the awarded contract that the
code is made available to the government, then _that_ is guaranteed
access enough.
There are a lot of open source projects that have been abandoned, and
that's even worse than proprietary software you paid for that works.
Cost? Open Source software is not necessarily free -- read the license
even of the GPL, and acquiring the software may be attributed a fee.
The mere act of developing open source software entails cost, and if
Government was going to require that the software to be made for them
will be released/turned-over under an open source license entails cost
-- usually not very far from the cost of commercially available
proprietary software. Check out MySQL and the support license -- the
software might be free, but the support contract isn't. RedHat
Enterprise Linux -- can the downloaded and built from source, but
acquiring support is not cheap (not by any means).
the mere fact that the source is available is absolutely invaluable.
with industry standard "code in the big, 10% coding 90% debugging"
development practices proprietary software has a big advantage. but
with agile software practices open source software runs circles around
proprietary software in terms of deployment speed.
There are non-open source software that are developed using agile
software development practices. I have had the experience of working
on more than one of these projects, and I don't think it has anything
to do with being open source (the speed of development). Since the
source code is available, it makes it open to amendment after the fact
(or after delivery) not by the developers who originally worked on it.
This has nothing to do whatsoever with the license that the code has
been released (or turned over) under. If government used open source
software and made their own revisions _internally_ and didn't publish
the code for everyone else to see and use, then what advantage does
being open source bring over proprietary source available software?
[snipped non-open source software related comments]
i place more trust in private enterprise to do this. our government is
tied down by bidding rules, security of tenure and other BS. open
source will never have a chance unless these are all fixed. can the it
manager in a government office just download software now and test it
and then deploy it? then replace it with totally different one after
two weeks because the maintainer was a total asshole and told you to
RTFM? no way.
The bidding rules are there for a reason -- and for good reason at
that. BTW, there is usually no "IT Manager" in a government office,
which is the precise reason why Open Source software in ALL agencies
does not make sense, or will entail more cost than using proprietary
source available software.
a political party with total disrespect for all traditions with a
heavy geek membership will have a better chance at making this
happen. there will be no security of tenure to think about. no
separation pay. no bidding rules. no national debt. no BS.
this hypothetical party can really kick ass! net centric partisan politics!
Which will only happen in an ivory tower in the middle of eutopia
where all the people have rose-tainted glasses.
And btw, not all software developers will work for free -- so the next
time you say open source software will solve every problem out there,
how do you pay the developers that make these software?
--
Dean Michael C. Berris
C/C++ Software Architect
Orange and Bronze Software Labs
http://3w-agility.blogspot.com/
http://cplusplus-soup.blogspot.com/
Mobile: +639287291459
Email: dean [at] orangeandbronze [dot] com
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