Re: [Evangelism] Austin fiasco

2009-12-20 Thread Dylan Jay 


On 21/12/2009, at 12:28 PM, Dylan Jay wrote:


...
Another take home idea from this: if your government is putting out  
tenders that exclude opensource and Plone specifically, creating  
waves can get results. Especially if you can link it to jobs going  
elsewhere.


My use of the words "creating waves" is a little too strong for what I  
meant. The way in which we and others in opensource here have done  
this is to talk to those in government about removing requirements in  
their procurement processes that specifically excluded opensource  
solutions. Government to some extent have been responsive to this.  
This has taken a long time and is really just about helping them  
understand that other models exist and they can get significant  
benefits by considering them fairly along with their existing  
solutions. Governments respond to the concept of openness and fairness  
(and some may respond to the concept of local jobs but that hasn't  
been our experience). They respond precisely because they want to  
avoid what happened in Austin.
I didn't mean to suggest what those Austin guys did was the right way  
of going about it. If the tender has been written it's generally too  
late to do anything.





On 18/12/2009, at 6:13 PM, Matt Hamilton wrote:


Mark,
What is the best way of us handling this? That article makes some  
harsh comments about Plone. If Plone were some large corporate I  
would imagine that lawyers would be swinging into action now.


Do we want to publish some kind of official statement in response?  
Or privately contact that newspaper and ask them to retract their  
comment. It is a quote though so I don't know legal standing. Or do  
we just keep our head down and not draw attention to it?


http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/local-firm-to-start-city-web-site-redesign-129437.html

-Matt



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Re: [Evangelism] Austin fiasco

2009-12-20 Thread Dylan Jay 
I think what it shows is the reason its very very hard selling to  
governments. All it takes is one person to kick up a stink like a  
bitter vendor and the governments procurement processes become a  
politcal issue, fairly or unfairly.
This is why governments avoid taking risks even when its clearly a  
better solution. For anyone thats tried to sell to government and  
wondered why they have these really long painful tendering,  
preselected vendors etc that "attempt" to avoid any vendor/technology  
bias, this is why. You won't often find tenders that state a  
technology specifically unless its "beyond reproach" like "microsoft".


My question is, what was in the tender requirements that a Plone  
solution was going to cost 750K?


Another take home idea from this: if your government is putting out  
tenders that exclude opensource and Plone specifically, creating waves  
can get results. Especially if you can link it to jobs going elsewhere.



On 18/12/2009, at 6:13 PM, Matt Hamilton wrote:


Mark,
 What is the best way of us handling this? That article makes some  
harsh comments about Plone. If Plone were some large corporate I  
would imagine that lawyers would be swinging into action now.


Do we want to publish some kind of official statement in response?  
Or privately contact that newspaper and ask them to retract their  
comment. It is a quote though so I don't know legal standing. Or do  
we just keep our head down and not draw attention to it?


http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/local-firm-to-start-city-web-site-redesign-129437.html

-Matt



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Re: [Evangelism] Austin fiasco

2009-12-18 Thread Mark A Corum 
Keep away from this one - you don't want any of it getting on your
shoes.  This has nothing to do with Plone being deficient, and
everything to do with would be politicos wanting to seem sensitive by
buying locally.

Anything we could possibly say has already been said by residents of
the community - read the comments to this article if you have any
doubt:



The press lives by maximizing the number of people looking at their
pages.  Anything you do to go after them just adds eyeballs.  Its the
perfect example of the old adage - "Never wrestle with a pig - you
both get dirty - and the pig likes it."

Austin is spending $357,000 to analyse what their website needs in
order to succeed.  I'll be interesting in seeing the outcome of that -
as well as the price tag of the actual site when it goes out for bids.

Mark



On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Steve McMahon  wrote:
> As a former newspaper brat, I'll just say that this falls far short of
> what's needed to prove product libel, so there's no legal standing.
> Also, IMHO, this makes Austin look a whole lot worse than Plone. It looks
> like a place where the web techs need government assistance.
>
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 11:13 PM, Matt Hamilton 
> wrote:
>>
>> Mark,
>>  What is the best way of us handling this? That article makes some harsh
>> comments about Plone. If Plone were some large corporate I would imagine
>> that lawyers would be swinging into action now.
>>
>> Do we want to publish some kind of official statement in response? Or
>> privately contact that newspaper and ask them to retract their comment. It
>> is a quote though so I don't know legal standing. Or do we just keep our
>> head down and not draw attention to it?
>>
>>
>> http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/local-firm-to-start-city-web-site-redesign-129437.html
>>
>> -Matt
>>
>>
>>
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>> Evangelism mailing list
>> Evangelism@lists.plone.org
>> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
>
>

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Re: [Evangelism] Austin fiasco

2009-12-18 Thread Steve McMahon 
As a former newspaper brat, I'll just say that this falls far short of
what's needed to prove product libel, so there's no legal standing.

Also, IMHO, this makes Austin look a whole lot worse than Plone. It looks
like a place where the web techs need government assistance.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 11:13 PM, Matt Hamilton wrote:

> Mark,
>  What is the best way of us handling this? That article makes some harsh
> comments about Plone. If Plone were some large corporate I would imagine
> that lawyers would be swinging into action now.
>
> Do we want to publish some kind of official statement in response? Or
> privately contact that newspaper and ask them to retract their comment. It
> is a quote though so I don't know legal standing. Or do we just keep our
> head down and not draw attention to it?
>
>
> http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/local-firm-to-start-city-web-site-redesign-129437.html
>
> -Matt
>
>
>
> ___
> Evangelism mailing list
> Evangelism@lists.plone.org
> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
>
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