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Re: [LUG] Government IT Procurement Suggestion

 

El dom, 13-06-2010 a las 06:45 +0100, Henry Bremridge escribiÃ:
> [...]
> If however Microsoft (or any proprietary model) comes up with special
> software that really makes life easier then they should be able to sell it.

I don't know how it works in the UK, but in Spain the government wants:

 - Something that gets the work done (that's "ideally", because every
administration has custom software that "sometimes" satisfies all the
requirements).
 - Someone to ask for solutions in case something went wrong.
 - Someone to blame when something bad happens (it's easier to save your
job when a solution that costs thousands of â fails).

The regional government, at some point, realized that in this list the
"pay for a license" idea doesn't fit. What they wanted was *support*,
and that's one of the OSS business models.

For example: the regional health system of Valencia buys SUN hardware
because: a. the licenses of Solaris are then almost free, b. the support
it's "satisfactory", and c. they have a multinational companty to blame!

They've defined an OSS platform for applications that their providers
must comply, with JBoss + PostgreSQL (when Oracle it's no needed) + ...
you may say "Linux"... Âno! Solaris, because they're covered with SUN's
deal.

I think the license model is completely wrong for the government, but I
agree that moving to a OSS model isn't easy. If you have money to waste
and preserve the status quo, then it's almost impossible.

I know people working at Red Hat IbÃrica, and seems that the financial
crisis has been great for they. Wonder why.

Regards,

Juanjo

-- 
jjm's home: http://www.usebox.net/jjm/
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