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Re: [LUG] Government IT policy

 

On Mon, 7 Dec 2009, Henry Bremridge wrote:

My suspicion is that public bodies do not want to switch to FLOSS for
one of the following reasons:
- Our contracts specify proprietary software.
- The current system works (aka the devil we know is better that the
 devil we don't)
- When we have looked at it, we have looked with a view to seeing how it
 will not work. We have not tried to think how we can make it work.
- We do not know our current software will run on it.
- We have data sharing agreements that run on proprietary models
Call me cynical, but I'd add to that something along the lines that the 
*huge* companies that currently tender and are awarded the contracts to 
produce the current set of bespoke "national" software have large groups 
within them who actively lobby the govt., etc. to tell them that their way 
is best...
If you or I go in to tender for something, then we'd get laughed away in 
the breeze.
What's needed is a large enough company with enough clout and lobbying 
power to go in and write it using FLOSS tools for them....
... but they'll never make it open source, GPL or whatever because they're 
too embarased to show what a shocking cock-up they'll make of it...
Gordon

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