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> Full disclosure: I'm one such contractor. We work with small and local government. Cities and counties mostly. ... >If you are a government organization and
by lgas 9y ago
> Full disclosure: I'm one such contractor. We work with small and local government. Cities and counties mostly.
...
>If you are a government organization and the OSS you are using has a bug, who do you contact to get it hotfixed ASAP or find you workarounds?
You, or someone like you, presumably?
- nradov 9y agoThat's a nice theory about OSS but it seldom works in practice. It can take a very long time for even experienced and skilled government contractors to learn enough about a code base to fix major defects. And even then there's no guarantee that the project maintainers will accept that patch into the mainline, so if they don't that puts you into configuration management hell. Governments need a "single neck to choke" along with some reliable assurances of support levels and time to resolution.
- dikaiosune 9y agoIt seems to me that govt agencies could still pay contractors to build these things, just with the requirement to make them openly available as part of the contract. If others step in to offer support contracts as well, great! Competitive environments for that would probably be good.