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Where does $86M go if a few open source libraries gets you most of the way there?

by khazhoux 7y ago

blfr 7y ago
Sales process, lawyers, taxes, equipment, support, and better correctness presumably.
- DiabloD3 7y ago
  Lawyers is probably most of this. Police departments want to outsource their blame when something goes wrong (as do major corporations, mind you), so they're paying someone to handwave mistakes away. 99% of corporate/enterprise product delivery isn't about the product, its about contractual blame assignment.
guitarbill 7y ago
Q&A. Compliance, e.g. correctly storing the data, while allowing audited access. Ongoing, around the clock support. Etc Not that it doesn't make sense to look into government overspending in IT, it happens all the time. But this angle of approaching it is ineffective at best.
- khazhoux 7y ago
  Yeah, I know. There's always a huge gap from opensource-bandaid-weekend projects and a real production system. But still, $86M is obscenely yuuuge.
leowoo91 7y ago
Product Life Cycle (PLC)
rolltiide 7y ago
In someone else’s bank account who is laughing at your inability to sell Identify the problem, masquerade a randomly generated solution as being part of your perceptive abilities KA-CHING! Thats a sound effect for getting rich from someone else paying you with other people’s money
akerro 7y ago
OK, this story gets posted on HN every now and then, and this question always appears there. Like, really always. People always recommend reading "The Mythical Man-Month", also this link is always posted somewhere in the comments: https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ my time this time!
tssva 7y ago
He didn't actually replicate an $86M project. The Victoria police signed a contract with Motorola for $17.3M in October of 2018 with Motorola part of which includes their ANPR system. It is a 5 year contract that will place cameras in 220 cars. The cameras will also record high quality video and audio. Among other things the contract includes 5 years of managed services regarding the operating of the ANPR and video/audio management system. A proper revised title for the article would be "I replicated an unknown fraction of a $17.3M project in 57 lines of code"

Where does $86M go if a few open source libraries gets you most of the way there?

blfr 7y ago

Sales process, lawyers, taxes, equipment, support, and better correctness presumably.

DiabloD3 7y ago
Lawyers is probably most of this. Police departments want to outsource their blame when something goes wrong (as do major corporations, mind you), so they're paying someone to handwave mistakes away. 99% of corporate/enterprise product delivery isn't about the product, its about contractual blame assignment.

guitarbill 7y ago

Q&A. Compliance, e.g. correctly storing the data, while allowing audited access. Ongoing, around the clock support. Etc Not that it doesn't make sense to look into government overspending in IT, it happens all the time. But this angle of approaching it is ineffective at best.

khazhoux 7y ago
Yeah, I know. There's always a huge gap from opensource-bandaid-weekend projects and a real production system. But still, $86M is obscenely yuuuge.

leowoo91 7y ago

Product Life Cycle (PLC)

rolltiide 7y ago

In someone else’s bank account who is laughing at your inability to sell Identify the problem, masquerade a randomly generated solution as being part of your perceptive abilities KA-CHING! Thats a sound effect for getting rich from someone else paying you with other people’s money

akerro 7y ago

OK, this story gets posted on HN every now and then, and this question always appears there. Like, really always. People always recommend reading "The Mythical Man-Month", also this link is always posted somewhere in the comments: https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ my time this time!

tssva 7y ago

He didn't actually replicate an $86M project. The Victoria police signed a contract with Motorola for $17.3M in October of 2018 with Motorola part of which includes their ANPR system. It is a 5 year contract that will place cameras in 220 cars. The cameras will also record high quality video and audio. Among other things the contract includes 5 years of managed services regarding the operating of the ANPR and video/audio management system. A proper revised title for the article would be "I replicated an unknown fraction of a $17.3M project in 57 lines of code"