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Unfortunately, that isn't how government works. Whether it's F35's or Microsoft Office, putting money into the pockets of political cronies is what drives the
by GartzenDeHaes 6y ago
Unfortunately, that isn't how government works. Whether it's F35's or Microsoft Office, putting money into the pockets of political cronies is what drives the purchase. FOSS doesn't benefit anyone with power, so it's useless to the government.
- prepend 6y agoI suppose it depends on the government, but my experience is that it’s more about familiarity and ease of maintenance. In the US there are few actual digital services/ engineering / hackers who are employees. Mostly project managers and contract admins. So it’s frustrating to me seeing a mediocre commercial solution purchased because it’s easier to support than equivalent OSS that requires just a single person who knows how to admin something simple like Wordpress. The number of times I’ve heard that SharePoint is superior to Wordpress for intranet and content management because it had better support would boggle any reasonable mind. No one is paying political cronies, just people trying to do their best without any direct understanding of what it takes to run these types of services. I think the solution is to require a rigorous analysis of OSS in solution contracts. Then all the contractors supporting SharePoint will just support WordPress and funnel the license savings into more contractors.
- an_opabinia 6y agoI’ve got news for you dude, cronyism is a lot worse when selling to corporations.
- xapata 6y agoWhen people complain about government inefficiency I always wonder if they've ever worked at a large company.
- extremeMath 6y agoNo. With government the stakes are significantly higher as governments don't go out of business.