4 ms·

18 million is still way high for that. Fact is, there's a huge open source community that would do 90% of that work for free in order to get their names on a h

by jpcx01 17y ago

18 million is still way high for that. Fact is, there's a huge open source community that would do 90% of that work for free in order to get their names on a high profile project like that. It only takes a few pages of reading the RFP to start seeing the rampant waste. They'll be purchasing Sybase, Oracle, and MS SQL Server for the project. Why all three? That's likely 100s of thousands of dollars right there. Also, why are they contracting this out? Why not hire a small team, and release in stages via some agile project management techniques? I doubt this is a big deal in the grand scheme of things however its the sort of thing that sort of reminds you that no matter who is in power, things run the same way in Washington.

heyadayo 17y ago
> Fact is, there's a huge open source community that would do 90% of that work for free in order to get their names on a high profile project like that. A naive and unworkable strategy at best. As a major open source developer and project leader I've come believe that the majority of relevant open source works comes from a tiny, motivated, and highly skilled minority. And remember, OSS developers don't work for free because they want their name on some product or webpage. There are jobs for that, and they even pay.
jonknee 17y ago
You should have put in a bid then. Could have made some "easy" coin for a month's work. Only three of 59 approved vendors decided to bid which speaks for itself. > It only takes a few pages of reading the RFP to start seeing the rampant waste. They'll be purchasing Sybase, Oracle, and MS SQL Server for the project. Why all three? That's likely 100s of thousands of dollars right there. The actual text says that the government would prefer to leverage servers and licenses they already have and those include Sybase, Oracle, MySQL and MS SQL Server. Other databases are allowed to be proposed, but must be included in the cost (including support for the duration of the contract). The existing site uses MySQL so they are not opposed to open source.

by jpcx01 17y ago

heyadayo 17y ago

> Fact is, there's a huge open source community that would do 90% of that work for free in order to get their names on a high profile project like that. A naive and unworkable strategy at best. As a major open source developer and project leader I've come believe that the majority of relevant open source works comes from a tiny, motivated, and highly skilled minority. And remember, OSS developers don't work for free because they want their name on some product or webpage. There are jobs for that, and they even pay.

jonknee 17y ago

You should have put in a bid then. Could have made some "easy" coin for a month's work. Only three of 59 approved vendors decided to bid which speaks for itself. > It only takes a few pages of reading the RFP to start seeing the rampant waste. They'll be purchasing Sybase, Oracle, and MS SQL Server for the project. Why all three? That's likely 100s of thousands of dollars right there. The actual text says that the government would prefer to leverage servers and licenses they already have and those include Sybase, Oracle, MySQL and MS SQL Server. Other databases are allowed to be proposed, but must be included in the cost (including support for the duration of the contract). The existing site uses MySQL so they are not opposed to open source.