[Klug-general] Open Source Petition @ No 10 Website

[Mike]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 08:06:20AM +0000, Peter Childs wrote:
> On 27/02/07, Adam Buckland <Adam.Buckland at eurohill.com> wrote:
> >I've had a reply from this now with the Govt's position made "perfectly"
> >clear!
> >
> >
> 
> And its actually a sensible position. Which is strange given that we
> are talking about the government. Once again the main reason OSS can't
> win the contracts in realility is because we don't have a sales team
> so nobody to sell our often very different solution.

Reading between the lines, I get the impression that the Government is really just paying lip service to OSS.

Quite frankly, the Government will only consider one thing when it comes to IT and that is short term cost.  If the government is offered vender lock-in at a good price, then they will take it because they are short signed enough to fall into the trap.

Sales teams are not the people to contact about IT desisions.  Everyone will sing the praises of their own product.  The people to make IT desision are the staff of the IT department.  Good IT staff cost a *fortune* but they are worth their weight in gold.  It might cost you 200k a year for a shit hot architect but when they are saving you millions of pounds a year, it's money well spent.  Unfortuntly, to be able to judge the competance of a shit hot IT worker, you have to be one yourself, which makes finding them rather tricky.

Finally, it's not often that I agree with the BBCs technology articals but this one hits the nail on the head:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6397257.stm

Mike.