Re: [ossig] Great Ball interview ... should be in our OSS 'war chest'

[Mukhsein Johari <pythonium@yahoo.com>]

--- Dinesh Nair <dinesh@alphaque.com> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Imran William Smith wrote:
> 
> >
> > I hope you can press for strong commitments with
> timeframes,
> > in the panel discussion at FOSSCON on Wednesday
> then :)
> 
> oh believe me, i've pressed at very high levels.
> problem still remains.
> 

I've been thinking about this and the only explanation
I can come up with is that they don't really
understand it and they don't hve people who do either.
And, they don't know how to make money out of it or
don't know anyone (ie. ones they want to give projects
to) who knows / understands the open source tech
enough to know where and how to make money.

For large projects, the companies that 'win' the
tender  or awarded the project will find it easier to
just go to the multinational vendors and/or
'consultants' who will push their products and hence
have a big incentive to supply the contractor with
whatever they need.

Compare this with an open source solution. Who do you
call? There aren't enough companies with the required
skills and knowledge. ASP/JSP/VB+Access coders you can
find a-dime-a-dozen. Perl/Python + mysql/postgresql?
PHP? While not as rare as say, 5 years ago, it's not
exactly a-dime-a-dozen, is it? 

What about Oracle, SAP, Sybase? No probs, just call on
the likes of pwc and so on. MySQL? Postgres? erm...

Why the sorry state of affairs? Commercial vendors'
(eg. M$) technologies are taught regularly in schools,
colleges and universities. Most local 'CS' graduates
will know VB, Access, Visual C/C++. How many even know
of gcc? KDevelop? Python? Zope?

I suppose it all boils down to how things are done
here. It is virtually unheard of for
small/unknown/unconnected businesses get awarded
important/expensive projects. Even in projects that do
not require a high physical capital outlay. (as in ICT
ones, as opposed to construction). I think that the
nature of open source makes it unlikely that the
large/known/connected businesses have the skills and
knowledge of open source tech because they would have
invested (training, license) in closed source stuff
like Oracle, Java, VC++, MS Server2003 and so on. 
This is what they know.

Open source on the other hand, places the onus of
mastering and support of the tech on the
implementor/integrator itself. This do-it-yourself
required attitude is quite alien to domestic
businesses, especially large/known/connected ones.
("Hey, why spend time learning/creating that? Just buy
off the shelf / sub-con to multinational company xyz
and blame them if anything goes wrong. We just get the
contract and 'cha-ching'!")

Hence, the problem we see.

For this to change we need a significant number of
grads to know _only_ open source techs well. In other
words, reverse the situation. Make proprietary tech
skill and knowledge the rare thing and open source
ones common. This is actually _very_ easy since much
of it is free and open source! Well, duh! If IPTA/IPTS
commanders (eg. V.Cs, head of faculties) don't have a
clue or the initiative, government will have to issue
the directive. Otherwise how will it change?

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