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

[Dinesh Nair <dinesh@alphaque.com>]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Mukhsein Johari wrote:

> 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

you don't know how true this statement is. just this evening, nsh and i
witnessed a _very_ senior government official ask david axmark (founder
of mysql) if mysql was ms sql server. i kid you not, and this chap was
once a big wig in deciding IT policy and implementation for the
government.

i felt terribly embarrased at his ignorance, especially since it was also
witnessed by jon "maddog" hall and a number of other people.

> 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

with closed source, middlemen have margins to make their money. with open
source, they can't. period. the root cause of this is the corruption
within our procurement systems.

> mysql/postgresql? PHP? While not as rare as say, 5 years ago, it's not
> exactly a-dime-a-dozen, is it?

but then you don't need masses of them either, just a few good ones.

> 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

i think we need to ask why this is so, and agitate to make this change. a
major problem in procurement is still the fact that relationships and
corrupt practices rules over merit and deliverables any day. that is the
crux of the problem, and election after election, the voting public still
does not make any change or even send a message.

Regards,                           /\_/\   "All dogs go to heaven."
dinesh@alphaque.com                (0 0)    http://www.alphaque.com/
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