[Talk] AFR: No mandate on open source, says Qld

[Con Zymaris]

Read it and weep ;-)

http://afr.com/premium/articles/2003/07/21/1058639726733.html

 The Queensland  government is reserving judgement on open-source software 
 and maintaining its use of Microsoft technology instead.

 ...

 Microsoft is one of the state's key technology partners following a 
 whole-of-government licensing deal that continues through to the middle 
 of next year.

 "We've saved a lot of money by entering into the Microsoft agreement as 
 well as eliminating licensing risks," Mr Lucas said.


- - -

If anyone knows how these whole-of-government regimes works, you will know
that there's no point in trying to get anything bar the status-quo into a
department. It's too much of an up-hill battle. Therefore, the idea of
'Sure, we aren't against Open Source; departments are free choose it if it
has merits.' is junk. There may be a handful of instantiations here and
there, but not hundreds, nor thousands. And the sheer fact that it's such 
an uphill battle will eventually allow those in power to claim 'look, we 
let them decide to select Open Source, and they didn't. Obviously it's 
just not good enough, and there's no demand amongst the departments.' 

It's also good to see the Minister state, in effect, 'don't look how much 
we've spent on Microsoft software, look how much of a discount they gave 
us!'

Nauseating. Simply nauseating.

Are there any QLD'ers around? What's your take on all this?

con
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_____________________________________________________________________________
Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au> Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne 03 9621 2377 
Cybersource: Unix/Linux, TCP/IP and Web App. Development  www.cyber.com.au