[ILUG] email sent to politicians about Mary Hannafin'sdecisionnotto use open source

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 02:19:12PM +0100, Bryan O'Donoghue wrote:
> Where the governmnet "looked" to determine the TCO of a Linux based IT 
> infrastructure.
> 
> http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.asp

There is something you're all forgetting. For a government, the Total
Cost of Ownership isn't merely the cost of the product, maintainence,
training and so on as we usually understand it ... there are also
macro-economical reasons.

I'll try and explain; Take a look at a Civil service department, a
University Beurocracy or a Hospitals Administrative staff. To an
outsider looking in, it will appear to be a disorganised inefficient
mess which seems almost designed to waste taxpayers money. We complain
about this inefficiency, how much of our money is being wasted, how
awkard it makes our lives when we have to deal with 4 different people
between some arbitrarily chosen ridiculous opening hours - and we're
right to. But what we forget is that this very inefficiency actually
helps drive our economy. 

All of those people have Jobs that wouldn't exist in more lean
organisation, and a lot of that keeps the Country ticking over. With
something like a third of people in the Country being directly or
indirectly paid for by the state, it begins to become obvious why change
has to be slow, measured and sometimes counter-intuitive.

Now there are many Economic models that don't need the above, it's
fully possibly to run a country with a lean and mean services model
with more top-down wealth distribution and so on, but noone in there
right mind ever sees that happen over-night. It's the hysteresis
in the system that economists fear the most.

And so it is with Microsoft. What people are not factoring into the
Government's Total Cost of Owenrship equation is that Microsoft isn't
just an expenditure for our economy, it's an input too. Microsoft is one
of Ireland's largest exporters and employs thousands of people here,
directly and indirectly and you can bet they feel a lot more favourable
about staying like that when they have the local Government on side as a
major customer.

I don't know the numbers but I would be surprised if they wern't a net
input, after all Government expenditure on Microsoft products was
removed. This argument is not going to be one on a TCO front, it's just
not politically doable. It wouldn't even matter if there was a massive
Open Source input into our economy here (which there isnt) - it's just
how it works with jobs.

Anyway, there are no votes in an Open Source Vs Propreitary argument -
maybe a few hundred (at most) people spread accross the country who
would even consider it, if they even vote at all, and it certainly won't
have any affect *at all* on Fianna Fáil loyal base (FF don't care about
the floating vote, they know they never get it).

Frankly, it's quite rational for the Government to be giving money
to an organisation in a way in which it will help drive our economy.

Any progress is going to be incremental and small, not that it's not
worthwhile. I'd say stick to a very small number of good key points
and just try to inform policy (write to Ministers, have questions asked
in the Dáil) and so on. My own would be:

	* The Government should mandate the use of Open Standards and
	  Open-standards products accross the board, where an Open
	  Standard is a published standard, available from a reputable
	  international standards body and there are at least two
	  independent implementations of software capable of fully
	  interpretting those standards.

	* Recognising that Open Source has a different cost-model but
	  also that in some areas it represents good potential for
	  savings, the evaluation of Open Source software should be
	  a requirement of all future ICT public procurement 
	  procedures.

	* Open Source software protects our national security intrests

Ranting and raving will not help, and giving out to the Minister for
what is, from a certain point of view, an entirely reasonable decision
is not a great start. It's an intresting topic though, and if someone
wants to start up a lobby group - it would be a good caus but to be
honest the zealotry and lunacy displayed by the people who claim to be
Ireland's Open Source proponents are one of the biggest stumbling blocks
to progress (especially IFSO, or at least as long as they listen to
Ciarán O'Riordan).

-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net