Re: Open Source is alive and well in Alaska

Had to comment on this one. Using open source in school district/gov't comes up now
and again.

Back in my conslutant days, I did some proposals for the Anchorage School District, and
for a couple of state and municipal depts. The attitude to non-MS and other non-
proprietary options was best categorized as "openly hostile". There several reasons
for this. None of them are technical.

1. Rightly or wrongly, Msoft/Oracle/SAP/whatever skills and certs are seen as more
marketable and more lucrative than non-proprietary alternatives. The school district
and government folks I worked with were using their jobs as training ground and
stepping stones to 'real' jobs. So their projects and recommendations were in part
based on those goals.

2. You can ask for, and get more, money and funding for projects using proprietary
solutions. And like it or not in this world the name of the game is the size of your
budget. Technical validity and 'tool for the job' are secondary considerations.

3. Training and schools and support for Msoft and similar options are more
widespread. (see items one and two above)

4. It's easier to justify travelling to cool places for training and refreshers and
such for proprietary, easily recognized names.

5. Did I just mention 'easily recognized'? Remember the old adage 'no one ever got
fired for recommending IBM or ATT?' (did I just date myself?) The same principle
holds. It's a lot easier to float proposals and suggestions and courses of action with
names and buzz that Management recognize and see all the time in one context or another
and so feel warm and fuzzy with. (Remember, the word "manager" is derived from an old
indian word that roughly translates to 'clueless knowitall').

6. Finally, what is probably the only really legitimate reason in my list: no one in
a day job wants to have to learn a whole fundamentally new set of tools; they're
already overworked and overtasked and overstretched as it is. In marketing-speak this
is called 'the dissonance of innovation'. Or in business-speak 'the disruptions
generated by innovation'. Or in fieldhand-speak "How badly is this going to screw up
my life today?" It doesn't matter if it'll make everyone's job easier in two years;
they have a job to do Right Now, and everyone is overwhelmed just containing today's
fires to check out and acquire better firehoses.

As technos we concentrate on technical excellence (rightly so, I might add).
Unfortunately, in the -vast- majority of circumstances, non-technical issues are the
deciding considerations. We seldom realize this (or refuse to) until we get 2x4'ed
across the head with it enough times.

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Received on Mon Mar 5 08:33:35 2007