HI Jan! On 9/19/06, jan gestre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 9/19/06, Dean Michael Berris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I want the Philippine government to use FOSS, but I want it to be used > plainly because of its merits -- not because it was required. If FOSS > is as good as we think it is, then why should government require it to > be used? Have the local providers bid with FOSS, and then make it > through to government the same way proprietary software made it into > government. > > hi dean, if you have experienced working in the government sector
FWIW, I have. Clerk at a small municipality somewhere in Laguna.
you would understand its predicament.
Yes, I do understand the predicament.
i will cite you an example regarding a computerization project in one of our regional office, they submitted a budget proposal costing around two million pesos outlining the proposed computerization of a certain system and their office as well. the said proposal was to purchase one high end server costing around 800,000 pesos, windows 2003 enterprise edition server as OS, visual studio 6, MS SQL server 2000 .... the database was to contain around 5,000 records with a maximum of 10,000. they will also outsource the manpower needed to operate the system.
I experienced the same, but the budget was for buying a system to which a government initiated FOSS product was being used. The headaches cost waaaaaaay more than the savings: I had essentially been working _for free_ because I had some "special connections" and was doing the municipality a big favor by taking on the problem head on. I heard they have moved since to a better solution which required some non-FOSS components _which just worked_.
now tell me, are these the kind of choices you would the IT people in the government to make? hell no!
I agree, I wouldn't want to have incompetent people make the choices especially when it comes to technology. Perhaps that's how you solve the problem: remove the incompetent and corrupt people who make the decisions.
luckily the project didn't push through as planned, our bureau was quick to rebutt these proposal and i made a comment stating that this is an overkill and waste of taxpayer's money, i recommended FOSS as a solution wherein the money that will be saved from the very expensive proprietary software should instead be used to purchase another server to make their system redundant and failsafe.
I agree with your recommendation. And I see how FOSS can definitely help. And based on these same merits that I want FOSS to be used. But please, I don't want it to get an unfair advantage over every other kind of software by being the only thing that's going to be used by government. I've seen a FOSS disaster already in government, and I don't want to stand to see another one.
there are lots of government projects that i saw go to waste, the bill drafted by the office of Rep. Teddy Casiño is a welcome development and i agree that if this bill ever get passed into law will save millions.
I don't think it will save Millions. It will just change the way legislation is being made, and government (especially the Congress) can then start saying "The Government will only buy BT Corn or GM Rice because it will save us Millions regardless of the consequences of making this choice."
democracy and freedom are two of the most overrated words in this country.
I beg to differ: they are the two most important things that make a free country work. The same reason why we can discuss this freely is because of these two words: of course, the noisy majority here overwhelms the lowly noisy minority me.
just my 2 cents worth.
Much more than 2 cents worth if you ask me. ;-) -- Dean Michael C. Berris C++ Software Architect Orange and Bronze Software Labs, Ltd. Co. web: http://software.orangeandbronze.com/ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mobile: +63 928 7291459 phone: +63 2 8943415 other: +1 408 4049532 blogs: http://mikhailberis.blogspot.com http://3w-agility.blogspot.com http://cplusplus-soup.blogspot.com _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
