Open Source/Free Software in Maricopa Government

On Wednesday, December 18, 2002, at 01:31 PM, Derek Neighbors wrote:
> Im not so sure its sheep mentality as it is, 'no one ever got fired for
> choosing Microsoft'.
>

That's a given. :)

>
> Can you provide a list of these errors or pages? I am sure their
> webmasters would love to fix any problems you are finding.
> Specifically
> if there are short comings in the technology proof of it can only help
> your cause in conveying to the leadership there of the problems.
>

I actually jotted down quite a few while doing some research on
maricopa.gov. Funny thing is, they are not reproduceable, which leads
me to believe they have a load-balancing scheme setup and I just
happened to hit a server with old code/faulty SQL server setup or some
such thing. They come and go. Very frustrating.


> I question the SOOO cheaper. Freedom is expensive. I would suspect
> switching away from Microsoft would likely actually be more expensive
> in
> the first year or two, but real dividends could be realized by a
> significant number in the 5 to 10 year outlook.
>

Exactly - and I think the majority of us were looking at the obvious
stuff - content management, web, sql, file/print, etc.
As in my current industry, there are apps that not even the big boys
can provide now (like court case management software).


> However, a phased rollout/replacement model could reap benefits
> smaller in
> number over a period of years without raising costs.
>

Bingo.