Open Source/Free Software in Maricopa Government

[Derek Neighbors]

> But then Maricopa County would have to hire competent IT people at
> market  rates, instead of incompetent hacks at 2/3rds of market rate!

What makes you think they dont pay people at market rate?  Is this just
your opinion or do you have fact to back it up?  I think you are carrying
forward the myth of government employees a bit too much.

> Like Microsoft is fond of saying, TCO is more than just the up-front
> software  costs. For Maricopa County to switch over would require that
> a) they find  some pretense to fire the incompetent hacks who currently
> run their IT  department,

What technology is used generally has nothing to do with the people.  In
the sense is I have met some very good Windows developers admins and some
very bad unix programmers admins.  I think its easier to find more bad
windows folks because well there is more.  So if the ratio is 1/100 or 10%
if you have 100,000 unix admins and 1,000,000 you have 10,000 bad unix
folks and 100,000 bad windows folks.  So you have a 1 to 10 ratio there,
so it surely looks like windows folks are encountered more.  However, the
point is dead weight should be dropped regardless of software choice.

> b) pay lots of money to settle the inevitable
> "wrongful  dismissal" charges out of court,

This is speculation.  At this point it would be more likely microsoft
would offer 'free goods' just like they have to peru and india than they
would sue.

> c) do a search for a
> competent IT director  (and who is going to do this search? Who at
> Maricopa County has the knowledge  to tell a competent IT director from
> a hack?),

I am not sure what leads you to believe the current IT director is
incompetent?  Its easy to be an armchair quarterback on Sundays.

> d) pay this guy market rates,

Again, what makes you think he isnt being paid a decent market rate?

> e) have him hire competent IT
> staff at market rates. In other words, we're  talking considerable
> expense to do the changeover, plus a higher recurring  cost because of
> the need to pay competent IT staff at market rates. If the  difference
> in licensing costs is $50,000 per year, but the difference in  staffing
> costs to get competent IT people is $100,000 per year, you can see  how
> it wouldn't be worth it to change over to Open Source -- even if we're
> not counting the wrongful dismissal settlements as part of the
> difference in  staffing costs.

Again this is speculation that there is no compentent IT staff or that
they are not retrainable.  Also, that they are underpaid.

> Microsoft software is like crack cocaine -- once they get you addicted,
> breaking the addiction is hard to do :-(.

I agree with this.  The way microsoft markets it licensing schemes to big
companies they make it sound 'reasonable' per seat.

> Btw, the personnel costs are not insigificant. When I was doing school
> consulting, I was regularly asked "What server platform should we use?".
> My  inevitable response was "Use whatever your staff is most familiar
> with and  whatever has the most local talent that knows it" -- whether
> that was Novell,  Microsoft, or (unlikely in that era) Linux. Our own
> servers (that we  installed at these school districts) were Linux, but
> that's because we were  being paid to maintain them and we were Unix
> database geeks. These  mostly-rural school districts couldn't afford to
> hire people at market rate  and pay them to move to BumFuck
> Mississippi... they had to stick with the  local talent, which was
> (alas) mostly Microsoft-centric (with some Novell  guys out there). When
> I was asked by these school districts, "should we use  Linux?", my
> response was inevitably "ask your local computer experts",  because if
> the local computer experts didn't know Linux, they hadn't a hope  in
> hell of making a Linux installation work right. Given how (in)competent
> these "local experts" were with Microsoft software, I didn't see a hope
> in  hell of them ever learning Linux... but what the hey, maybe the
> horse learns  to speak, right? And in fact one or two districts DID
> dabble in Linux, mostly  for mail servers (much cheaper than Exchange
> Server).

Personnel costs generally capture 70% of governments budget.  So they are
EXTREMELY significant.

> But the deal is, I recognized that I, as an outsider merely passing
> through,  was not in the best position to say whether Linux could
> successfully be  deployed there. And you, as an outsider, are in no
> position to say whether  Linux could successfully be deployed by
> Maricopa County. Given the general  incompetence and ineptitude of how
> these "local experts" are handling their  Microsoft install, the thought
> of them trying to do Linux is rather...  terrifying.

I think it is true that being an outsider to any organization makes it
hard to recommend a course of action, but again I think the 'incompetence
and ineptitude' phrases seem out of line if you dont know the internal
organization.

-Derek
>
> --
> Eric Lee Green         http://badtux.org/home/eric/resume.html
>
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