Open Source/Free Software in Maricopa Government

[Gary Nichols]

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.