County Meeting

[Robert Bushman]

The Bad News:

As we suspected, Maricopa has no legal obligation
to debar Microsoft - it's an option.

Maricopa believes that if they did debar Microsoft,
Microsoft would fight it.

Maricopa perceives no significant pain in its
relationship with Microsoft, and sees the price as
reasonable.

Maricopa perceives significant benefit in its
relationship with Microsoft.

Maricopa perceives neither motivation nor
obligation to debar Microsoft, and will not do so.

Maricopa equates market share with trustworthiness.
Hence, Linux will not be on any Maricopa desktops
in the forseeable future.

Maricopa is investing in .NET, and made no mention
of developing new systems on alternative platforms.

Maricopa has sampled StarOffice, and will keep MS
Office as the standard for the forseeable future.

And finally, a little humour: Maricopa is dedicated
to giving its employees the same OS at the office
as they use at home, and Windows proficiency is a
prerequisite for employment. Not kidding, these
two statements were made sequentially. "You can
have any color you want, as long as you want
black." - Henry Ford


The Good News:

Maricopa is considering some trial Linux print
and fax servers - no target date.

Maricopa has a few non-Microsoft desktops
(Macintoshes), and many non-Microsoft servers.

Maricopa legacy systems currently run J2EE
(WebSphere on HP/UX). There is not currently any
plan to migrate legacy systems to .NET.

Maricopa targets platform independance regarding
their website and public documents.

Maricopa was very cordial, and suggested that we
do this again sometime.


My humble opinion:

Maricopa has no serious intent to do anything to
alter its dependant relationship with Microsoft,
and is not interested in trialing Linux. We are
barking up the wrong tree.