Hi,
Thanks for summazing the discussion for the list - indeed an interesting
subject.
I'm probably issing the context of the discussion, but I really don't
understand why Mr. Gilon feels that a commercial organization should even
consider adopting Open Source software (or anything, for that matter), for
"ideological" reasons. The decision to use any product/solution/technology
must be based on cost/benefit/risk considerations, for any commercial
entity.
As others have pointed out, the Open Source model does *not* mean that every
user must start recompiling the applications used by the company - what is
the source of this misunderstanding?
Rony
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Shachar Shemesh
> Sent: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:48
> To: Linux-IL mailing list
> Subject: Meeting with Gadi Gilon
>
>
> Hi list,
>
> Just came back from a meeting with Gadi Gilon. For those who don't
> remeber, he is the CIO of "Kupat Cholim Klalit". He stumbled upon the
> last time his name was mentioned on this list (thread starting at
> http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Linux/maillists/03/09/msg00296.html),
> and wanted to talk.
>
> I'm BCCing him on this email, so he can choose to participate actively
> in this discussion (or just correct me).
>
> The discussion stayed, almost exclusively, on the theoretical,
> ideological, front. If I understood correctly, his main point is this:
> "I can see ideological/social reasons for writing/using free software,
> and I see financial ones. If I try to adopt the ideological reasons
> within my organization, it will never work. I cannot let every user of a
> machine in every hospital change their own software. I cannot expect to
> have the social contract's benifits when aquiring the software, yet not
> pass the same benifits onwards. I must therefor reject the social
> reasons for adoping free software".
>
> Please don't start flame wars saying "but there are also financial
> reasons for adopting open source". He is not rejecting this possibility.
> It has not come up due to lack of time.
>
> Now, I tried to point the practical reasons behind the social contract,
> and his response rather suprised me. Basically, he has contracts with
> all of his software vendors that gives him full access to the source
> code in case the company goes under. His basic premesis was "I can get
> competition over support in proprietary software too - Clalit did it in
> the past already".
>
> I tried to point out that this is actually means that he has forced the
> vendors to turn their model, when dealing with him, into a free software
> one. He acknoledged the possible truthfulness of this statement. I read
> that as "the free software model is so much suprior, that I am actually
> forcing closed source companies to adhere to it". I guess you may read
> that to mean that the free software advantages are not as important to
> him, representing a huge organization, as it is to SMBs. I guess had the
> quotes in the paper said "I don't see the advantages of free software to
> organizations of my caliber", things would have been understood
> differently by us too.
>
> Like I said before - the financial aspects of free software were not
> raised at all.
>
> One last point - he said he is willing to talk to us further. If he
> doesn't wish to join this discussion (and even if he does), I was
> thinking of dedicating a Telux meeting to that end. What do you think?
>
> Shachar
>
> --
> Shachar Shemesh
> Open Source integration consultant
> Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/
>
>
>
> =================================================================
> To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
> the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
> echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
