I have to disagree on that. The size of the project and ROI have
nothing to do with open source. For example, the govrenment could
have required for the bid that the resulting software should be
made available to the govrenment or/and to the public.
especially when paying 470m$ I would have requested the source,
not to go over the cobol fiasco and b2k.
I was told the army does that with some of his outsourced projects.
Regards,
tzahi.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Eli Marmor
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 8:51 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Governments spending on IT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> According to the Walla article at:
> http://news.walla.co.il/?w=/3/538997
>
> The government has agreed on spending 470 Million NIS on projects
> "Merkava" and "Memshal Zamin".
>
> With all the talks about OpenOffice, MS licenses vs. Linux etc. - does
> anyone here have thoughs on the effect of such spending on the ISraeli
> OpenSource industry?
>
> I understand that most of the badget will go to places like IBM or
> Matrix, but still it should create demand for OpenSource skills in
> many tiers around it, shouldn't it?
First of all, in the same day, a budget bigger in 4200% than this, was
approved for the railway (Rakevet, not Merkava), so this budget is not so
big as it looks.
Now, please don't confuse between Merkava and Open-Source: Merkava is a huge
ERP project, done in SAP. That money goes to licenses of SAP, to a lot of
work done by SAP programmers, and to deployment (a major part of the costs).
I wish this money would go to Open-Source, but Merkava is a very specific
project that has nothing to do with Open-Source.
Now one may ask: "Well, so why don't them give this money to developing
Open-Source projects rather than to ERP?
The answer is simple: ROI. The government is a public organization, and
can't give money freely, but only when it is clear that this money is
crucial (e.g. medicines), or legally needed (e.g. payoff of American loans),
or when there is a clear ROI.
Ministry of Finance claims that ERP will save billions, so (at least
according to this claim) there is a clear ROI by spending 470M NIS.
There is also a clear ROI in developing Open-Source; For example, the
government spends $5M for Office, so *if* OpenOffice can replace ALL of the
current assets, there will be a nice ROI. But not when the cost is 470M, of
course... And nobody promised you that ALL of the current assets will be
replaced...
Giving big money to Open-Source development (let's say $10M) may be followed
even by sues, because the government is a public organization financed by
our taxes.
So the government did exactly what any of us would do, and budgeted it by a
small money.
And again - don't confuse ERP with OpenOffice.
--
Eli Marmor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
CTO, Founder
Netmask (El-Mar) Internet Technologies Ltd.
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