personaltechpipeline.com — A trade association has blasted the Massachusetts Information and Technology Division for requesting a plug-in for Microsoft's Office Suite, saying the policy is "a biased, open source-only preference policy."
May 9, 2006 View in Crawl 4
ghastMay 9, 2006
would seem to me that since government agencies are funded with public money, there SHOULD be a bias to use open source products whenver possible.
endersadvocateMay 9, 2006
i lolled
dbcubixMay 9, 2006
Oh, here I thought they were talking open bribery and the government. That would make more sense. haha
prophetsixMay 9, 2006
"OMG! You won't use *OUR* software! You're so biased!"Ummmmm... ok.... NEXT!
kremvaxMay 10, 2006
Right. As a manufacturer of baby-grinding machinery, I'm outraged by your anti-baby-grinding practices! You'll put my entire factory floor out of work if you don't grind up more little babies! Are you some sort of unamerican communist? Buy more baby grinders, darn you! That's it.. I'm going out and buying me a senator!
jtwjguevaraMay 10, 2006
From the Article: "In other words, it had little to do with access to documents, and everything to do with excluding proprietary software providers."Why shouldn't it? It's a major burden when huge organizations are deadlocked into proprietary systems and formats and are then subject to the support and pricing of the vendor of those systems. Converting becomes harder and harder as time passes.Kudos to Mass. for their initiative. I wish more organizations would do the same. Kudos for Mass. for realizing this.
kettlechipsMay 10, 2006
It's called a front.
yahoofromMay 10, 2006
A: I am not biased. I make only unbiased choice.B: did you just say "only"? You are only choosing #1. : #1 unbiased choice. #2 biased choice. Then you are #1-biased. Because you are pro-#1 and anti-#2.A: huh?
svpirateMay 10, 2006
Yeh, biased, as in they took a sensible choice and no-one believes they had the balls to do it and people that don't like it have decided to castigate them. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
sinmerchantMay 10, 2006
@sporkwitch: I'd argue that a government entity's bias should be toward the best VALUE rather than just trying to find something that is free. If a free software product requires hiring (or extensively training) one or more competent IT professionals to keep it operating correctly, it's not as good a value as one that offers adequate tech support but costs a little bit out of the box. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case with RedHat (or MS or whoever the vendor is), but focusing on the up-front cost alone frequently leads to expensive boondoggles.