[Noisebridge-discuss] City of Berkeley explanation of why not using open source.. Open Source vs. "proprietary" software

[Wladyslaw Zbikowski]

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Asa Dodsworth <asa.dodsworth at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since the City has an
> existing Enterprise agreement with Microsoft and is using virtualization,
> there is no cost to the Rent Board for server and web server software.

Sounds like the right place to take this proposal is to the City, if
the Rent Board is just leeching off someone else's IT budget.

>  Since our network engineers, database administrator and programmers
> are all familiar with SQL Server and do not have MySQL experience, there
> would be an additional ongoing cost to train staff and keep them educated on
> two disparate database platforms.

Obviously it's a bigger win to drop SQL Server, not keep both. By this
logic, nothing should change in any way, ever.

> It's possible that the 3rd party that
> supports the product is not qualified to modify the code.

I believe the writer is confusing two separate arguments:

A. That the Rent Board needs a customized database engine or operating
system, and finding an open-source developer to do it would be a
prohibitive undertaking.

B. That the open-source process of forking does not work -- shifting
maintainership from one entity to another does not actually happen in
real life.

If A, they pretty much HAVE to go open source and damn the expense,
because they certainly aren't going to get a custom build of MS
Windows or SQL Server. If B:

> Once a vendor has modified the base
> code, it could become proprietary unless they turn around an publish it,
> thereby counteracting the benefit of going with Open Source in the first
> place.

Bizarre. He is saying what could happen is:

1. Ownership of MySQL turns unfriendly
2. XYZ Corp starts a fork called XyzSQL
3. XYZ also turn out to be shitheads and take their code proprietary
4. Therefore the ability to fork is worthless

I am willing to bet money that the person who wrote this does not
understand either argument, or even why they are different from each
other, but is parroting FUD from some Microsoft rep.

> City programmers are competent at creating small,
> specialized applications for those needs that can't be filled by commercial
> software -- customizing databases and operating systems exceeds their skill
> set.

Again, the idea that the Rent Board needs to write a custom database
engine to use an open source database is a total red herring. Someone
is feeding them misinformation.

> Open Source is like alternative energy -- it's the right thing to do

Try "Quaker Oats" next time!