On 16-Mar-07, at 12:03 PM, Rony wrote:
this is 'happening'. In the example of states A,B and C that i gave, it wasnt in the land revenue department and I have disguised the names of the states and the vendor. But it was the same vendor in all three cases and the vendor got paid in full by all three states
How are the charges for software creation, customization and implementation distributed in a deal between the vendor and the client. In case of big organizations like the Govt., a major chunk could be going into the customization, installation and setup itself, so even if they re-use code, they still incur major expenses other than creation of software.
not all that major. If you take land revenue, there are individual quirks in each state, but by and large there are three common systems corresponding to the three presidencies - madras, bombay and calcutta. Same with all the the other government departments. The cost of customisation is negligible compared to the initial cost of doing the system the first time. Dont forget, the routines for installation, setup and training will also be open sourced - so cost is saved there. And since the whole system is open source, a lot of things can be subcontracted at district level to smaller players. Think of a big multibranch company - they develop for one branch, iron out the bugs, work out policy, perfect it and then apply to other branches. And at each iteration the process becomes easier and cheaper.