On Friday 12 August 2005 20:34, Devdas Bhagat wrote:

FLOSS is often concerned with doing things right rather than doing it quick and cheap.

And invariably doing it right translates to quick and cheap. The prop software companies will con u by fixing the metrics while measuring costs. Eg. defining the life of a product to be three yrs. with a unlearning curve of 1yr (because of users learned behaviour) for floss, the saving are realized over only two yrs, whereas the product usage of even M$ is well over 5yrs.

In the case of governments there is something far more relevant which increases the cost exponentially - life of data. Think land records - infinite life, Income tax 12yrs (afaik), criminal records 30yrs. Put your data in anything other than an unecumbered (free as in beer, non patented, open) format and u have screwed everybody.

rgds jtd