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At the risk of saying too much (again): I would love to talk more openly about Dr Pugh's observations. But I fear that the only outcome would be my summary dismissal. Needless to say I think his views are both right and wrong, yes we do need vendors but then "buyer beware", while you cant lock anyone into a particular open source solution, you can lock them into the proprietary solutions that have been woven into them. Vendors know how to make money out of public sector (they have been doing it for a long time), the battle fields may change but the vendors know how to adapt their strategies. Unless the solutions are 100% open source, I would be very cautious about adopting them. Where the vendors solution has so much as 0.1% thats proprietry solution, he has a hold over his customer. Lack of documentation is another leaverage for the vendor. "Dont worry about the configs we will do it for you .... ching ching" Additionally I know of at least one local authority that have in-house UNIX / Linux skills. So the argument about not having technical support is at least flawed as far as this authority goes. But then this maybe the exception not the rule. I think the point here is that public sector dont always know how best to utilise their own skill sets. I'm not claiming to be a victim here, I have the choice to stay and fight, or move on to something else. I choose to stay .... for the moment. Solutions ? I think we need to cut out the middle men and pay the programmers to provide truely 100% open source solutions directly tailored to the needs of the public sector. Not free as in bear (quite the opposite I would imagine) but definately free as in speach. Its not a new idea (The German goverment is way ahead on this (again) ). I have seen so many ideas developed using tax payers money that then hijacked through commerical spin off and takeover, why should the taxpayer go on paying for this double-whammey effect. Non of the inhouse code we developed here is protected by GPL, (quality aside) it should be as the public paid for its development ! There I have said too much already. Tom. Information in this message is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is the intended solely for the person ( or persons) to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and please delete the message from your system immediately. The views in this message are personal, they are not necessarily those of Torbay Council. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.