[Evangelism] Austin fiasco

Dylan Jay djay at pretaweb.com
Mon Dec 21 01:28:02 UTC 2009


I think what it shows is the reason its very very hard selling to  
governments. All it takes is one person to kick up a stink like a  
bitter vendor and the governments procurement processes become a  
politcal issue, fairly or unfairly.
This is why governments avoid taking risks even when its clearly a  
better solution. For anyone thats tried to sell to government and  
wondered why they have these really long painful tendering,  
preselected vendors etc that "attempt" to avoid any vendor/technology  
bias, this is why. You won't often find tenders that state a  
technology specifically unless its "beyond reproach" like "microsoft".

My question is, what was in the tender requirements that a Plone  
solution was going to cost 750K?

Another take home idea from this: if your government is putting out  
tenders that exclude opensource and Plone specifically, creating waves  
can get results. Especially if you can link it to jobs going elsewhere.


On 18/12/2009, at 6:13 PM, Matt Hamilton wrote:

> Mark,
>  What is the best way of us handling this? That article makes some  
> harsh comments about Plone. If Plone were some large corporate I  
> would imagine that lawyers would be swinging into action now.
>
> Do we want to publish some kind of official statement in response?  
> Or privately contact that newspaper and ask them to retract their  
> comment. It is a quote though so I don't know legal standing. Or do  
> we just keep our head down and not draw attention to it?
>
> http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/local-firm-to-start-city-web-site-redesign-129437.html
>
> -Matt
>
>
>
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