IBM's reputation at risk in wake of census bungle

Rational Suite is the worse piece of crap I ever had the displeasure of using. Elephant sizes mounds of overpriced crap.

Whoever suggests using it should be fired on the spot.

If I see any mention of it on a person's CV (because I only mention what I am ok with), is enough for me to second-guess this person's ability

I'm so glad git is replacing it.

"partner in India".... done.

if you worked in india for next to nothing, would you see your clients as people who you wanted to help, or people who wanted to hurt others (others who charge fair prices for quality goods, and pay local taxes) to exploit you? exploiting them back is fair moral play. sell them shit and they'll turn around to hire you to fix the shit. fix the shit with more shit and you've got yourself a career.

you're all idiots.

Anybody who's been subjected to Lotus Notes is well-aware of the average quality of IBM software.

I found this headline kind of amazing because I was like, "reputation at risk? This has been my impression of their reputation for decades."

There's a name for software built with that kind of process and quality. Enterprise.

I'm not defending IBM here, because god knows I've had my experiences with their juggernaut, but in this case you are not considering the big picture. If IBM had let you donate this component, there would be:

1) financial implications (you were paid to develop a solution. we, the customer, have discovered that you were donated time & code. did you disclose your potential status as receiver-of-charity during your initial bid? do we need to hold a recompete because other bidders did not know to use free labor in their bid? how much code was donated? does this reduce the average wage of developers on the project below minimum acceptable standards? can you prove it?)

2) product liability implications (this free code you used is not working properly. people are dying or becoming impoverished as a result. we are going to the donor-developer for doing this, his employer for allowing it, and you for failing to provide sufficiently rigorous integration testing.)

3) support implications (your free code broke, and nobody can get ahold of the rando who wrote it, and the company he worked for at the time disavows responsibility. everyone is going to get sued.)

4) due diligence implications (did you use this code because it was free or because it was correct? can you prove it? was this a cost-cutting measure that may have deprived me, the customer, of a superior product? can you prove it? don't answer me; answer my legal team.)

I know it sounds extreme, but I've seen each of these things occur, at differing scales, over the years, and the reason companies like IBM exist is to deliver defensible solutions. This is not startup-land; it is not sufficient (or even, often, necessary) to deliver a working product -- the product must be able to withstand a Congressional investigation. You don't have to prove it correct, but you do have to prove you adhered to legislative guidelines intended to control the process.

This is also the reason behind the headline regarding IBM's "reputation." Nobody at IBM gives a shit what any of us think about their technological prowess or even their project management skills. IBM's reputation is an ability to operate at a massive scale without getting nailed to the wall by some government or another. If they get their ears pinned back in this census situation, the takeaway is not "IBM tech sucks" or "IBM PM sucks" -- the takeaway is "IBM is not a safe company for politicians to hire"... and for an IBM, that is fatal.

Again, I agree the whole system by which IBM operates is disgusting and wasteful, but to compete in this space you must become this space, as it were.