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In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

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Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#21

Post by viraptor »

bsder wrote: post #9

While I love the David vs Goliath here, I'm going to point out the thing that open source folks just love to fluff over: Who is going to maintain that app over time? Maintenance sucks and is expensive. I'm going through this right now with a security system for a non-profit. The old system is open source and works--but it's 10 years dead. So, they'd like to add these couple features. Who is going to develop that? Who…

> Who is going to maintain that app over time?

This is not a "current proprietary system" vs "open system maintained by volunteers". They can basically adopt the open system which is better and pay whoever they want the same account of money to maintain it. They just need to shift which system is being maintained. (And may even save money that way)

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#22

Post by cassepipe »

bsder wrote: post #12
908B64B197 wrote: post #4

> One parent managed to access other people's private data, leading to @Stockholmsstad being fined for bad security. ... And the fine, levied by bureaucrats paid with taxpayer's money was paid with... Taxpayer's money. “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” ― Ronald Reagan

[flagged]

Not really matching HN guidelines but I enjoyed your rant :D

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#23

Post by T-A »

trhway wrote: post #2

>The city's local government, spent 1 billion Swedish crowns (100 million dollars) over 7 years to build a massive do-everything school IT platform, which students, teachers and parents are forced to use. And their app is awful. Slow, buggy, almost unusable. One parent managed to access other people's private data, leading to @Stockholmsstad being fined for bad security. where is juicy details like who did it? Oracle…

> where is juicy details like who did it? Oracle? IBM? ..?

According to [1], no less than four contractors: Tieto, Ping Pong (apparently responsible for security), Unikum and Nova Software.

[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=https:/...

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#24

Post by bsder »

detaro wrote: post #13
bsder wrote: post #9

While I love the David vs Goliath here, I'm going to point out the thing that open source folks just love to fluff over: Who is going to maintain that app over time? Maintenance sucks and is expensive. I'm going through this right now with a security system for a non-profit. The old system is open source and works--but it's 10 years dead. So, they'd like to add these couple features. Who is going to develop that? Who…

Of course open source also needs maintenance, but maintenance isn't suddenly cheaper because you bought a big commercial solution. The difference is that for open-source, you are not reliant on the original provider to maintain it, but can pick from a large range of open-source dev shops and consultancies to help as long as the size of the system is tractable. (or if it's a big thing, hire your own people and bring i…

For someone without expertise, there is no difference between paying money to a proprietary company and paying money to an open source developer.

In fact, open source is almost always worse--the proprietary company can at least generally demonstrate that they can do what they say.

And, for contracts like these, the end customer generally gets the source anyway. So, to the end customer, there really is no difference.

And this is before we get into the whole "Whose budget holds the money for that maintenance over time?" political football. A lot of government contracting is about transferring uncertain future payments into certain present payments. And someone will try to kill that budget at some point.

I love open source. But open source software almost always fails hard when the subject isn't relevant to software programming.

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#25

Post by bsder »

lucb1e wrote: post #14
bsder wrote: post #9

While I love the David vs Goliath here, I'm going to point out the thing that open source folks just love to fluff over: Who is going to maintain that app over time? Maintenance sucks and is expensive. I'm going through this right now with a security system for a non-profit. The old system is open source and works--but it's 10 years dead. So, they'd like to add these couple features. Who is going to develop that? Who…

Proprietary route: input: 5+ years and 100 million dollars output: crappy system maintenance: still necessary, hire anyone but probably the expensive guys from before The route that these parents demonstrated: input: a few months and presumably a whole lot less money output: something that seems to be well-liked maintenance: still necessary, hire anyone Regardless of "but who's going to maintain it", the benefits sho…

> Regardless of "but who's going to maintain it", the benefits should be clear here.

Are they clear?

Or is this the "Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System" all over again? aka the gigantic disaster that somehow spawned the Extreme Programming "experts" and implemented the easy 80% while missing the really hard 80% (yes, that totals to 160% intentionally).

It's really easy to produce something that majority like but doesn't get even basic use cases. For example, let's start with some simple stuff:

- Does it meet GDPR guidelines?

- Does it meet accessibility guidelines?

- Does it meet security guidelines for protection of personal information of minors? (Apparently the original government software completely blew this off. As always.)

As I have pointed out previously on HN, that adds a bunch of cost to government software that MUST be paid if the software is part of government functionality.

I can whip out a single page app in a hurry. Ask me to comply with those issues and I'm going to have to spend a lot more time on things.

Don't get me wrong. Big IT projects like these always become boondoggles. However, everybody always simply gives the open source project the benefit of the doubt at being "better" when it probably just blows off a lot of functionality.

Government CRUD applications have to be able to handle the majority while still allowing the 0.1% to be handled.

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#26

Post by dmurray »

lordnacho wrote: post #15

Perhaps the thing to do is to offer up the government project to an open source initiative. "We need a school comms platform. It needs to have messaging and scheduling. People need to be authenticated (duh)." Now ordinarily I'd say "WTF who would build that for free?" but by the looks of it someone has done substantial work for free already. Heck, you could probably get free work from the kids themselves. There's ple…

> Now ordinarily I'd say "WTF who would build that for free?" but by the looks of it someone has done substantial work for free already.

There's a Cunningham's Law parallel here: the best way to get a good free open source system is to first build a terrible expensive proprietary one with shady business practices, and let the frustrated users do the rest.

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#27

Post by oscardssmith »

bsder wrote: post #24
detaro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course open source also needs maintenance, but maintenance isn't suddenly cheaper because you bought a big commercial solution. The difference is that for open-source, you are not reliant on the original provider to maintain it, but can pick from a large range of open-source dev shops and consultancies to help as long as the size of the system is tractable. (or if it's a big thing, hire your own people and bring i…

For someone without expertise, there is no difference between paying money to a proprietary company and paying money to an open source developer. In fact, open source is almost always worse--the proprietary company can at least generally demonstrate that they can do what they say. And, for contracts like these, the end customer generally gets the source anyway . So, to the end customer, there really is no difference.…

What about blender, vlc, and Firefox?

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#29

Post by wrnr »

This happens in every city in EU. Yesterday I was checking out the mandatory drone tracking solution of my city provided by a local supplier. Don't think it a network of radars connected to a surface-to-air-missile installation, no, a lame skin on google maps where you upload a flight plan based on a pdf you need to find for yourself on another website.

Re: In Stockholm there's currently an IT battle underway

#30

Post by bsder »

oscardssmith wrote: post #27
bsder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone without expertise, there is no difference between paying money to a proprietary company and paying money to an open source developer. In fact, open source is almost always worse--the proprietary company can at least generally demonstrate that they can do what they say. And, for contracts like these, the end customer generally gets the source anyway . So, to the end customer, there really is no difference.…

What about blender, vlc, and Firefox?

Firefox and Blender have significant commercial investment behind them to keep them maintained. And they both started out as proprietary.

VLC I don't know about.

The fact that there are so few successful, non-programming examples exactly demonstrates the point.

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