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0 pointsbigstrat20039mo ago0 comments

It doesn't need an excuse; it's a fully valid reason. Using proprietary software is a perfectly valid choice to make.

0 comments

Chosing to pay millions when it is not necessary is definitely not a valid choice. It is at best stupidity, at worse corruption.

In my experience in the public sector in France, I have seen these decisions taken to advance someone's career.

For example, a first year free means a purchase person will get their promotion on incredible YoY progress.

kube-system9mo ago

Deploying a free tool that doesn't solve an organizations problems isn't a valid choice. I'm tired of open source advocates hand-waving away the reasons people choose other software. For most organizations, software is not a big cost, labor is. It often makes sense to throw a million dollars at a piece of software to make people's job easier, because that can translate to tens of millions in labor.

louiskottmann9mo ago

That is stretching the subject beyond reasonable. Proprietary software as a general endeavor is not an invalid business and nobody is saying that here.

LibreOffice is close enough to Microsoft's offering that surely it makes sense accross the many EU states to stop spending millions on it, and spend a few to close the gap, saving even more millions in the future.

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dismalaf9mo ago

Let's be real... Tons of governments employ people just to boost employment numbers. Government staff are almost always simply a cost, governments don't need to be profitable. They extract taxes and then spend it. And I think a lot of countries would prefer to spend more on salaries than on software licenses going to a different country...

mistrial99mo ago

In English the word "free" is apparently another difficulty. The technical Four Freedoms are not at all about the money. Money can be exchanged between willing partners of course. That includes government. The means and methods of closed source, and the means and methods of "corruption" are real.

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0 comments

louiskottmann9mo ago

Chosing to pay millions when it is not necessary is definitely not a valid choice. It is at best stupidity, at worse corruption.

In my experience in the public sector in France, I have seen these decisions taken to advance someone's career.

For example, a first year free means a purchase person will get their promotion on incredible YoY progress.

kube-system9mo ago

louiskottmann9mo ago

That is stretching the subject beyond reasonable. Proprietary software as a general endeavor is not an invalid business and nobody is saying that here.

1 more reply

dismalaf9mo ago

mistrial99mo ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse