Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (225 mails)

["Mark Evans" <mpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 02, 2003 at 04:50:39PM +0100, Chris Duncan wrote:
> 
> Quoting "adrian.wells" <adrian.wells@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> 
> > Unfortunately many of these decisions are made ultimately by bursars who
> > like to be able to point the finger at listed companies rather than a
> > group
> > of like minded geeks (no insults intended). It's about accountability
> > (pun
> > intended). When it goes down the tubes for whatever reason, "..but we
> > pay
> > them ?1000's for the software" has much more clout than "... yes, but it
> > was
> > free!" or "...every other school in the country uses it" as opposed to
> > "but
> > our computer whiz said that we ought to try it out"
> >
> 
> Hopefully there would be a rigorous evaluation of ANY software that is being 
> considered for adoption by an organisation. The fitness of the software for the 
> purpose intended, support options and cost would all be evaluated according to 
> their relative importance to the organisation. If a product is chosen that 
> isn't up to the job, I would be inclined to take issue with the process. If a 
> product is chosen on the say-so of a 'computer whiz' alone, then the parties 
> responsible for the decision ought to be looking for alternative employment.

But is this intrinsically any worst than software being chosen
because "that's what the LEA likes", even when they don't have
to "eat their own dogfood"; because it's an "upgrade", this 
even gets applied in cases where the "upgrade" involves radical
change or even because "everyone else is using it"...

> I'm not sure why you suggest that because you pay 1000s for software, you 
> would have more clout with the software vendor. Real world experience says that 

Reading a few EULAs should enlighten people.

> a company in a near monopoly position is not going to be too bothered by 
> complaints if enough units continue to be sold.

>   
> > It's not the users that you have to convince; you can teach monkeys to do 
> > anything
> 
> If your users find a computer system too difficult to use, they will simply 
> find ways not to use it. I would contend that you DO need to convince the users 
> in order to ensure that you gain measurable benefits from the computer system 
> instead of paying for a system that hampers staff.

If you don't need to spend those thousands on software (and
the hardware to run it) then maybe staff will appreciate
whatever else can be bought with the money.

-- 
Mark Evans
St. Peter's CofE High School
Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109
Fax: +44 1392 204763