I was at Capita a while back and I was told the reason they are in bed with MS is that the turn over in programmers means they have to go for the lowest common denominator in terms of expertise. I pointed out that if they used open source they could use the money saved in software licenses to pay better programmers to stay! When it comes down to it the decision makers just don't understand the options.

Regards,

-- Ian

... and the story I heard was that M$ own something like 20% of the company. WHich might also explain Capita's adoption of .NET But to be fair - if C# ( ~ Java) and C++ are typical development tools, then I don't see the 'lowest common denominator' argument. Unless you mean Borland = good or GCC = good and M$ = bad. Why do they have large turnover of programmers? Surely connected with staff satisfaction? -- ******************************************************************************** All mail sent and received may be examined to prevent transmission of unacceptable material. Wellington College does not accept responsibility for email contents. Problems to postmaster@wellington-college.berks.sch.uk. Website: http://www.wellington-college.berks.sch.uk ********************************************************************************