Just a side note on this humorous RFI that tech blogger Glen Moody stumbled across, from the Federal Gov’t to the FOSS (Free Open Source Software) community:
Canada has a Request for Information (RFI) related to No-Charge Licensed Software (typically referred to as Free and Open Source Software or FOSS and also applicable to freeware). For the purpose of the RFI, No Charge Licensed Software means Licensed Software that is available at no charge for the Licensed Software and is typically made available as a free download from the Internet. No Charge Licensed Software may also have No Charge Software Support Services (NCSSS) available at no charge from the Internet.
Here’s a suggestion: You have a huge IS organization, full of people with the right skills and knowledge – just try it. Put 10 workstations with 10 IS staff behind an extra firewall layer, install Open Office & Firefox & Thunderbird, and test for stability, interoperability with Office apps and Exchange Server, test network interoperability (drive shares, etc.), and watch the ports for security breaches.
While I admire the willingness to consider FOSS options, the RFI process is cumbersome and unneccessary when the capability is already available internally. Besides which, no information recieved from an RFI of this type is ever truly actionable is it will be serving an agenda.
As one commenter added, the impression the RFI leaves is that…
…they seem completely helpless and seem to know nothing unless that’s the good old strategy to win better prices from Microsoft. [From Anonymous commenter on Glen Moody]
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