MESSAGE
DATE | 2003-09-23 |
FROM | Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS
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SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Re: [nylug-talk] RE:Business application SW for Linux
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> Weather we like it or not, they'll just keep on doing this until they > feel enough pressure from everyone to close up shop and do things the > proper way. >
Your 100% correct about this. And this will likely continue until one of three things happen. First, businesses need to begin to look at their computer infrstructure rationally. This is something they simply fail to do at this time.
Money spent on software and hardware seems to go through a different evaluation process than, say, the corperate fleet of cars. It's been fairly well demonstrated that locking yourself into proprietory data formats costs large companies more money over the long term. They end up being forced into upgrades which they would not otherwise need, and the commitment to different software applications over the years means maintaining antiquated software and licenses, even operating systems and servers, in order to maintain access to historical data. This is really bad. In fact, when we were working together at NYU, we had this exact problem moving data from EZ Dental to Dentrix.
The company which owned both products couldn't even export the data, and I needed to literally grep through binary data files and unpack the 100,000's of record and export them to MySQL.
Secondly, the community needs to develop the 'business' infrastructure to be able to support businesses craddle to grave. This is a huge problem because in general, people don't volunteer to create boring accounting, tax and auditing programs. A committment needs to be undertaken to support these boring projects, which I firmly believe can financially succeed. Seed money is a big part of this problem. If your going to offer accounting software (which also needs to do auditing, report writing and taxes) then you also need the practice management software to handle the human resources function, payroll and the rest of the practice.
Thirdly, we need a broader general education by the public about what computers do, how they work, and how they can be deployed. This lack of understanding by the general public puts the public in a position to be exploited by proprietory systems.
As a point, NYLXS was designed to address just this problem. We promote BOARD general computer knowledge amoung non IT professional. The FSCC works together to develop the business plans needed to move onto the desktop and to provide a foundation of mutual support for consultants and businesses. And we also concern ourselves with the broad political issues needed to promte the adaption of Free Software in all areas of living. All three of these aspects need to be addressed in order to break the back of the monoplisitic business pressures which is now victemizing the public.
BTW - The Free Software Institute is starting Intro to Programming with Perl tomorrow. This is part of the effort to address part one. Since your well aware of my teaching priorities and effectiveness in teaching these programming fundementals, perhaps you can do me the favor and spread the word a bit. We still have some seats to fill.
Also, mon ami, Akshay, how about an Inservice for old time sakes :)
Brian already did one on IRC Perlbots :0
Ruben
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