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TDC and the Real Black Hole

Written by Matt B · first published 19/01/2008

Thanet Council have once more demonstrated the folly of using expensive proprietary systems over the more logical free and open source solutions that are the defacto standard. In case it was not clear (and to some it might not be) the council website runs a Windows based server and runs the ASP.NET web scripting framework.

Both of these require more resources than say PHP5 and Apachi on a Linux server. Not only do these take less processing power but they cost nothing and do not have a license that expires every year.

Like this:

Persits.Jpeg.1 error '800a0004'

AspJpeg has expired. Please visit www.aspupload.com to purchase a registration key.

/_colony/members/branding_style.asp, line 22

Observed on http://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk/ at 0943 hours on 19.01.2008

So no image uploads for the council until they pay for the right to use the code that blogger.com, wordpress.com and even thanetstar.com enjoy for free. I am sure that we could reduce taxes if we stopped the council paying thousands of pounds per department per year for expensive software solutions when free software of equal quality exists right now.

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Public Comments

Chris Roos wrote:

I'd love to see government organisations opt for open-source over proprietary software. I'm just not sure we have anyone in a position to make a difference that agrees with this point of view (I may be wrong about that).

I've bookmarked a couple of debates in hansard that mentioned open source. One of them[1] made me really angry: they quite clearly demonstrate that they don't know what they're talking about (imho) yet they just keep talking. Grrr.

[1] http://www.theyworkforyou.c...

19/01/2008 13:14:54

Matt B wrote:

I see what you mean. That Angela Eagle (Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury) is talking from her backside. The issue is not demanding a specific OS but rather that a good system should be unbiased (as to race or computer). Any decent online system should be OS ignorant or in English - it should not need to know what your OS is.

The Internet works like this already. There are not versions of Google or yahoo for each platform but just one standards compliant (more or less) system that anyone can use. I can use any OS that will support IE6, IE7, Firefox, Opera, KMenlon or even Lynx and access Google and Yahoo. Why should I need a specific OS to access what is basically a form driven post and reply system.

To comment here you just need any PC and any browser. That the process is simple compared to somethings is beside the point the principle is the same if I want to transfer money from bank to credit card or if I want to sign up for blogger. It was the same process when I purchases the server that is running this site.

Why should the government be different?

19/01/2008 19:07:17

Thanet Blog List wrote:

I'm always harping on to people about Open Source and some people just can't believe that all of it comes for free. They'd rather spend lots of money because they have it in their budget, and fall for a lot of the sales speil.

Open Source doesn't have to try and sell itself, as it promotes itself simply by the fact of it it works or not. The amount of input on the softwares forums and the fact that people will spend many hours trying to improve the software without any pay shows this.

At work we were tied into a 5 year contract which provided us with a CMS website. It is shit. The contract is running out now and so I've been setting up a new site with Joomla. It's completely free and the amount of plug-ins is amazing. Done, and �6,000 a year saved.

If only the council and others would do a little more detective work instead of pouring our money into ventures that could be done at a percentage of the cost.

19/01/2008 23:44:31

Matt B wrote:

Then they would have a lot of money to spare. At a very rough estimate of the spending the website and so forth must cost the council I am fairly sure that switching to purely opensource software would allow the creation of a data centre that would allow not only everything they do no but sufficient resources to establish a Thanet MAN linked to the Kentish MAN and JANet at the very least. the result would be an improved IT infrastructure that could allow municiple Internet related services to run in Thanet. Such services as Municiple 802.11g+ (WiFi) access and high speed connections to the continental and US/UK backbones would make Thanet a good place to establish highly lucrative top end IT businesses in.

Because they would not be paying for all that software the money could be used for better hardware.

I doubt any of the local parties could argue that low pollution, high paying, big spending (light) industry would be anything other than a massive boost to the local economy.

20/01/2008 10:27:33

adem wrote:

They wouldn't go for it though. IT would be a great industry to have here but whilst the council still grasps onto the idea of making Thanet a prime tourist destination then it will never happen.

The millions poured in, and wasted on, projects like the Turner Center are an example of this. Yes I love Thanet, but I don't think it will ever reach the tourism heydays of the 50s/60s, and anyone who thinks it will is being very shortsighted.

As a wiseman once said to me <i>"you can't polish a turd."</i> There is a lot more that needs to be done to the infrastructure instead of just painting over the cracks.

p.s. remembered to login as me instead of Thanet Blog List this time.

21/01/2008 11:48:50

Matt B wrote:

Sadly I think you are correct. Tourism is a set of industries that sit on top of many, many others. Some of those are missing around here.

Like the basic trade industry which is required to keep the visitors spending. A lively and vibrant town centre is needed for that... oh woops, we killed all of ours.

23/01/2008 06:53:02

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TDC and the Real Black Hole

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