Re: Interesting comments about the OLE project

From: Matthew Phillips <M.E.Phillips_at_nyob>
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:53:19 +0100
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
>>>> "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2_at_YAHOO.COM> 20/08/2009 22:35 >>>
>Carl Grant, president of Ex Libris North America, writes some critical
commentary 
>about the OLE project on his blog:
>
>http://commentary.exlibrisgroup.com/2009/08/ole-unanswered-questions.html

>
>Grant's commentary is followed by an interesting response from Brad
Wheeler, 
>Indiana University's Chief Information Officer and VP for Information
Technology.

Yes, very interesting.  Carl Grant says:

"The final question I think anyone responsible for making an investment
decision in terms of building OLE should ask themselves is this: If I
were investing my own money in a company that said they were going to
build OLE, would I do it? If not, I think you know what you should do
when it comes to your organization’s money and OLE."

My question would be if I am paying support and maintenance costs on
commercial software of £xx,xxx per year, surely I should expect, after
deduction of profits and overheads, at least £x,xxx of software
development work going on areas which are important to me.  But in
reality, as a customer, I have very little influence on the priorities
of the developer.

At least with contributing development effort to an Open Source project
you can tell your programmer(s) what to do!

Matthew


-- 
Matthew Phillips
Systems Librarian
Library IT Support
Library and Learning Centre, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN
Phone 01382-385181 (internal x85181)


The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish charity, No: SC015096
Received on Fri Aug 21 2009 - 10:57:27 EDT