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Comment by wyldfire | Hacker News Reader

Background on the author (from [1]):

> Ken Glueck, Senior VP for government affairs, Oracle

> Bio: Based in Washington, Glueck has run Oracle’s Washington office for about 20 years, having built a career as a tech lobbyist before there was a phrase for it and running field operations for Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.

[1] https://www.recode.net/2015/8/18/11617800/meet-silicon-valle...

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"False Narrative: In-house government IT development know-how is critical for IT modernization. In-house government procurement and program management expertise is central to successful modernization efforts. Significant IT development expertise is not. Substantial custom software development efforts were the norm at large commercial enterprises, until it became obvious that the cost and complexity of developing technology was prohibitive, with the end-products inherently insecure and too costly to maintain long-term. The most important skill set of CIO’s today is to critically compete and evaluate commercial alternatives to capture the benefits of innovation conducted at scale, and then to manage the implementation of those technologies efficiently. Then, as evidenced by both OPM and Equifax, there needs to be a singular focus on updating, patching, and securing these systems over time."

Um. Yeah. 'Cause that's going to lead to a good end.

Well there is a mix, the majority of companies shouldn’t waste their developers time on writing an inventory management system or writing an accounting system. Instead they should focus their efforts where they can build a major competitive advantage.

Every large org project I’ve seen fail does so for three large categories of reasons: under-management (delegating too much authority, project management and lack of accountability over to vendors), vague requirements (ie vendor becomes more hesistant, less certain what to build and moves in tangents to meet expectations) or too long of a feedback cycle (ie BDU).

Also outsourcing cheaply.

So, all he intends to say must be:

“Use of closed source software has been increasing rapidly in the private sector”

Edit: AFAIK, open source and closed source teams are working hand in glove with each other.

This quote comes to mind: "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

"if all you have is a hammer, sell it to the government for $3000"

Why sell hammers to the government for such a discount?

While the hammer is only $3k, the corresponding 5 year maintenance contract for said hammer nets $100k!

Send them a screwdriver first so you can bill twice.

Then pay contractors to blow torch rip-replace the tip of the screwdrivers after each screw turned. See also: scrap-heap piles of new engines and wheel rims left in Afghanistan that were billed to the US military, the metal of which was sold cheap by local scrap merchants to make weapons for the Taliban in Pakistan.

And a second hammer in a geographically separate location for resiliency so you can bill three times.

oracle and open source? do i smell something here.

If it's a stench it's just Java.

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