Crumbs
Rich T finds some tasty titbits you might have missed in the week's news
Friday 20 October 2006, 5:12 PM
Cynicism over Newham Linux U-turn
The controversial CIO at London's Borough of Newham brought on more controversy this week as he branded open source as a "red herring" in front of dozens of senior IT professionals. The cio, Richard Steel, evaluated a Linux environment two years ago, only to turn his back on open source and pursue almost exclusively Microsoft software.
Steel's comments - and there was more related wisdom flowing to delegates at the IP'06 event where he was speaking - has met with cynicism from ZDNet's readers (see the talkbacks on the article).
Critics say Steel only evaluated Linux so he could obtain greater discounts from Microsoft, and that the Newham Microsoft programme is now just one big publicity exercise for the Redmond giant.
Certainly the public sector should not accept taxpayers' money to evaluate technologies they have no interest in adopting. But is there anything wrong with using taxpayers' money to make savings for taxpayers on a contract with an IT supplier?
Steel's comments - and there was more related wisdom flowing to delegates at the IP'06 event where he was speaking - has met with cynicism from ZDNet's readers (see the talkbacks on the article).
Critics say Steel only evaluated Linux so he could obtain greater discounts from Microsoft, and that the Newham Microsoft programme is now just one big publicity exercise for the Redmond giant.
Certainly the public sector should not accept taxpayers' money to evaluate technologies they have no interest in adopting. But is there anything wrong with using taxpayers' money to make savings for taxpayers on a contract with an IT supplier?
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