[OSGeo Africa] Another illegal GIS RfQ

[Luncedo Ngcofe]

Hi

Thanks Tim for clarity.

I guess the follow up question would be:

  *   How can Government tenders cater for such (if they are not using an open source software)?
  *   From another view as the tender is not specific with the software, how can one (company) charge for something free? I do understand of the time for training and support but the tender is not based on that only but rather the software of conducting a certain function.
As a suggestion, maybe a template tender document should be drafter and circulated. It is then crystal comparison of current tender documents and the direction proposed can be reviewed.

Regards
Luncedo

From: Africa <africa-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> On Behalf Of Tim Sutton
Sent: Friday, 18 October 2019 12:17
To: Africa local chapter discussions <africa at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [OSGeo Africa] Another illegal GIS RfQ

Hi


On 18 Oct 2019, at 10:52, Luncedo Ngcofe <Luncedo.Ngcofe at drdlr.gov.za<mailto:Luncedo.Ngcofe at drdlr.gov.za>> wrote:

Dear all

Please enlighten me

  *   If open source software (s) are free, then why would Government put out a tender for that instead of downloading such and start using such?

If you want to have support, you need a company or a person to provide that. Generally people won’t give their time for free. What many organisations in e.g. Europe do is take half the budget they would have spent on proprietary software and contract a support company to provide support services. They save lots of money in license fees and benefit from an open market where they can change from one support provider to another if needed without needing to swap out their technology.

Those organisations that don’t need support can just use it for free - which happens in many cases too.

Regards

Tim

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Tim Sutton

Co-founder: Kartoza
Ex Project chair: QGIS.org<http://QGIS.org>

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