Re: On LinuxToday... erm... today :)

[Dr A V Le Blanc <nospam [at] mcc.ac.uk>]

On Thu, Apr 27, 2000 at 10:48:24AM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Remember, the "system" is not a box plus the OS plus the apps; it
> includes the bureaucratic interface.  You can't just plug a Linux
> system in to the government; you have to train some civil servants to
> work with it, and civil servants are not famous for enjoying
> retraining.

One job I've had is dealing with tapes from various government
sources.  Often they have a machine set up 10 or 15 years ago, and
they don't even know how to control the format of a tape, or to
control what goes on it; all they know how to do is to run a job
'write tape' which someone wrote when the system was bought.

I suppose a lot of that may have changed a bit with the millenium
bug scare.  But in general, government offices don't want to have
computer staff on duty; they want to continue using what they
have always used.  I can see Linux being a contender for new
systems, but I can't see any great push to replace old systems
(as long as they still work) with Linux boxes.

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc [at] mcc.ac.uk
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