Comments on: What’s the opposite of sustainable software?

By: Tim Small

Tim Small — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 20:35:04 +0000

Radio 4′s “File on 4″ on this project at 20:00 19-Oct-2004 – repeated 5pm Sunday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

By: Ivan Pope

Ivan Pope — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 10:01:34 +0000

Anyway, what’s that about £20 an hour?

By: Jag

Jag — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 20:37:28 +0000

The “socialist” in me finds that totally acceptable! Surely one of the responsibilities of a government is to keep people employed?

Another fine example is the 3G licence auction. 20 billion UKP. Quite a few new hospitals – and a great way of reducing the national debt.

By: Steve Bowbrick

Steve Bowbrick — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 17:17:20 +0000

But 30 billion quid? At 20/hour I make that nearly a million man years (not including any infrastructure, of course). That’s 200,000 full-time staff for five years. Wow.

By: John Hawkes-Reed

John Hawkes-Reed — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 15:33:08 +0000

Um. Those things work (for appropriate values thereof) and were cheap (ditto) because the problem to be solved was either relatively simple or was a New Thing, so there wasn’t much in the way of interoperation needed. What interoperation there is/was is reasonably well-defined (RFCs and the like).

None of these things are true for the average NHS IT project. I spent several year banging my head on that wall, and I still start to spit blood when I think of the frightening amount of money wasted. (The stories I could tell you are probably still actionable…)

By: Troy Worman

Troy Worman — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 06:27:03 +0000

Answer: Shareware.