Theme from mapserver conference at U of M:
I talked to several people from various governmental organizations and schools who are struggling under expensive ESRI and Oracle licenses. They are looking at open source products to replace some commercial software. They often run into barriers, sometimes from management uncomfortable with backing "weird open source products", sometimes from coworkers wedded to a brand of technology. The latter was hard to overcome because some organizations have large GIS departments that have invested heavily in ESRI and don't want to turn away from an industry standard like ESRI's ARCIMS. A another type of resistance is from the higher ups who have made the determination never to do any development in house, to not compete with the software industry, and to only buy out of the box solutions. Those with tin foil caps might surmise, as I do, that the software industry has leaned on government agencies to clamp down on open source wackos funded by the government releasing high quality software for free that competes with expensive software made by campaign contributors.
I can see the other side, that a bureaucrat would be afraid of being punished if it were found out that his people were working on open source software that wasn't central to the mission of the organization and that the agency would be spending resources supporting this software.
6:18:32 PM 
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