Slashdot Mirror
Stanford Learns a Software Lesson
Nick Irelan writes "In 1994 Stanford set aside $60 million to aquire the latest financial and management software from PeopleSoft and Oracle. However, the upgrade that was planned years ago is still not complete. Stanford has even begun outsourcing! 'Those who can't do teach :)'."
There was a story here on Slashdot a while ago about resistence to an "open source" solution to the educational intraweb at Princeton.
Said professor made the argument that a bunch of "kids" writing experimental software weren't qualified to write such software and that it should be left to the experts. Bear in mind that one of these "kids" is Brian Frickin' Kernighan who is a professor at Princton.
I did some digging on said professor who holds himself out to be an expert on web design. His online tutorial a)is some of the worst web design I've ever seen and b)was a pretty shitty tutorial.
A little further digging showed he's been in PeopleSoft's pocket since before day one.
There's a lot of politics in these things, and a lot of money flying around and buying opinion. As often as not the last thing those in power want is their own Computer Science people involved. That would queer the whole money flying around deal. Nevermind that it all, ultimately, has to be taken out of the hides of students and other customers.
KFG