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by cromka 1909 days ago
"The city's local government, @Stockholmsstad, spent 1 billion Swedish crowns (100 million dollars)"

"@Stockholmsstad are now acting like angry toddlers."

I'd read between the lines. I don't think it's a hurt ego, not with these numbers. Someone is (continued) to be paid for this to be happening. This reeks corruption.

3 comments

Well, angry toddlers are also often angry when someone takes something they believe to be theirs. And toddlers often think the whole world is theirs and theirs alone and everyone is here for their amusement .. and if reality tells them different, they can get very mean, too. So - I think the analogue holds somewhat.
It's not so much angry toddlers, who at least can be placated with ice cream and a Pixar movie.

It's more government officials and contractors with their reputation and money on the line. In the case of government officials, it's not necessarily unmarked-bills-in-a-paper-bag-under-the-table kind of corruption, but the more pernicious "revolving door" of government/private industry kind.

Most of the people responsible for starting the journey have left the local government. I think the big problems are - the fact that they have been fined for not handling personal information in a correct way combined with - not enough technical knowledge to know what their current solution enables - the scope of the problems with the system are so big that they do not know what to do and they feel like they get attacked from everywhere and do not have the professionalism to see the bigger picture - they can't afford to scrap the project and start from the beginning
It's one thing to feel attacked, but they apparently actively try to undermine and derail the competing open source project. That's not mere defending, that's open hostility. So the obvious inclination, IMHO, is that the company behind the original code wants to continue to gain from the ongoing (and, ideally, perpetual) cost of maintenance. Naturally said software company itself cannot openly be the source of those obstructing software changes, so they have the officials to act on their behalf and request them. I hardly can think of any other scenario in this case.
>This reeks corruption.

Absolutely correct, it's smells exactly like the kill-LiMux "Project" from Munich.

But Sweden has a pretty big history being corrupt, just think about Assange, Olof Palme...and the bad russian sub story.

OK, I'll bite. I'm thinking about those, but I don't see the corruption. Care to elaborate?
Sweden, LiMux or Olaf?