[clairity]

ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.

there are a number of other office suites that are entirely adequate for bureaucratic organizations to build methodical processes around (which is what bureaucracies do). the capabilities of the underlying tools don’t matter much in this regard.

also, audits aren’t meant to prove anything (like security), but instead to shift liability.

[mmanfrin]

> ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.

An ad hominem means using an insult as the basis for rejecting an argument, e.g. 'that is wrong because you are [attack]'. Saying an argument is naive and then explaining why is not an ad hominem.

[clairity]

arguments can have multiple lines of reasoning, one of which can be an ad hominem all by itself.

[wutbrodo]

None of the lines of reasoning were an ad hominem. From your other comment[1], it seems like you think "ad hominem" just means "being rude to someone". I recommend reading the GP comment's description of ad hominem again: it means making a logical argument that depends on the speaker's personal characteristics.

"You're European, so your argument is biased and wrong" is an ad hominem. "Your argument is naive, here's why I think that" is not. The latter is logically downstream of the argument, while the former is upstream.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31854644

[clairity]

no, an ad hominem need not be literal. do you really not understand nuance in language? we're not computers operating only on singular data and deterministic instructions.

see how those three sentences go together? that's a line of reasoning. the subject comment doesn't have that throughline. it's disjointed; the parts are only tangentially connected.

[wutbrodo]

> no, an ad hominem need not be literal

What on earth do you mean by "literal" here? Ad hominem refers to a specific fallacious style of argumentation. Being ignorant of the definition and then too stubborn to admit it is not pushing back against "overliteralism".

Especially because the rest of your comment (dismissing the rest of the argument due to "ad hominem") only makes sense if one assumes the correct definition!

[lovich]

But an ad hominem requires that the argument is thrown out solely based on the attack against the person. Laying out a logical argument against someone's belief, and then _additionally_ insulting him based on his beliefs is not an ad hominem.

[lovich]

A car has multiple parts, but it’s still difficult to use if you only use/look at each one separately

[clairity]

if you look carefully, the 3 sentences are disconnected. they don’t form a line of reasoning.

if it had been starter, engine, and transmission, maybe you’d have a point, but instead it’s corroded battery, door handle, and tailpipe.

[lovich]

I looked at it carefully, and I’m not seeing what you’re seeing unfortunately. I interpreted the naive comment as a separate summary of their opinion, and then the rest of the paragraph was the supporting explanation. He didn’t dismiss the idea because it was naive, it’s the reason it is naive is why he was saying it wouldn’t work

[jasonlotito]

Ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.

[robertlagrant]

None of it was ad hominem.

[Jcowell]

> ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument.

GP never says that you’re naive, but the comment was.

[clairity]

either way (intent can also be multi-modal), it signals a triggered response and is entirely superfluous and distracting. it's worth setting that aside, even after writing it, and examining the emotional underpinnings that led to the response in the first place. we learn a lot about our own subconsciousness that way.

[ska]

>, ... it signals a triggered response

This is, at best, a stretch.

[simonswords82]

I have no idea what it is you're trying to say but I did laugh that your username is clarity! :)

[clairity]

excellent, my diabolical plan to rule the world via dry humor is working as designed.

[scarface74]

The average large organization uses over 100 SaaS products

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-s...

I would love to see you replace all 100 of those with open source software.

Have you ever dealt with large technology migrations?

[quantum_magpie]

And if no one does anything, in 5 years it will be a 1000, in 10 years 5000. As it is right now, the only voice governments hear is that of corpos, and corpos want to preserve the influence of corpos. That's why we need to force the ban on corpo influence. I'd rather pay 1% gdp for a one-time migration to open and free software than pay .01% gdp per corp per year.

[scarface74]

Are you going to also train staff to use the new open source software? Where is the open source SalesForce equivalent? Workday? Concur? Device management? Email service? ServiceNow? Time tracking? Photoshop? Are you going to also force every employee to use Linux instead of Mac and Windows? Are you going to tell them to rewrite all of their software and business processes written on top of Oracle and SQL Server? Should they also rewrite all of their bespoke mobile apps to support open source mobile operating systems? Are you going to migrate all of their Office documents and SharePoint? Are they going to move all of their project management processes from Microsoft Azure DevOps (aka Visual Studio Online)? Are they going to move all of their call center software to open source? For school systems are they going to move their fuel procurement software? Many education systems are partially funded by the lottery. Are they going to move their backend systems from GTech? Their lunch programs payment systems for students use a third party, are they going to move that too? Their ATS? LMS? Grade tracking software?

[Dylan16807]

How long have they been using each one of those products on average? How about migrating off at the same speed?

[scarface74]

So let’s take the lottery systems. Most states including mine has been using the same back end for the lottery since 1991. Who is going to write the replacement? Who is going to audit it? How much is it going to cost to replace literally thousand of lottery terminals? And what benefit would it be?

I can’t think of the name of the company now. But there is one company that manage the school lunch programs. Who is going to write the software and you have to replace all of the hardware throughout the state.

[Dylan16807]

So put systems like that at the end of the list?

And they'll require renegotiation or hardware upgrades at some point, so use that as leverage to say no government entities will buy any more unless they meet certain rules about open sourcing and data storage.

But really, if a handful of things like that were the only examples that would be wonderful.

[abarwick]

Simply training government workers to use open source tools would shut down governments for weeks.

[mensetmanusman]

Then this is a good argument to help convince Republicans to get on board.

[clairity]

not sure that it's relevant and 'large' is subjective, but yes, i stewarded the technology migration of a core product suite for a prior employer, which incidentally had government agencies as a prominent customer segment.

i'm not suggesting that governments can only use internally developed or open-source software, i'm saying corporate interests should be firewalled away from goverment. so a locally-installed office suite incorporating no surveillance tech doesn't have the ancillary corporate interests attached to qualify it for being firewalled.

[scarface74]

You migrated a product. Were you involved in migrating the entire infrastructure of an entire state?

Yes, I speak from experience, migrations and modernizations are kind of my job.

[rapind]

100 SaaS products in one org sounds like a security and logistics nightmare.

[throw827474737]

so just assuming you have an overpriced stinking pile of sh*t, is this an argument to stay with it forever?

[scarface74]

So do you think open source or the government producing their own software will be better?