eConsultant is leading SA Drupal

Completely agree Mark.

Just today, I walked into a "Drupal Development" house to collect a website from them. The client has moved over to our 7 (currently) strong company with over 6 years of experience in the field, from theirs which has move than 30 developers. The offices were well done, the atmostphere enjoyable and the people friendly.

I had to collect the website, which they did not have ready. They needed to create a support ticket for the database to be extracted, codebase to be downloaded etc. I realised the situation would take over an hour, and so I left them with my harddrive.

Then came the shock and horror of the situation I was in.

Due to the hosting requirements, we need to deploy changes to their servers until the 1 month contract expires and they can issue support tasks etc to move the DNS, blah blah. This wasn't the issue. The issue was that I asked how we were to deploy. They said, I would receive FTP access. Coming from a very strong, linux only company, expecting SSH, I was left aghast, but this has happened before, so that is fine.

Then I asked about version control. I was told they only have version control on their development systems and not live. I couldn't and still don't understand this. If you have it for one system, why not extend to the rest? This is simple and changes your life forever. I can't imagine working without (what we are calling) our enterprise workflow. Essentially, Development -> Staging -> Live. Version controlled all the way. All content types, views, contexts, etc into Features. Merged from Dev branch into Staging, into Live. Deployed, Tested, Happy Clients, Good Systems.

And this is where the difference comes in. Some people know this, Some people dont. Some charge highly for inflated services, and others charge highly for services that deliver, even if that delivery is in the background. Trust me, your client knows when things break, and they blame you if you're coding on the live system, because you don't have a workflow.

There are other development houses that have these systems, and charge less. Perhaps the value equation is lost on them, or they only have clients that can only afford X. This is not our debate, as we don't have data.

What I am saying, is that I agree with Mark. It's a craft. Some build shitty paper aeroplanes and sell it as a Boeing, and others build Boeings and sell it as such. The market will flush these out, and yes, some clients get caught in the mix.

Setting up a body to dictate these terms is not the way to go. Educating each other on Standards and Expectations is one avenue to help all houses make better products, but then those houses would be sending people to Drupal meetups and we know that's not happening right now.

The tender process in South Africa and in a lot of "democratik" countries is very broken. And excuse me, but there is not a way around discussing the tender process without talking about politics so if anyone wants to carry on with their module development and pure basic technology discussions then the rest this is of no value.

I do apologize for my abusive response, /but in my defense i did think the amount was a lot more then it was and certain biological functions are removed under realization of such a matter. I still to this day can not help myself from incoherently repeating the twilight theme song in my head when i think about the free state's website cost.

Tendering rabbit hole

First and for most, government officials should not be able to, by law, hold any position in any other organization while in service and in retirement. They are public servants, in their position , voted by the people to serve, not to dehumanise. It is human nature it be invested in processes that determines your worth, and in this capitalistic society, that worth is measured by your salary. The inevitable consequence is an invested interest in small groups of people ( ie private companies ) and not the interest and well being of the society at large. This very act is in opposite with the ideologies of Plato's republic and the inherent tenets of democracy, where first and and foremost come the upliftment of humans through education, health and security. These principles do not exists and the collusion of private companies and government have turned a productive and contributing process into a proactive way in which to enrich small groups of well connected people under the illusion of a righteous free market.

The tender process should be an analysis ( which is not hard now a days with the likes of google , and even more so with a piece of software written by Palantir, with just this software the government would become more productive in every area as long as they invest in education , which they seem to care very little for ) program based on real data, from various sources , and by various .. i mean a lot.

Obviously, outside consulting from companies within the broader area of expertise that have no interest or do not qualify for the tender. And not just one or two .. but a few.This makes perfect sense in a proper free market where there is large competition ... one word ... Telkom *sigh. In this case (the tender concerning ) if it was put forward with the government in guise of a private company and went to various web development firms i can right now guarantee that this would not have cost more then R500 000. And if you have a lobbyist with a IT background that price could come down to R350.000 . I have seen this happen on more then one occasion. But its the government .. easy push overs hey. Try that shit with any accounting firm .. i dare you. You will spend nights just trying to understand the contract you just signed, with legal jargon that would be somewhat understandable if we still spoke latin.

Tenders should be ( and maybe i am being a neive idealist ) treated with the same regard as a criminal investigation. The work that companies do for the government will either make or break a system and that could even mean a new government ( unfortunately that is not so much the case in this country ). This has happened in Europe because the government was in bed with the banking system and once the people who control the flow of money also become the same people who regulate it , you are stuck with egos that are so far gone in mental delusions of omniscience that pure reason and logic disappear almost completely.

Take our glorious president. He has officially stated that he used 70 million rand of his personal money on his stately security upgrade in a recent interview with the BBC. He should not have access to this amount of money, not while there are reports of the like we see in this country. Highest HIV AIDS infection rate, one of the worse serious crime rates per capita and recently was given the 1 spot according to Oxfam in the inequality between the rich and poor.

But lets take a look at the this current tender of 2.7 Mil for an internet service in a country with an unemployment rate of 25% ( yes money well spent , very well spent indeed ) that is basically a service to provide as an information portal. No revenue streams ( well not that i am aware of ) Now although they have removed their client list from their website it is a pretty well know fact that this company (eCon) as done but a few government based websites, least we forget the infamous "official" soccer world cup site. There is no doubt (and i could probably easily prove it ) that there is a cozy relationship between the government and this company. Which is good .. i am not saying it is bad, its is very good that drupal is being used in government. However , how fair is it during such an important tender process when a company that has well know relations with the government for the other companies involved and for a justified outcome? When you know that those two will be sharing drinks later and the smooth talker, mixed with a bit of 1984 kwv, will start mumbling on about facebook and twitter comparisons. The court of law has a term for this. It is called a conflict of interest. With that said any proven information of conflict of interest in any tendering process should leave the process null and void and a fine given to the politician who handed out the tender ( not necessarily the actual official whom the conflict of interest is with )

With 2.7Mil the government could have setup a educational project to teach a group of very motivated and very poor school leavers ( of which there are many black and white .. and indian and colored!! ) , maybe even hiring econ to train them, in web development using the drupal CMS. I dont mean to bust anyone's bubble here but to create a website in drupal is so bloody easy. You can create a really complex app without writing 1 line of code, in a matter of days. And as for a adaptive theming, i know there is a drupal theme for free, that allows this functionality with a few mouse clicks. These trained users can then work on the site with a salary , and a proper support structure from multiple drupal based companies. The government can put a process in place to carry on training new users while at the same time having provided real world training ( which is IMO is of way more then a degree ) to a group of youngsters who can now go and get a nice cozy job or even create their own company. This removes corrupt intent completely and at the same time it develops humans who otherwize are going to be smoking wongu and start knifing and raping because their is no work and no opportunity but a struggle of epic proportions the likes of which you, me and anyone else on this site could not even begin to comprehend, sitting behind your nice flat screen monitors and/or +R6000 smart phones.

( Just a side track. How is it that the government does not own its own servers? But wait it actually does, it actually has a server farm, with a team a server admins, so to be quite frank there should be a hosting cost of R0.00 )

This is what open source is about. It is about free as in freedom!! not free as in beer! that last statement will only make sense to an alcoholic .. not a software engineer. This form of programming is an ideology and you can argue the details of the positions between Stalleman and Linus (or maybe you dont even care :.( if you want but it basically comes down to empowering people to be better then they were the day before through the freedom of information , the freedom of source code. Well this is the way of the white hat anyway. It has so much value that even the likes of microsoft have opened up ASP, ajax, typescipt and a whole suite of technologies. And even more so with drupal going a step further and not releasing one ( NOT ONE ) module for money. This is about people and technology and wanting to improve peoples lives through this delicate art of coding. Not working off of a perverse subversion of Adam Smith's principles where money it the sole enricher of the soul and the determining factor of self worth.

Anyone who has really gotten into code or even site building will know this. That zone when the reality of Einsteins theory of relativity becomes very real and time becomes removed almost completely from the task at hand. I know we all have to survive ourselves and we all need to make money. But I think more then any other industry we have a responsibility as the pervaders of the speed at which our civilisation increases in advancement to not disregard the bigger picture and connectivity of a larger whole beyond the networks.

"The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want, More than machinery, we need humanity"

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