Old?
Given that the Libs want to take Australia back to the 1950-60's, I suspect they view the software they are using as "cutting edge and futuristic".
Liberal Party of Australia: why are you paying so much for ancient software?
An Australian developer has taken a look at the Liberal Party's controversial Feedback software, and guesses that MPs are paying a fairly steep licence for something developed on DataFlex. For those of you born later than the first Linux release, DataFlex was a Windows development environment that emerged from the DOS era to …
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Wednesday 29th June 2016 04:25 GMT Magani
Outdated?
"...or even VB6"
Disclosure: There are at least 2 applications that I wrote in the late '90s / early '00s that are still running because:
* They work
* The premise on which they were built hasn't changed
Leaving the daylight robbery rip-off of the fees aside, why drop dung on it just because it's old?
I'm old and I still ... oh, no I don't!
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Thursday 30th June 2016 04:50 GMT Mark 65
Re: Outdated?
I can think of one reason - because it'll be a pain in the arse to support. VB6 was always a bit of a c*nt to deploy and I'm pretty sure that nowadays nobody wants to drag their CV that far backwards to take on a support contract unless it is at exorbitant prices. So few people are able to support it (plenty think they can code VB, less know of its myriad of shitty bits) and less would want to go back to doing it. Quite aptly for the Liberals this would then be the 1% of the 1%.
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Thursday 30th June 2016 05:50 GMT david 12
Re: Outdated?
>VB6 was always a bit of a c*nt to deploy <
You're confusing Vb6 with the VB4 debacle.
Since VB6 is no longer updated, and since the library is included with Windows XP, Vista and 7, it's supper easy to deploy VB6 applications, and they'e supper stable.
Win10 and XP64 I don't know about.
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Wednesday 29th June 2016 08:06 GMT Magnus_Pym
Dataflex or Visual Dataflex
This is just marketing hype isn't it? 'You don't want to use that old reliable stuff. You want to buy new stuff because it's newer." I can't see where the cost comes from though. Dataflex is still available and under development BTW, or at least Visual Dataflex is.
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Wednesday 29th June 2016 08:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
Liberal Party Rort!
The cost per MP has nothing to do with the cost to run or maintain the software, it is just another way for the Liberal Party to get more funds from the people of Australia.
The sooner we have full Political Party funding disclosures the better! We have already seen them try and hide funds and get caught out! $1.5 million must have hurt some ones campaign.
I wonder if we the people of Australia could get a Royal Commission on Political Party funding? Might be the best money ever spent!
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Thursday 30th June 2016 12:03 GMT micmac_perth
Steep licence for something developed on DataFlex
As a DataFlex developer I’d like to inform you that it is well and truly alive and kicking, and provides a great business application development platform. But don’t take my word for it, take a look www.dataaccess.com.
It’s not DataFlex that’s old it’s the application, which may have been written in an old version of DataFlex. Too hard to tell from the screen shots, but in the 1990’s this might have been Visual DataFlex 4 or 5, in 2016 it’s DataFlex 18.2.
Ultimately what has more bearing on the quality of an application is not the tool being used but the developers skill in getting the best out of that tool.
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Friday 1st July 2016 01:58 GMT Argus Tuft
Dodgy is as Dodgy does..
one point that is missed above - the 'product' isn't the issue, even whether it works or not.
The software company in question 'Parakeelia' is owned/run by a political party*, who then pay (taxpayer supplied) funds into it, and receive very large 'donations' back.
Basically just a money laundering operation.
Any money spent on actually improving the product would reduce the slush fund for 'donations'.
*Parakeelia is registered to the same inner-Canberra office building as the Liberals. The company's directors include the Liberal Party's federal director and president. It is registered with authorities as being associated with the party.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
