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2008-03-08

Taxation without web presentation

"The Library of Congress recently signed a deal to accept 3 million dollars worth of "technology, services and funding" from Microsoft towards building a new website powered by Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in. I (Casey) usually leave the blogging to Tim, but I've got to say something about this.

Microsoft, in general, is very good to libraries, and libraries are very good to them. Microsoft gets huge tax breaks for donating software licenses -- something that doesn't really cost them a thing -- and libraries get software they couldn't afford otherwise.

This is a different beast, however. It sounds like Microsoft technologies will be used from the ground-up -- if you use Microsoft's Silverlight to do the front-end, your developers pretty much have to use Visual Studio and Microsoft languages, your database admins have to use MS SQL Server, and your systems admins have to use Windows and IIS. In any case, it seems unlikely that Microsoft would consult on a project and not recommend you use Microsoft as much as possible."

http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/02/taxation-without-web-presentation.php

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