On 03/02/10 21:21, Dan Jones wrote: > On 3 February 2010 17:22, Terry Coles<[email protected]> wrote: > >> 'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to require >> publicly-funded bodies, in light of the Government's newly >> published Open Source policy, to fully explore free and open >> source software before choosing proprietary systems.' >> >> See http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/govt-oss/ >> >> -- >> Terry Coles >> 64 bit computing with Kubuntu Linux >> >> >> -- >> Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wed 2010-02-03 20:00 >> http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 >> Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.org&channel=%23dorset >> List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset >> >> > DfES guidelines say that we are only allowed to use proprietary/closed > source products in schools, as they use the arguement that if somethin > goes wrong, who are they going to litigate? > > Load of crap, but we end up spending £4k more oer fiscal anum than we > would if we used open source solutions > > That obviously is crap, but you'd think there'd be a business opportunity here. The big companies can afford that kind of litigation risk because part of the cost of software goes towards insurance to cover it. A insurer could offer Open Source risk insurance to companies and public bodies who deploy FOSS solutions, designed to cover them against the kind of problems that they'd normally sue a supplier for. This would I suppose include things like being sued themselves by an end-user, massive data loss, breach of privacy, and so on.
Given that this cost of insurance is already built into the commercial offerings' cost, I'm sure it would still be cheaper than a closed software purchase. Systems integrators and large FOSS suppliers sell this insurance when they sell to public bodies too as part of the package. Who knows? Perhaps this already exists. -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wed 2010-02-03 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.org&channel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
