2009/2/5 Stuart Miller <[email protected]>: > I can't speak to the specific needs of K-12, but I DO have an opinion about > your questions: - Is the assumption that an open ILS installation will be > cheaper > hosted solution true or should our librarians not assume that Free Software > means cheaper software? We would very likely be looking to have this solution > hosted. > > Most advocates for open source do NOT claim that it saves money. Rather, it > allows you to redirect expenditures to more productive uses, allows for > competition for your support dollars, and eliminates what can be a very high > initial license fee for a new system. That said, you still might be able to > reduce IT costs--but like everything else, it depends.
Agreed. In working through our project costs, I would say that the total cost of operation (TCO) is probably a wash, but the potential return on investment (ROI) with an open source solution is much greater than with a proprietary solution. And if, after a couple of years, you determine that the ROI is not meeting your expectations, you can drop your support contract but continue to use the product. (Well, in a hosted situation that may not be true... but then you're balancing the cost to employ and train someone to care and feed for your ILS in-house vs. paying experts to do it for you - lots of tradeoffs to consider.) > You can obtain Koha or Evergreen for "free" in the sense that do not pay an > upfront, one-time initial license fee such as you paid for Horizon. If you > choose to support your open source system, you will save the annual > maintenance you pay for Horizon. However, my guess is that you will want to > continue to contract for support from Equinox or LibLime, the two companies > currently offering support for Evergreen and Koha. Actually, LibLime no longer claims to support Evergreen. A company called "PTFS" claims to offer support for Evergreen, but as far as I know they have never contributed to the project or demonstrated any competence with Evergreen so I would personally be wary of their ability to follow through. Given that Equinox has done and is doing the bulk of the development work on Evergreen, I would find it hard to recommend any other company for support services. -- Dan Scott Laurentian University
