I can say at least that we pay an annual licensing fee to Microsoft for all
of our MS products, so there is a benefit.
But definitely there's a lot more than just licensing fees. If nothing
else there's the link between applications, where you might have a
proprietary system, especially a big-iron one where there just isn't even
an FOSS option, and that vendor in turn only supports using a Windows-based
client and/or interfacing their product with MS Office. At that point,
that's pretty much end of discussion at least for people who need to
interface with that app in any way.
But, as much as we'd love to think liberty would be a powerful inducement
to consider open source, the fact is that in time of budget crunch,
licensing fees and cost are a far more powerful incentive, at least in
those areas where you don't have some other vendor lock-in like the one I
described.
As for keeping old mainframes, the other part to that is how much it would
cost to migrate. As in, if you have something working now and you know the
budget to keep it that way, what incentive is there in time of budget
crunch to take a chance on moving, given all the projects you've seen
around that run way over budget and behind schedule? Better to keep your
head down and just make due with what you've got. The devil you know, and
all that.
--On Monday, December 08, 2008 10:51:38 AM -0500 Nick Floersch
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If we focus on liberty and not cost, then it seems moot to bring up the
discussion in the context of state budget cuts..?
I know from personal connection that the Dept. of Social Welfare (i.e.
foodstamps and related things) is paying obscene amounts of money (millions
per year) to account for it being the primary and mostly last (AFIK) great
user of a proprietary system … but it isn’t Microsoft based. The DSW
has a custom-written database application running on an old-iron mainframe.
The software program (named Access, but not MS related) is one of those
dinosaurs keeping various old-school Fortran-type (though I don’t think
that is the language) programmers still employed with the state. I bring
this up because I wonder how many departments are doing similar things –
paying a lot of money just to keep old code running when there might be a
better way? And the thing is, software licensing fees start to pale in
comparison to paying millions of dollars from your department to the state
IT group just to run a single mainframe. How many jobs will be cut instead
of refactoring the mainframe out of the picture?
So – while it would be sane to push for more FOSS in the state gubment,
in terms of saving budgets, I think there may be a lot more to consider
than licensing fees.
Also, it seems like that even if the state is using WinXP, Server 2003,
and Office 2003… we won’t save them money by having them switch –
those licenses are probably already paid for… it isn’t like you need to
–necessarily- pay for XP on a yearly basis, depending on your license
setup. Ditto server and office software. Switching to OO may save money
when the switch to Office 2007 arrives, but it isn’t really there in
full-scale yet. And if they purchased software assurance from MS, the
office 2007 upgrade might be free anyway … or at least already paid for?
-nick
---
Nicholas Floersch (pr. Floor-sh)
Stone Environmental, Inc.
From: Vermont Area Group of Unix Enthusiasts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Bradley Holt
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 10:18 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: VT State Budget Cuts... a time to talk F/OSS?
As Kevin has touched on, I think it's important when advocating for FOSS
that we focus on freedom, not cost. Proprietary software vendors can always
cut their costs to compete with FOSS. They can even give away their
software at no cost to strategic customers or market segments (e.g.
developing nations). Heck, there's nothing stopping them from making
"better" software than their FOSS counterparts (I know, I know, some will
argue that the FOSS process of creating software ultimately results in
"better" software).
The one thing proprietary software can never win on is freedom. When you
focus on other attributes other than freedom you're giving proprietary
software something that they could potentially "win" at. Governments
absolutely should use FOSS. Our taxpayer money should not go towards
software that does not respect its user's freedoms. That is the argument,
forget about cost. Having said that, it's always a good time to advocate
for FOSS :-)
Respectively,
Bradley
On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 11:51 PM, Kevin Thorley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
It is important to remember that training and large scale
implementation/deployment of open source solutions is not the only
cost. Red Hat, as well as other F/OSS vendors, are hardly giving away
their software. There are still licensing costs for commercial
software distributions. For many organization, and I assume this
includes the government, support is also a major consideration.
Support from the commercial vendors does not come free.
I'm not saying that F/OSS should not be encouraged at the
state/federal level. I am saying that we need to be honest about the
costs. F/OSS costs less in the long run for many reasons, quality
being one of the biggest. However, it is free as in speech, not
necessarily free as in beer. We need to be clear as a community when
we talk about cost.
I would personally like to see the state government make an honest
cost comparison between a given proprietary system that they are now
using, including support costs and downtime, and a comparable open
source solution.
It will be interesting to hear what the area libraries who have
switched to an open ILS (I hope I have that acronym right) system are
seeing from a user and cost perspective. Maybe we'll hear some
anecdotal evidence at the next Vague meeting.
Kevin
--
http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/
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