UK Sets Open Source Procurement Policy

An anonymous submitter notes a story in the Register about the UK publishing their policy on the use of Open Source software. (Or skip straight to the policy itself.) The UK has been moving towards this for a while, and while they don't rule out using proprietary code, the policy definitely recognizes the benefits of OSS.

Comments

Re:TCO

[swillden]

No, it's not complicated at all. You're just making a lot of hidden assumptions, that's all. Those assumptions may or may not be invalid, but determining the facts of the situation requires research, not statements about the blinding obviousness of the conclusions.

You are assuming:

• There is no retraining cost with using Windows-based tools. This one is easily disprovable.
• There are significant retraining costs with using Linux-based tools. This one is really complex, and the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no.
• There are no TCO implications of a given configuration outside of license fees and training costs. This one is also easy to disprove. What's not clear at all is which solution has the better TCO (which was where the whole discussion started).
• De facto standards are more important than de jure standards. In the short term, I suppose this is often true. In the long term, this attitude would screw the whole industry badly. The right approach is not to blithely accept that only IE works with some web sites, the right approach is to *fix* the web sites so they're compliant with standards. That will have other benefits far beyond allowing other browsers to use sites. For example, creation of automated systems that talk to web sites for you is becoming more popular, and standards compliance makes those systems easier to build and less prone to bugs. Also, aging of proprietary formats is a real problem, and one that is likely going to bite us hard in a few years. Adherence to standards helps a great deal with this problem.
• Finally, you're assuming that all users and all companies have needs similar to yours. I'm working with a client right now who sees a lot of value in Linux because their users _don't understand it_. This client wants their users to have a few, specific apps to do a few, specific things and they don't want their users mucking about with anything else. They also want centralized management of all of those systems, which is easier and cheaper with UNIX-type system.

if the open source folks want to build software that can be seriously considered as an alternative to the tools people already use, they must not force the user base to compromise.

Ah, here's another faulty assumption: Forcing the user to change is equivalent to forcing the user to compromise. Change can be for the better. Many companies didn't want to pay the costs for retraining Win98 users on Win2K, but the superior stability of Win2K convinced them that the change was beneficial. My laptop has 43 days of continuous uptime right now, and it only got rebooted a month and a half ago because I wanted to play a Windows-only game. That's a system that goes through a zillion suspends, hibernates, has four different kinds of PCMCIA network cards and a half dozen USB devices attached and removed on a regular basis. That kind of rock-solid reliability is worth something.

I will change to another operating system if, and only if, it benefits me to do so.

Not me. I'll change just because I like variety. But that's just me; when making a decision as to whether or not to convert an office staff to a different system, only an idiot would do it on a whim. What I'm really saying here is: "Well, DUH!"

Giving me software that's equivalent to, but different from, what I use now will not motivate me to change.

Here's another mistaken assumption: You seem to believe that open source developers want you to use something else. Trust me: we couldn't care less what you use. We'll use what works for us. Now, I do care what my government uses, and I think representative Villanueva from Peru did an admirable job of explaining why open source software has a fundamental advantage over proprietary software, and TCO has little or nothing to do with it (although I think that in many -- not all -- cases OSS has lower TCO). For that reason I applaud the UK policy shift, and encourage them to strengthen it.