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An Informal Study Of K12 Classroom Software Costs
PGillingwater writes "Rob Lineweaver has written a concise summary of how much it would cost (and the savings that can be achieved) to set up the (almost) complete infrastructure in the Harrisonburg City Public Schools. He estimates that using commercial packages instead of open source would have cost the K12 schools an extra $27,000 in software license costs.
More interestingly, he states that this is not only about cost. He says: 'This makes it apparent that not all of the benefit of open source software deployment in is the form of cost savings; much of the benefit is in terms of capabilities gained. In other words, through the use of free software, I am able to do more within my budget than I could if I only had commercial solutions available.'"
As others have said, support is close at hand with the community of both users and developers.
As the primary author behind an open-source school administrative package, I understand this situation, and I understand that if something breaks someone will need to know what's going on. That is why I have the support policy that I do -- if someone is using LISSARD (the aformentioned software), they can go through the normal channels (mailing lists, etc.) in case of a problem or they can talk to me directly by phone, even at home.
No, it's not a promise of 24x7 support. But, remember that you're not dealing with trained monkeys on the other end of an 800 number, but rather someone that no only knows what's going on but why it happens that way and knows the situation backwards and forwards. In the end, my open-source project has better support than any of the other commercial offerings, because a resolution is reached within minutes rather than hours or (in some cases) weeks.
One more thing: the support contract never needs renewing. I will help whoever is using my software, because I know what it's like to be totally ignored.