Slashdot Mirror
South Korea Jumps To Open Source Software
mormop writes "Following on from the news that a far-eastern Linux distro is on the way, silicon.com is carrying news that South Korea is switching $300,000,000 worth of PCs to Open Source Software.
The only question now is will Steve Ballmer be capable of covering the sort of distance needed to pull back all these switching governments before collapsing with exhaustion, or is he en route for the Air Miles record?"
I am in a position of managing development and procuring hardware and software. I have used Open-Source Software (OSS) instead of Commericial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) applications recently; I have moved some of my development overseas to India recently.
In hindsight, what I notice, is that I did both for the same reasons. While the COTS applications have lots of advantages (support, professional services, a vendor to yell at), OSS' price was right, and it was good enough. There are a lot of problems with off-shore development (time, politics, control), but, its good-enough, and the price is right.
I know of COTS software companies whose chief competitors are OSS solutions. As a customer, I have picked OSS over COTS. The companies have had layoffs. Imagine if lots of people decided to work on auto assembly lines in the spare time; what would that do to the gainful employment for auto workers?
I'm not advocating anything, I just think that it is important to remember that jobs are lost due to OSS as well as foreign outsourcing. On /., we focus on losses due to outsourcing, but ignore the OSS losses (because this community, including me, tends to be pro-OSS and anti-offshore). In some cases, those losses are the same, when
OSS work is done in foreign countries. If you want to be
protectionist by making it harder to off-shore work, shouldn't
you also be trying to limit OSS?
On the other side, if you want openness, shouldn't we have openness in labor markets as well as software?
Just food for thought...
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Remember the big power outage in the northeast a month ago? (of course you do)
Well, the next day while I waited with a bunch of other folks in the sweltering subterranean heat of Penn Station, I was horrified to see that all the ticket machines had friendly little Windows dialog and error boxes popped up, screaming about not being able to restart properly.
What a ubiquitous piece of software.
I bootleg Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
Wouldn't it be great if state governments ...
Did you read about Oregon's open source bill? It didn't make it through the legislature but it came pretty close. One great thing about the bill is that the actual wording mentioned not only cost savings, but the issues of local control, of keeping public information resources accessible, of preventing spyware or adware being installed and others. More info here
...that I am currently re-writing proprietary applications bought from vendors, (one client-server app based on Oracle powerbuilder and another 32-bit windows-based). Once my team is done, we will own the code but the technology underneath (I'm thinking of Oracle specifically and other middleware applications) will still be owned by someone else. Once say Oracle decides to no longer support whichever of their products we are using, we have to upgrade and re-program it again if necessary, etc...
Basically, I think the cost-effectiveness will be recognizeable in the longterm because of the total ownership over the technology and investment made into resources so I understand your point in regards to open source by itself not necessarily being cost-effective. I have worked in the state government for 5+ years which, while not an extraordinarily long period of time, has revealed to me the expensive process that is endured with throwing money into "current" technology only to have it fade away within a few years and require replacing.
But you are quite right in that open source does not guarantee anything but it does offer great potential.
- tokengeekgrrl