Stokey asks:
"I work for a global finance firm, (60000+ employees and presence in 25+ countries) in the Group IT department. Pressure is building from the businesses to cut costs and Open Source software has been pushed onto the discussion table. I am trying to educate IT Directors where I can with correct definitions, breaking down assumptions, and will most likely end up writing the group wide Open Source policy. The challenges are well known: risk, cost, support, licensing, benefits, training, and so forth. I am looking for help in putting together a pack that can be handed to our IT Directors forum which contains a policy, TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) reviews, and risk reviews by companies that have done it. After asking what Gartner has to say, the next question will be 'So who else has done this?'. Can Slashdot assist?" What information do you think should be included to sell Open Source to management at the top-level of any corporation or business?
I'm sure several of you have run into this situation before, so I figure this may be as good of a place as any to suggest what information might be appropriate to place in such a policy, especially for future IT workers who find themselves in this position. If people are serious in getting Open Source further into the enterprise than it has already is, such information will be necessary to convince the powers-that-be on the things that we already know: Open Source can be as good as, or better than, commercial software for business tasks. Things like licensing descriptions, common misconceptions, and what Open Source really is would be an absolute must. What other information do you think would be absolutely necessary to include into such policy?
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I don't know why people think of a product as open source or not when doing deployment. Just think of it as linux or windows or mac or whatever the product is with whatever the feature you need.
How silly would it be to say to any manager, yeah... we're not deploying this because I can see the #includes and functions. That's essentially what people are saying, when they say no to open source.
How about Microsoft?
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Your company is very large. You must be using many open source solutions in many ways already. You should start there by identifing what is already being used and how effective they are. Thereby providing your own case studies.
http://Lenny.com
...is explaining it all to end users
I'm sure several of you have run into this situation before
Where would a bunch of fifteen year old script kiddies run into something like this?
It really depends on how your bosses understand the situation.
If they're more of the PHB kind, go "Linux is Free, we don't have to pay nothing, yadda..."
Now, in the "willing category":
1 - replacing WIndows w/ Linux at workstations may be a good idea. After all, their main use is Word Porcessing and E-Mails...
2 - In the server side, there are good choices too, but then there is support...
how long until
Though they may not be 100% trusted by the community, they do have resources and studies to help prove your case. Sometimes the slick presentation is valued more that the well-researched one, anyway.
Some open source projects are very well done, and provide clear and immediate benefits upon implementation - assuming that you have problems that they solve. Others are less so. In other words, don't try to sell "Open Source" as a fundamental concept. Sell specific open-source solutions to specific corporate problems.
Remember also that everything is relative. Let's say that you're working for a small software company. You need an office suite. You could use OpenOffice, which has no initial cost and a small but non-zero chance of incorrectly storing documents that get sent to potential customers and investors. Or you could go to Microsoft.com and get a ton of NFD software, including Office, for a couple of hundred bucks. Here, the open-source solution fails to be appealing. If you're developing J2EE applications and need a good app server though, its very possible that JBoss provides a compelling open-source alternative to expensive software like WebSphere.
But (and here I'm speaking as the CTO for a growing software company), if you start out with blanket statements like "Open source has lower TCO," without talking to the specific context of a business problem - I may agree in principle, but speaking as the company, "I don't care." Solve a problem, do it well, do it cheaply, and you'll find that the company execs don't care either - but that holds true in both directions. If the best solution happens to be open-source then they'll probably go for it, but not because its "k3wl" or open, but because its better for the business.
This is the time for open source to, as they say, put its cards on the table. The advocates feel that it does deliver lower TCO (and other advantages). I happen to lean that way myself. But that should mean, ironically enough, that the end product should be superior without including the specific point that its open source, any more than I would pick any other product because of the way that its built. The better building technique produces a better product, and that's why it gets used.
At least, that's my opinion.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
RISK
THE BOTTOM LINE
The latter is of course, tantamount in a for profit organization. Focus your research on these two items, and shy away from the "thousands of eyballs reviewing the code" arguments, as those are unlikely to carry the day.
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It sounds like you may need to talk with IBM (or other large open source based company, maybe RedHat? ) about some of this stuff -- they probably have done a lot of the homework for you.
Good luck, please let us know how this goes!
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
Make sure to highlight both the positive and negative aspects of the switch to open source from a user's perspective. That way if something doesn't work exactly like the higher-ups want it, you have covered yourself by telling them beforehand. You also may be credited with good foresight in the event that certain tasks / implementations are made to work better / faster. Again, make sure to cover both sides of the story or you may be in for some dissapointment or trouble.
I believe that the thing that needs to be addressed and stressed are the recent KNOWN vulenrability "outbreak". The fact that in order for one to keep up and deploy all the security patches that come out almost on a daily basis on all clients. One has to have dozens of man hours per patch. Which obviously translates to quite a bit of money.
How's that for a start?
-JemNo businessman ever trusts something that is argued to be "free". The saying "you get what you pay for" rings true with most management teams, and anything "free" is directly indicative of being poor quality. Cheap is a euphemism for bad quality normally. And switching to Open Source is not free, indeed it is often not even cheap. The costs are real, but so too are the advantages.
I don't know about your IT department, but for many more than half the price of a PC is Windows and Office licences. Stopping those is a dramatic cost-saving.
Your company will almost certainly want continuing support for its systems, this will have to be budgetted for. Don't forget training costs, your workers will need to be retrained to learn how to use the new systems and this costs money. There are more costs but you get the point.
Do a genuine cost-benefit analysis, work out all this, especially support and training costs, and it will still be dramatically profitable to switch to Open Source. However a fully polished, professional and complete cost-benefit analysis will provide very useful and significant information to management, in a form they can understand and trust.
Try digging back to as far as the 70's and 80's when companies hired people to write them code. The idea of relying on closed-source software was really an idea from the late 80's and 90's, sold on the idea that it would be cheaper.
If a large company commits to integrating some Open Source, hire programmers to "tweak it the way they want" and then contribute the resulting code back to the Open Source community.
THEN compare your TCO's, RTI's and EIEIO's to you CICIO's.
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Cheaper software makes it easier for small businesses to grow, and large businesses still need the support and tech's to impliment this software, so they hire, spend, develop, and contribute (via GPL). Anything that lowers the cost to start up and grow a business is good for jobs, good for the economy, good for consumers who now have more choice in the market place.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
The Robert Francis Group has a .pdf of a study commissioned by IBM on the TCO of Linux (the link is for web servers, but there are other .pdf's under the 'research' link). You have to fill out some data, but it doesn't have to be representative of you. Download the PDF, it's pretty interesting!
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
You are fortunate to work in a company that is open to open source. I work for a large software company (10000+ employees in several states), and the official policy is that nobody uses any open source software, because if somebody sues us there isn't a company we can turn around and sue. This is seriously the primary reason - I've had one-on-one discussions with our lawyers on this issue.
Personally, I violate that corporate directive on a daily basis - I run linux, I use mozi^h^h^h^hphoe^h^h^h^hfirebird^h^h^h^hfox, etc. I do have to rdeskop to a windows box for corporate email and to use word+excel, as many people in my same position have to do. But 100% of my development (java) is done on linux.
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Assuming you're advising management, or perhaps the CXO level, what you want to focus on is cost. Price. TCO.
Executives don't give a flip about "open source," or "contributing to the community," or "furthering the Free Software movement," etc. Executives do care very much about what they're spending on IT.
Consider the cost of 60,000 Windows workstations vs. 60,000 Linux or FreeBSD workstations. Do some calculations based upon the Windows licensing scheme vs. "free." The differences will undoubtedly be astronomical. Don't push the "free" aspect over the top; factor in the legitimate costs of a) switching existing workstations to an open source OS and b) supporting users migrating from Windows to the OS you choose. Any open source OS will still come out way ahead, even with the cost of switching.
Finally, I would advise that you forget what Gartner has to say, unless your superiors are totally sold on Gartner results.
Verizon's IT division had been running the entire development team on Linux, Openoffice for years now. There was an article somtimes back, on newsweek about a Verizon Director George Huges's initiatives.
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition....
I think it is most important that the ROI be measured in an effective method. Such as, not only look at the obvious costs, but look at the hidden savings from changing to Open Source. Such as, we are running Pentium II computers for a year longer since we are running Linux, which extends the life beyond the cycle of expected depreciation. We can cycle in upgrades to hardware in cycles to prevent a one time expense on the balance sheet.
Then cover things like the amount of power saved with the older machines using less watts. For some companies, this could be $100,000+. EnergyStar has statics on this information.
I would also mention the recent losing of the source code for Windows along with the ability to break free of recurring charges with virus software.
In the grand scheme of security, it would probably be beneficial to note that spyware and corporate theft is less likely in a system that is unfriendly to script based theft schemes.
Mention that you don't have to worry about paying for MCSE for employees. You have no fears of employees stealing licenses.
No more formatting when a new employee inherits a machine.
The ability to disable Cd Drives remotely at will.
I guess that covers the basic things. I would give them all copies of Linux LiveCDs that they can take home and use on their home machines. LindowsLive is a good one to use. Let them see for themselves that it is not going to be a foreign OS, but just a slightly different OS.
I am looking for help in putting together a pack that can be handed to our IT Directors forum which contains a policy, TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) reviews
:-)
Here you are. I hope that was helpful
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
yes it is wrong this type of discussion can educate the average slashdot reader with the salient points of the discussion, that way if they are surprised with the question they will have info on hand, and can then seem well-informed to their boss.
Smooze up and get them to do the leg work for your proposal you will do during your presentation. If you can't get marketing to sell and idea to top management your screwed anyway at that point. Remember it is not about facts and information but buzzwords, powerpoint, charts, and lies at this level.
YMMV of course
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
Simply couch it in terms that most big biz managers can understand, the days when mainframes, dumb terminals and programmers ruled the earth. The largest data center I've ever worked in was First Chicago - National Bank of Detroit's Haggerty Rd. Tech Center, and based on that experience (and at smaller data centers) I see no problem with Open Source taking over most of the software functions from the OS to applications to custom programming for one-off jobs. The main thing to remember about Linux and OSS is that most of it needs to be used as large Lego's, nice blocks of code that do their job damn well, but need smaller custom machined parts if you need to go outside the boundaries. This is the reason IBM is behind Linux and therefore OSS, you can still make a hell of alot of money actually making the whole thing work. I hope your tech team is like most of the ones I work with; love to read and learn new things, enjoy long hours in the night and weekends spent with keyboard and mouse, and the courage to kludge and break things in a test environment, but the control to leave out the kitchen sink if the plumbing stinks.
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I recognize up front that I may not be the most objective soul on the planet, speaking as a web/database developer working exclusively on a free software platform. What follows would be my list of potential gotchas concerning questions we've been asked by clients:
(1) Since you are a member of a company that's subject to rather scrutinous regulatory and privacy concerns, you would definitely need to develop a solid policy for code auditing. Yes, I tend to trust the core developers of most major projects to watch patches and such pretty closely (especially with OpenBSD and Debian), but mistakes can happen. You'd probably need to consider the cost of keeping an in-house audit team (a few good coders) to review new releases under consideration for your production environment. These people don't come free, but I'm pretty sure they'd be less expensive than (a) implementing the applications yourself in-house, or (b) going with a propietary solution (which costs money up front) and then STILL having to audit the code to be sure.
(2) In relation to item (1), I'd be sure to cover the fact that just because a company has a closed source product doesn't necessary make their developers any more trustworthy than highly regarded community development teams. Reference the Sybase backdoor debacle for some concrete proof that nasty things happen in Fortune 500 companies. "Having someone to sue" doesn't necessarily mean jack when your company is getting hounded by the Feds for improper information disclosure.
(3) I'd try to focus on tech segments where open source solutions are already extemely well tested and in general acceptance, such as Apache for web serving. Again, some internal problems may really benefit from a chained solution using existing OSS projects and toolkits, but these are probably a touch sell that would be better left alone until other projects are firmly grounded. Possibly exempt from this rule would be broad projects such as the Perl programming language, although you would probably want to add a policy subsection on module auditing as well (since CPAN is just so darned comprehensive).
That's about all I've got for now; I'm a bit tired from a late day/night of bug fixes. Hope some of this helps.
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I work for a massive-global corp and getting an OpenSource policy in place would be impossible. My suggestion would be to start with a small group. For example, the group I'm with has been denied licenses for PowerPoint do to cost reasons. The solution was to distribute OO to our team members so that we can create PP compatible presentations for distribution and viewing.
If you were to identify those kinds of groups that have been denied or lack software packages do to cost reasons, then you might be able to make similar in roads.
I have condensed this entire discussion into something that will comfortably fit on a single powerpoint slide.
...?
:))
1. Install Open Source Software
2.
3. PROFIT!
(Unfortunately, this joke is getting rather old...
These sigs are more interesting tha
If your company seems resistant to Open Source for whatever reason, include a package from Redhat or Suse that includes support (such as Redhat enterprise.) Business types will prefer buying into a product/service package as opposed to a solution/process package. Then you can ease them into the idea of running pure open source software over time.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I think the question is not whether open source or not, but it is about whether you want to use free software or not. My policy has been, if i have a tool which is assisting in coding, testing, deployment, and widely accepted and supported by other major vendors, then we can us that. A good example would be struts. IBM, Weblogic all support the standards. If i have to use tomcat to build a webapp which is smaller in size, i use it. I know i can deploy in weblogic in future. But again, if you want to use XDoclet for development, are you sure that it is going to be updated for next version of J2EE and next version of tags for your vendor app server ???? I doubt looking at their activity. So stay away. Or may be there is a way to reverse engineer generated code and it can be then used again. So use it. Confusing, but risk is what you play with. If you are using Operating Sytem like Suse or Linux, feel free to use it. Lot of mission critical software runs on it, and using a Enterprise Version is not at all a risk, as you can switch to other clones of it. If you want to build on top of Jboss, which has no major ide support and most of the time will crash and it is a critical system i assume you wont use it. All JBOSS supports please mod me down, i myself use jboss for some smaller projects :)
And again, dont use some third party open source API which forms the major part of your critical application, and later found that it has errors... and you can't do anything with it.
I could change the world, but GOD won't give me the source code
I assume you won't be going open source for everything, but will rather evaluate on a need-by-need basis.
As you evaluate each need, some special questions apply:
- Legal: Do we want/need legal recourse if something goes wrong with this piece of software?
- Do we plan to extend and enhance this product ourselves? Are we willing to share our work with the larger OSS community?
And for each OSS candidate:
- Liveliness of maintainers: are they issuing regular updates? Are they meeting the needs of the community?
- Conversely, does our organization have the right skills to help update the software?
- Is the userbase big enough to ensure decent longevity of the product? (Safety in numbers)
- Do we need and can we get tech support that meets our SLAs?
There must be a bunch of other questions to be asked, but you get the idea. Again, I suggest you treat OSS as one tool to help you on a need-by-need basis, rather than the answer to your business' cost savings dreams.
I work for a Fortune 500 corp, and our Open Source policy is this:
Stop issuing press releases about it until SCO gets shut down.
I wouldn't do it, it does not save money in the long run. I tried to run open office in our Manufacturing Plant during a run that required Excel to log data, it didn't work out. The program it self didn't allow sharing of documents, and I couldn't auto save it, unless I did so in it's Open Office format, so then I had to save each days run as an Excel file.
In business I can count on other companies having Microsoft Office products, I can count on them having Adobe Acrobat. When you start getting into something that isn't the 'norm' you seem to run into problems. Granted, I am sure no one else on Slashdot will agree with me, due to the nature of Slashdot, however, business is business, and in most cases (outside of IT) it needs to be done now. Not when the next free version of software comes out with X feature you depended on before.
Look you want to cut costs? Don't upgrade, don't buy into software assurance, cut spending drastically, your already 'taking time' researching 'open source'..
I think Linux and the whole open source genere have their place, its in the server farm, not on desktops, at least, not right now..
Many will disagree, however, I am just speaking from my 'work for a manufacture, been there, hoped I could save money, found out I couldn't, done that'...
Try Caterpillar for a real life example! -- I know personally that all their back end servers and mission critical servers are indeed open source.
/. here
And - NASA's going open source too see
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
I had the same reaction. Is this gigantic financial services company relying on such an unstable and unreliable information source as a clueless IT employee who obviously (if he's not lying) has--at least the ear--of middle management?
Good lord, clueless and lazy.
Call me naive, but surely most large corporations don't operate this way--oops, sorry, carry on . . .
What information do you think should be included to sell Open Source to management at the top-level of any corporation or business?
Ok, this is going to attract down-mods the way that posters named "I'mASingleGeekGirl" attract up-mods, but I have to say it.
Why should we care about "selling" open source for internal business use? Now, I don't blame Stokey for asking -- I'd do the same. And I guess if you're a *nix admin, the more companies using open source, the more business you have. Point taken.
But if you're not a *nix admin, why do you feel the desire to give free advice to a company that's never going to give you a dime? Why do we treat open source like it's a religion that we need to "witness" and proselytize for?
Sure, in a few cases, if a business starts using open source, they'll contribute code modifications back to the community, or maybe even hire a few coders from the community.
But in most cases, the company is just going to install linux and postgresql and Open Office and the open source community won't get so much as a thank you.
And besides, these businesses are forever telling us how much they know, how brilliant their management is, etc. If these men of brilliance can't figure out that $0.00 per seat is less than $200.00 (or whatever the figure is after corporate discounts), that few viruses and exploits are better than the never-ending waves of windows viruses, that never being audited is far less disruptive than repeated visits from the BSA, if the MBA geniuses tat run these companies can't figure this out on their own, why should we Slashdotters who aren't invited along on the expense account lunches sweat to convince them otherwise?
I mean, if no company ever used open source again, there would still be hobbyists producing open source code. and that's a straw man anyway -- companies that want robust servers already use linux in droves.
It's like we all grew up as geeks in hisghschool (ok, I guess we all did) and now that we have decent jobs and decent wardrobes and no more acne, we're still tripping all over ourselves just because a pretty girl -- the "legitimate" business -- smiles at us. How about saying to her, if you can't figure out why you should want me rather than the bloated slob from Redmond with all the viruses -- well, I'm no longer so desperate and lacking in self-esteem that I'll beat my head against a wall trying to convince you.
Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to convince companies to go with open source; we should. I'm just saying I think we shouldn't be -- we needn't be -- so desperate to do so.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
One of the best examples, when people get concerned with the source being available is apache webserver... It's all over the internet, as the most used webserver and it's been doing it's job for years now...
Do it like the guys from Schwaebisch Hall. Find a young, attractive blonde and let her tell your bosses that Linux is sexy and let her demonstrate how easy it is to use.
- Have your policy/standard give prescriptive guidance about when you feel it is - and is not - appropriate to use open source. I'm not saying there are necessarily cases where you may not want to use open source, but there may be. For example, our shop is a big WebSphere user, and for us that was a strategic choice. We have good operational competence at running it too. So, just because some project came along and said "we'd like to use JBoss", that would be a good example of when not to use open source - for us, anyway.
- For cases where you do use open source, make sure that the sponsoring project for some particular open source tool has clearly identified how it will be supported in production. This may be the team itself, it may have chosen to outsource, who cares... But, make sure they do identify a source of support. Otherwise, when stuff breaks a 2AM, the ops folks will just call *everyone* in...
...probably including you.
- Make sure that your General Counsel's Office is thoroughly briefed on the various kinds of open source license agreements, and that they are ok with the license for the particular open source tool when it is "acquired". Some licenses may not be compatible with all commercial usage (LGPL is probably the worst offender from this perspective), and thus careful review is appropriate. In any case, if you don't get your GCO on your side, they'll shoot you down in flames...
- Make sure that your policy/standards differentiate between where it's appropriate to *use* open source, vs. where it's appropriate for you to *contribute* to it. There are at least two reasons for this: a) if no one gives back, the quality of open source software will suffer; and b) there are often cases where it's better to give up both work (as well as "intellectual property") rather than doing something proprietary. For example, three or four years ago my own company had decided that we needed an MVC-based front-servlet design. It proved very handy, and as projects like struts came along, we just dumped some of the core ideas into that project. Over the long-haul it is much better for us to have our needs supported directly by open source products, than it is for us to have to build a bunch of proprietary goo.
- You will likely have another fight on your hands with the aforementioned lawyers on the idea of contributing to open source, but it's worth fighting for. (Our own GCO just didn't get this, and I'm not sure whether they fully do yet. They have a distinct feeling that our IP rights are such that we should own the universe.)
- Expect a fight. There will be a certain number of folks "from the Dark Side" who view open source as a threat to Civilization As We Know It. Take no prisoners with these types...
Good luck!"The time is always now" - Victor
The first argument that I heard was "We will have to develop our own distribution" rather than rely on Redhat or SuSe or something like that. This is particularly true of financial institutions who must be very concerned with their ability to audit exactly what is on their machines at all times.
With open source comes the question from developers, "Will we be able to contribute changes back to the community?" The answer is almost always "No" in the big companies because they feel that it makes them responsible/liable for those changes. Worse, this sometimes develops into the black hole of "Get it off the net, integrate it into our stuff, then never say another word about it. Don't even get new versions [we don't want to be dependent on them], just treat it like it's been ours all along."
Lastly, in order to use open source app X, be able to show that a vendor exists who will sell you support for that app. I heard that almost verbatim from a boss once -- Why Tomcat over JBoss? Beacuse he knew where he could buy Tomcat support, but not JBoss. (Whether or not you actually can buy JBoss support is not the question -- the fact is that a manager's world is limited to what he has read in Business Week or who he has talked to at the latest trade show).
Oh, one more thing. Keep religion and philosophy out of it. If your company really does want to go open source, they are most definitely not doing it beacuse they want to contribute back to the community, or because they believe that it is the new way, or anything new agey. They are doing it to save money. Therefore, sell it like that. Don't push your luck.
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Why don't you ask an extremely knowledgeable professional or two if you work for such a money-rich company?!?! You're asking a bunch of /.'ers how we've dealt with structuring a Fortune 500's OSS strategy??? You're either crazy, or just plain stupid. You're going to get hundreds of disparate answers from this crowd. If you're hoping to save some money, why don't you first spend some to make a lot more? (in cost savings)
Better yet, do your own research to find this stuff out! These 'Ask Slashdot' questions sometimes truly amaze me. The poster of this 'Ask Slashdot' probably makes 2-3 times what I make (if not 10x-20x in stock options alone) and yet he's willing to listen to my poorly informed ideas on such an important matter?! Truly hilarious!
Talk to your peers in other financial companies. I know quite a few use open source. Feel free to send me an email at michael_j_mangino@bankone.com if you want to talk about this in more detail. I can give you some information abotu what other companies are doing.
Mike Mangino
mmangino@acm.org
Policy is great, so is open source philsophy. But what sells the idea to management is the presentation of a cohesive plan for implementing the new software: variant & feature selection, configuration controls, distribution to & training of users, support needed. Comparing these to the existing way you do business will show the pros&cons of changing over.
The devil is always in the details...
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?
If a linux desktop is on the cards, why not do the better part of your presentation from a laptop with impress (open office powerpoint) and near the end of the presentation, you minimise open office and show them a ximian gnome, or nice KDE desktop underneath. Show them it is REAL.
I am a bit of a Gnome fanboy, but in the interests of OSS I'd say use a KDE that's been setup to be "windows-like" so they go "wow just like windows, but free".
On the server side, maybe setup a windows box and a linux one side-by-side and show them running a ContentManagementSystem (php+database) both on apache and say "the only difference here is a windows server license".
Sure IT overlords will want case studies and number crunching - but both Gnome and KDE and pretty impressive now for "wow" factor.
Detail how much of the size of Microsoft is also devoted to un-business like things - directx 9, games, drivers blah blah. And how there are people pushing a desktop "for business" that can have IMs, spyware, viruses etc. "locked out, so work can get done". Spartan systems are to your advantage here. "This isn't entertainment or home oriented, this is business oriented from it's base as a networked server operating system". Linux isn't a bunch of kiddies, it is system admins "trying to get work done".
Not to downplay the benefits an OSS VoIP/IM system could have on internal communication. Content management systems as "team work areas" that can be securely VPNed into to allow work from anywhere.
Play up all these things are corporate, not hacker made... even if they are not....
Play up Mozilla as an awesome productivity tool. "Funded by AOL and standards compliant this beast is all about a workers workflow management - take tabbed browsing for example".
"OpenOffice is driven by Sun as a standards compliant office suite - I am running this presentation on it"
"Redhat competes against MS server markets, and because they are specialised they do a better job"
"Novell is driving ximian to be the best work-force desktop - look at these colaboration options, compatible with MS servers too"
"IBM is putting their weight and experience behind this, and is swapping to linux internally themelves as we speak."
Get that "Unix industrial grade" aura rather than "community this and that".
This may be a side issue, but as somebody who uses Macs, Windows, and Linux (servers), I would like to knoiw the cost advantages of open file formats, document types, communication methods. There is a cost of moving things around, and most likely Windows is the gated community in the organization. What are the costs of lock-in and extension (new programs to support new needs)? And, what does it cost to have Office on every machine regardless of the need?
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/34949.htm
Is whatever they're being paid to say at any given moment. I'm amazed that they have any credibility left. Anyway, careful digging through their "research" can come up with either a group of "for" cases or a group of "against" cases, so be careful.
Do you have ESP?
Having been installing and supporting MS products for a very long time, I would say that there is considerable risk in sticking with them. Over the past 10-15 years many enforced upgrades (to newer versions of office products for example) have required significant rewrites and porting efforts (the horrors of upgrading Access through several versions are well known). Open Source and Open Standards bring security and stability.
I am the IT Director at a much smaller (100+ employees), so this advice may not wash in just a vastly different culture. I have found that it is much easier just to do it, and then point to it when it is up and working at a reduced cost. I have found great success in this approach.
"Here are last year's costs...here are this year's costs. Wow, is that a lot less or what?!"
YMMV, of course...
Linux
Apache
Mysql/Postgresql
Perl/PHP/Python
Simply make it okay for your employees to install this technology on their computers, because it is great technology, it won't lock you in, and it is becoming a global standard.
It will be much easier approving a couple good Open Source technologies than creating a general policy for Open Source technologies.
Once management sees how great the above work, they will be much more open to additional addons to your list of approved Open Source programs.
The future is Open.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I also work at a financial services company. Our Policy:
If the open source is supported by a company, then we can sue the company, and it's okay to use it.
On the other hand, we use Perl extensively (though not as extensively as I might hope) and though we officially get our modules from an ActiveState CD, we do have modules from CPAN, though ones I've tested well.
I used to work at a company that had an exceptionally good policy.
I'd like to expand on theirs and propose one that is like this:
1. Open Source software is to be considered equally with closed source software when it comes to product features.
2. Support for open source products should be considered alongside support options for closed source products and both purchase and support costs counted into the total cost of purchase / ownership.
3. Small one-off and/or utility products should not be required to be supported by a vendor. This means primarily code and products that are easily understood and thus where support for them in-house is not difficult or problematic.
4. Any time a large open-source product is considered, such as Apache, MySQL, Linux, etc., some investigation should be made of viable support options along with the true cost of in-house support (learning curve short or steep, etc.)
5. Large support vendors (PC desktop support companies) should be encouraged / required to provide support for open source desktop applications such as MySQL admin tools, etc.
6. Internal projects whose functions are not firm-specific should be strongly considered for placement in an open source mode.
7. Attention should be paid in the design of all projects to move proprietary or business-specific information from source code into configuration files. This will enable easier decision making about making a project open source.
8. Projects that are designated by a manager as open source should be hosted in a publically accessible location such as SourceForge.
9. One project lead should be designated (usually the project manager, but it may be the chief technical person). This person should be responsible for filtering all proprietary information out of the code and documents placed in the open source repository.
10. A project homepage and some documentation should be created for the open source repository. This should also include release notes and postings on FreshMeat.org on a semi-regular basis. The dual goals of the publicity should be to encourage others to use the software and thus contribute to the development / support of it. This should include the web-search-ability of the project to make sure anyone searching for it will be able to find it.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
While (as you rightly pointed out) it is quite clear there are advantages for and against individual opensource an proprietry products, there is also an argument to be made for opensource in general.
This is not to say that every open source product has better (or even equivilent in some cases) functionality, but that the very fact that it is open source has benefits. For a large multinational such as the submitter is enquiring for, one of the big wories must be ownership and continuity of support for whatever product / projects they use in their IT infrastructure.
Pick a proprietry product, and a company going bust or mearly becoming uncooperative could result in a large risk to your ability to maintain your internal infrastructure - be it through bug fixes or introducing new features.
By choosing an opensource strategy, it will always be possible to either maintain such systems internally, or shop around for someone appropriately qualified to make the changes you need. Purchase and maintainance TCO are good arguments, but IMHO the biggest factor to large multinationals will be one of reduced risk, and therefore there can be a benefit by choosing a lower featured opensource product over a traditional proprietry one.
Just this morning on the news, the talking heads were yammering on about the alleged leak of NT source code. On comment jumped out at me: "some [security researchers] are worried that hackers will be able to use the source code to find new vulnerabilities."
Chew on that for a moment. If the only thing keeping Windows from being 0WN3D on a daily basis is that hackers can't see the source code so they know exactly what function is vulnerable, then how secure is the code? We call that "security through obscurity," and it's really no security at all.
Of course, Open Source means that those same hackers can read the Linux or *BSD code to look for vulnerabilities, but so can a lot of people who are interested in making the system more secure.
Consider the scenario: a F/OSS developer discovers a huge security hole in the code for the FooBar 1.1 release. It will take a huge amount of effort to fix, and so the F/OSS community will have to continue using FooBar 1.0 for 3 more months. Irritating, but manageable.
Now consider if it's a programmer at MS or any other commercial software outfit. Will your customers wait 3 more months? Will your boss appreciate the impact you just had on the company's finances? Might the bug be "papered over" in order to not impact delivery to customers? Is that really in the best interest of the customer, especially if the customer is a large finance company?
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
first post!!! you lame assholes... I can post first because my XBox is a american product and my pride in my great country and my great XBox accelerate everything...
If only they would make games for that bitch... IAve played Metroid Prime and it ruled... I hope M$ will buy those japanese bastards and port Metroid to my great american console system!!!
Join the fun!!!
... that the top level management usually thinks of open source software only as a means to cut costs while ignoring the inherent benefits vis-a-vis the quality and the robustness of the software.
I work for a much smaller company where most if not all of the IT decisions are left up to me. I would like to eventually move most of our desktop systems over to Linux, and am wondering about one thing.
We use Quickbooks for entering sales transactions and nearly every workstation needs to have QB installed so we can get our job done. Is there a way to run Quickbooks on a linux PC without ANY problems? I thought about WINE but am hesitant to jump into something that might be really buggy.
My users are rank newbies and it needs to be as easy as "double click" the icon on the desktop. So I guess the question would be - can I set up a Linux installation with KDE or GNOME, and use VMware or some other system so that my users can just double-click the quickbooks icon and have it work the same way it does on windows??
To get over the instinctive, subliminal, unconscious fears of getting something free (as in the much-maligned free lunch), mention as soon as possible that science has been open source for the last 2500 years, and science has progressed very nicely. Open source software just applies the same principles of openness and peer review that have made scientific progress so rapid, especially in the last few centuries since printing started. The ancient Egyptian priests kept all their science closed source - trade secrets. Then the ancient Greeks got hold of some of it and really went to town with it, publishing everything on papyri and making very rapid progress. The rest is history!
OpenOffice.org's presentation software "Impress" can open and save PowerPoint files:
From http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html
"Of course, you are free to use your old Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, or save your work in PowerPoint format for sending to people who are still locked into Microsoft products. Alternatively, use IMPRESS's built-in ability to create Flash (.swf) versions of your presentations."
$8.95/mo web hosting
I run a 6000 user network in the healthcare industry. The first thing I had to do here was dispel the stupid myths such as open source software is insecure because so many people can change it. This was difficult because of the power of the Gartner Group and other orgs like them. In fact, the network manager was so Microsoftized, it took going over his head to the CIO in order to get people to start listening. That was quite a risky move but luckily it worked.
The second thing I did was set up parallel apps that mirrored the same thing the company was doing with their closed sourced systems (Windows). This included setting up squirrelmail to connect to the Exchange servers, setting up Linux-based SSH boxes (we had SSL-based FTP) and setting up a Snort box to rival the ISS IDS that was installed. Once they got a taste of how good (and cheap) the software was, management starting coming around. Another thing that helped was the software that I mirrored on Linux boxes were apps that we had been experiencing consistent problems on. The Outlook Web Access and the IDS servers kept crashing so that was easy. The more challenging one was the SSL-based Windows FTP server. I prevailed when I got our customers to start requesting SSH client access (a little comment every now and then doesn't hurt). Most of our customers were running a UNIX-based system so once they found out that we could possibly start using something native to their systems, they started requesting it through our sales reps.
It also helps to get in good with your business partners' IS department.
There is an additional issue that I have not seen discussed here. That is the Total Cost of Liability (which I will call TCL ;-).
Microsoft has gotten into the habit of suing companies for installing software on machines without licensing. So you own say 3 valid licenses, one of the staff needs a version of MS Office to do a presentation, they install it in a hurry and forget to tell accounting to purchase another licensing. If M$ finds out you could be in big trouble -- you are a company and are preceived as having deep pockets. Now lets say that your admins are diligent and everything is purchased but in a tidy up someone throws away the little proof of purchase stickers... You are just as liable as you were in the case of "illegally" installing the software or intentional "piracy". Just to make sure that I am not paranoid, look at the costs various school systems and cities around the US when M$ audited them, and make sure to account for downtime (if/when they lock you out of your own systems for the audit), staffing redirection, and fines in the event that someone installed to much software on even one machine.
after all, it is open source now
You're looking at it all wrong. You need to balance a efw things. 1. Functionality
2. Cost
3. Risk
You need to balance those 3 things, to arrive at a solution to fit a particular need. And not all solutions will end up at the same answer. Functionality - what are the available packages that will perform this specific task? List them *all*.
Cost - what are the total costs? Training, support, purchase, time wasted because it does not work quite the way you need. Is it as fast?
Risk - What risks are associated with each? Will it break? Will the suppliers/developers be around in a few years? Will it talk seamlessly with the other offices? Will it break other things we have in production?
Present a balanced appraisal of each solution. The best option is not necessarily open source, nor is it necessarily closed source. Each aapplication is different.
To run a corporate webserver, Linux+Apache may well be the best solution. For running the payroll for 60,000 people, a client ADP app on Windows might be the best.
But you won't know until you analyze each specific need as it comes along.
Sometimes, the more costly solution is the best, because cheaper solutions do not work as well. And all the fanboy ranting in the world won't change that.
The bosses care about two things. Running the business, and growing the business. Anthing else is secondary.
I think that a policy like this:
combined with some basic education about what open source is and is not, will get you there.
No-one seems to have yet mentioned proprietary lock-in. If you go with Open Source, you have open interfaces and formats, so you have less lock-in to the specific suppliers in the future. That is 'a good thing' (TM).
Well, I worked in a global financial services firm in a CI/TO capacity. And yes, I glance at Slashdot from time to time. Use of open source in financial services firms is *very* common place, and the TCO and Risk factors have been studied and re-studied, and has shown to have significant value.
There are several sources of information (Public), try:
Gartner research, good reports on Open Source and Linux TCOs
Meta Group has some good research.
Read articles from Wall Street and Technology, several articles on Open Source adoption in the last couple of years.
Hope it helps.
The way I look at it, you are simply trying to convince the powers that be that your firm has the talent and expertise in house to manage software from the raw code up - as opposed to outsourcing it to Msft etc, where you pay them a fee and get a nice shiny shrink wrapped product that you just run insert and run setup on (and even that vision is not true, Msft products often take a LOT of effort to get working the way you want it, sometimes harder because of everything they are hiding from you).
In sum, if you have the resources to do something in house you can save $$$. If you don't, you have to pay somebody else to do it. Just like if I can operate a lawn mower and have the time, I can save some bucks over paying a commercial firm to come around and do it.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
A couple of key points to look at: Performance Measures, Licensing, and Quality of the OS Project.
Tie employee's performance to the long term success of the project and overall company performance. My initial concern when implementing an OS system like proposed is that employees bonuses and raises are tied to how many people they supported during the day or if the projects were setup on time. While both of these are valid, when first implementing OS there is usually a learning curve where these may suffer initially and then later on be significantly better than before. What happens is that during the implementation phase employees are penalized for doing as managers requested. Also, recognize that you are building knowledge in the company. The IT Directors should encourage this and find ways to tap into it.
You have already acknowledged the licensing however it may be worthwhile to put a brief outline of the different types of licenses and illustrate times where the IT Directors should check with the legal department to make sure they are in compliance. What comes to mind is that if a division creates a specialized financial program for a client the Director should know to check whether they have to release it under the GPL as well.
It should be noted in the package that not all open source packages are created equal. It may be worthwhile to create some standards as to the length of time a project has been active, have their been audits performed, how strong is community support (graph the number of developer discussions) and remind the Directors that open source is only a tool and in some cases may not be the best one.
Been there, done that. Just that it was different players. Back in the days of the mainframe (IBM), I recall several incidents where an upstart company (Amdahl) was about to "win" product placement against IBM in some $BIGCOMPANY. IBM's response was consistent: go over the head of the person or group recommending the non-IBM solution. In many cases, this was effective. The old-boys played golf, etc. and a big gorilla on the board or in the executive suite would jawbone other executives with FUD, and the like. A good, well researched, well documented, OSS proposal can be shot down by a "well respected" executive doing some back room politicing.
Watch out for the back-stabbing tactics of the convicted felon company. They have no ethics, morals, scruples.
JMHO.
Generally when we have a source license and fix a problem or add some functionality we need, we send our patch to the vendor and ask them to include it in future releases. This is to our benefit because it reduces our maintence load since we don't have to re-patch each new release ourselves. The same logic continues to apply with an "open source" source license.
For inclusion of the software in a product we ship, particularly if we have customized the software, we need to look at the specific license. In general, in looking at the license and deciding whether to use the software, "community good will" should enter into our calculations in the open source case, while that would not usually be a consideration with proprietary software.
Using "open source" in shipping products, and handling it well, is an opportunity for advertizing and marketing. It can constitute a competitive advantage in the marketplace, because many customers prefer software they are already familiar with, which they are confident in, and which they can easily examine and modify.
The issue that you will have is based on cost. Most large corporations (like the fortune 100 company I work for) have a mentality that open source is free. The code is free, the software licensing is free, but is there a cost?
Most people don't understand why they (being large corporations) call things open source instead of by the name of Linux or ___BSD. What it comes down to is what they are considering. They define many projects that use "free" or "open" software as open source in an implied type of meaning relating to support cost in most cases.
What most people fail to realize is that with a commercial "closed source" product, the company that sold it to you is expected to support that product. If it has problems and the wizbang features they market to you break, then you go back to them and tell them to fix it. After all, you paid them for it and it should work. One other thing to consider is that many software companies have a very strict QA testing environment. This doesn't mean the software is better, but rather that the company that purchased the product has someone to point a finger at when it breaks and someone who will be more obligated to correcting the issue.
With open software, it is quite different. Most of you know that bug fixes are done mostly on spare time of coders helping with projects. There is no solid support of software like you have with commercial software. You may consider mailing lists and bug tracking pages to be support, but thats not quite the same as being able to pick up a phone, call the developer and say "Fix this!". While many developers in the open source community have a sense to help out, many don't. So you are not garaunteed support from them. The other thing to consider is with such a large environment, who does the end support? Most large corporations pay for end support through their vendors they bought the software and products from. With Linux, what companies can provide that?
There are options like getting with RedHat or some others offering "Enterprise" solutions, but if the goal is not to pay for software, then you will pay dearly for support. Then again, it's my experience working with RS/6000 systems that my company pays for the OS/Systems and for support both, so who knows. Just keep in mind that support is a major fact.
root 10956 5164 0 Oct 22 - 0:23 sendmail: rejecting connections: load average: 70 (isn't sendmail just too kind)
Now I have to state before I make my comment, that I work for a small college with around ~5000 students. And working in Academia is a bit different than working in the corporate world. We use opensource software here (Linux, apache, squirrelmail, netsaint, and a few others...), and it wasn't that hard to get in the door. Mostly because it's cheap (budgets are tight) and it gets the job done. Plus, both the network admin and I know Linux, so the college does not have to spend money training people who can use opensource software. I don't care what microsoft says, if you already have a linux/unix admin employed in your company, then your TCO for Linux over windows is practically nil.
But anyway, with that said, one thing that I've noticed here at the college, is not so much a hesitation to use free/opensource software, as there is to make sure that it's supported properly. See, our budgets are stretched tight with microsoft products, so if we can save money or even go with a free solution, then it actually is welcomed. But what they really want is someone to point the finger at if it breaks. Now if your solution is homebrew, then they point it to you and you have to fix it. (not necessarily a bad thing. That's how our account-creation on campus works. Buying a product would have been too expensive) But being able to rely on another company for help is a big plus.
I know that companies like RedHat and IBM may have their own interests at heart (like RH not releasing new free versions outside of their fedora releases) but if you can get a support contract from these guys that says that they will back up their software, then that's often what you need to turn the tide. So long as the software does the job, and does it well. All you really need to do is just get its foot in the door. Once you do that, if the products work just fine, then you'll have much less resistance to getting more software in the door from there on out.
-Through the server, over the router, off the firewall... Nothing but 'Net!
This question would be perfect without grandstanding in the first line. Instead, I'm faced at 8:00 in the morning with the
Look, I run two companies, one successfully, and the other appears to finally be up and running to the point of profitability. I'm fine with sharing knowledge, but I'll be damned if I ever post:
Instead, some diplomacy is in order:
I guess I need caffine.
Where I work, 25000 folks, 100+ in IT, we are apparently owned my M$. M$ came by a few months back to our senior management and said something along the lines about either buying an enterprise license or an audit with possible legal ramifications. Management bowed to M$ pressure and we are now basically locked into MS. The senior VP in charge said something along the lines "Well, there aren't a lot of apps that run on Linux/Unix that we need so we can't switch.". Argh.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Hope those references help.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
This letter and the examples following below convince me that the push to convert to Linux-Open Source will not come from the developed world's corporate environment, but, rather, from the undeveloped world.
Linux-Open Source will be adopted there first because there won't be the money available to buy Microsoft or other large private closed software solutions. As the developing world's entities grow larger and richer over the years, they will become the force that will be most successful at convincing wealthy corporations to develop parallel open-source software stuctures to Microsoft-SAF-Oracle, ect...
In this light, it is to Microsoft's advantage that the entities with limited resources for software in the developing world continue to use easily pirated software. People will use pirated Windows when they are poor and as they get more resources they will buy licenced versions of the same software in order to reduce linkage costs with global institutions that have used proprietary software since day one.
It would be in the interests of the open-source community to demand software companies put as much copy protection and install encryption techniques as possible on their products!
Your task is not an easy one ... don't' expect to write an open source policy on your own, or in one giant document to cover *all* open source. The risks in installing a new OS (Like Linux) are radically different that the risks of letting a handful of developers use Eclipse (an Open Source IDE) and even those are different than using, a small LGPL'd component.
Never-the-less, here is some practical advice: 1) Involve Legal. Educate them, work with them, and understand their concerns. Be their friend!
2) Start asking your various IT managers to place a note about open source in their strategy documents. They do not need to be for it or against it, but they *must* address it. Provide help, as they need it. (Have the Development Managers talk about OpenSource in his particular context, as should the Networking team, and so forth.)
3) Finally, figure out if you have a set way to evaluate software for purchase. If you do, construct procedures to include OSS in your evolutions along side commercial software (This is harder than it sounds.))
There are the beginning steps.
In short, there is no "uber policy" for open source. Treat open source like "just another vendor" as best as you can and you may be pleasantly surprised.
You forgot the most important item.
THE TWINS
1) Make sure that every point you make is backed up with fact and research. Avoid religious level proselytizing. Just becasue you (and I) are already sold on FOSS doesn't mean they're going to accept that information without supporting data. Remember, as a senior leader in any organization, their jobs are to play devils' advocates and plan for the worst case scenario when evaluating now projects and expenditures. Allay the fears that they may already have. It would be wise to read Microsoft's anti-OSS propaganda pages and rebut, in your first paper, all of those claims that relate to your organization.
2) Write with a hefty respect for "What could possibly go wrong?" Anticipate objections and rebut them in your initial report. For each FOSS product you're planning to use, explain how you can make it redundant (ie. failover web-server/database serveR) and how you can recover your backups in the case of data loss. If you can make your current backup solution work with your alternative OS servers and apps, that's a big benefit! As you can imagine, protecting their large, director level salaries is a big concern for the PHB's today. Make them understand that support and recoverability are not the exclusive domain of proprietary vendors. They might approve switching some in-house app from SQL Server to Postgres if they know you will still have full functionality and recoverability without spending a mint ripping out the backup software/hardware and starting over.
3) Make the point that FOSS is perfect for some needs, while less suited to others. You have a better chance of having your ideas accepted if your message is "right tool for the right job." Is there any reason that file and print server should run Windows 2003 Server and require 2 gig of RAM and dual XEON procs when Mandrake, Samba, and Webmin would achieve the same goals on a lot more modestly appointed system.
4) Don't forget about hardware! Point out that software that uses fewer hardware resources will require less frequent hardware replacement. A new linux kernel doesn't mean everybody needs new hardware... Compare with each new iteration of Windows having an ever exponentially-increasing list of hardware requirements.
Beyond that? You're on your own. Oh, and to quote Bob from "That 70's Show": "Hit him with a banjo."
Who did what now?
They haven't heard of Linux? Do you guys deal with Wall Street? Most of the brokerages have already switched to Linux.
Why should I share my success with you?
Why should I take the competitive advantage
I've gained by using OPENSOURCE and
give you the same advantage??
All Fishermen are Liars.
Except for you and me.
And, I'm not too sure about you...
IBM is a big proponent of open source.
The trick with the desktop is that you lock it down as far as you can so that each user can do just what they need and no more (you should be doing this with Windows anyhow ;). There's not many calls saying "How do I use X to do Y" because the user can't even see X in the first place.
This takes care of call cent(re|er) staff, and indeed almost anyone whose job involves little more than accessing a system through a terminal or web browser. It also makes the client much easier to handle because all you have is:
- Base Linux Install
- X Windows
- Terminal Emulator
- Mozilla
The complicated bit is anything which requires a fancy Windows program for which no replacement exists. Here you've two main options: rewrite it (either yourself or pay a 3rd party) or use Citrix.The way you sell this, as has been discussed before, is in terms of cost-risk-benefit. In the above example, the biggest change is to the client PC, which probably doesn't do much business-critical stuff anyway and so you're rather less bothered than you might be at the server side.
This fascination with making KDE look as much like Windows as possible, including aping the colour scheme and button design right down to the nearest pixel, just to say "It looks like Windows so it must be as easy to use!" is, IMHO, a load of rubbish. 95% of Windows "ease of use" is marketing.
Unfortunately it's very good marketing, but that's not the point here...
Remember you must always consider the TCO, however, also remember to realize that purpose and training is always a concern which adds to the TCO. Do your research carefully and make decisions based on the individual needs, not an overall "open source" policy. There will be times where a commercial product will have a better performance for your needs, and have a lower TCO. Then, there will be the opposite as well.
After asking Gartner about Open Source (and Free Software btw), your next question should be,
Who owns Gartner?
Then, the next immediate question should be,
Are we ready for a "BSA" audit and other tactics?
Perhaps the final question should be asked by your employer, why is an IT manager asking slashdot for advice on doing his job?
Be safe, go with what is most popular.
Web server software: Apache
Web scripting language: PHP
MTA: Sendmail
DNS: BIND
Office: MS Office
You get the idea.
That said, many development managers and architecture folks have seen value in open source for some time, and have utilized it in projects (below the radar). As the quality of open source increases, and the deliverable become larger (Xerces to OopenOffice), we asked that the company formalize the usage of OSS.
During discussions we argued that OSS should not be treated differently than other purchased and/or developed SW. We did see a few exceptions:
However, once those have been met (i.e. the risk issue is mitigated), we saw no difference between vendor code and OSS code.
Legal and Security drafted a policy, and it recently became official. In essence, the policy states the few additional risks that must be mitigated, and then states that OSS must go our normal software acquisition procedures.
I know some purists (zealots...) may disagree with the exceptions above, but we decided they were acceptable, were good business practices (remember, business could care less about the OSS philosphy, they are interested in lowering costs and/or raising quality while not raising unmitigated risk...), and were not worth the fight to remove. We decided this policy would allow us to utilize open source where appropriate, and time will pass. As the fight shifts from components (MSXML versus Xerces) to applications (MSOffice versus OpenOffice et al), business will become more comfortable with OSS, and the policies will change to reflect that (I remember in 1994-6 when companies resisted WWW, because they saw no value in it).
In the end, though, resist the urge to make the policy a political statement. I agree OSS needs help to thrive in a corporate environment, but not that much help. If OSS can't lower prices and/or increase quality while not raising unmitigated risk, then it truly is not appropriate for business.
As for the other items you mentioned, I don't think TCO is best done globally. Quite frankly, in some areas, OSS has lower TCO, in others it does not. Risk can be generally reviewed at the global level, but risk really depends on usage (Writing reports with OOO is low risk, calculating agent commissions with OOO might be high risk).
I agree with others that if you are looking for a "why use OSS", Call IBM or RedHat or some other places, there is plenty of material like that out there. Coupled with Gartner and Giga/Forrester, you should be set.
By any definition I can think of, they are coders. They may not use an 3L33T language, but it's a computer language and they are writing code in that language, even if it consists of drag+drop actions.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Preamble
Whereas the incorporation of 3rd party noncommercial and quasi-commercial software into _____ solutions has become an issue that has arisen several times of late, we need to set down some guidelines for approaching such solutions.
Practices
The license agreement must be reviewed and understood. There are several license types that are common (GPL, LGPL, Apache, Mozilla, BSD, copyleft, etc). Some of these fairly liberal, and some of them are quite burdensome. Care must be taken.
In each case, we need to establish the manner in which the licensed software would be used. In particular we would need to examine the destinations to which it would be distributed (internal or customer), whether the software would be resold in any manner - perhaps as a service, etc.
In each case, an opinion of Software Asset Management must be acquired, to ensure the interests of the company are protected.
In the particular case of Open Source Software, ____ may need to present Software Asset Management with a statement of intent regarding the modification of the source. Some license agreements require such changes to be released back to the OSS development community. If we do engage such an obligation, we need to ensure that we fulfill it.
The development department would agree to own the support for the product as a proxy for whatever support maybe be available from the developer or developers. By default, the development area that uses the product would own the support, unless formal agreement from some other area is obtained.
Development would need to assess their ability to support the product independent of any other organisation.
Development would need to assess the risk involved if such a product were to fail.
A Development Senior management member (director or up) would have to approve of the products usage.
Is the source for the product available as part of the license? If not what is the risk of a binary only license? Is code escrow an option?
The commercial alternatives should be evaluated.
If the license agreement is 'for fee' (shareware and very small software developers), the mechanism for metering the usage and compliance with the license agreement shall be defined. In many cases, a broad enterprise license agreement should be considered, which would be structured to avoid any tedious license compliance efforts.
There must be an architectural review of the product and its usage to ensure that its strategic or tactical status is understood and accepted.
Or you could give them the Slashdot version of that same list:
- Risk
- ???
- The Bottom Line
IBM is probably already a "strategic" partner with your company. (they hold tons of IBM shares)
Go talk to them.
If your firm is really that large, then you are already using Linux throughout your system. I know for sure that all of your competitors are.
I work for a Linux company, and we have most of Wall Street using our software all over the place.
davejenkins.com |
As open source application almost always based on/support open standards you should empashize this aspect. The competition of suppliers is the best possible for your organization because it guarantees decreased prices (TCO) and improved quality, and you are able ot rip off another contender if something goes not as good as you expected. Obviously this a less typical option in a closed source MS dominated world where the competition of suppliers is limited. I think every PHB will easily understand these arguments.
Is it right? Not?
When looking at whether to use open source or commercial software one major consideration is the calibre of your staff.
My observation is that good quality, self starting, engineers can often work significantly more efficiently with open source where they have enough initiative to search forums or quickly trace through source - and sometimes patch source - when they have a problem.
Less able engineers, however, are much more likely to suceed if they are walked through problems by commercial help desks. While this can be slow and not always totally satisfactory there is little reliance on the skills of the inhouse engineer to resolve the problem.
Pay your money and take your choice,
- Hire good (more expensive) staff and get good software developed in a timely manner on free open source platforms, or,
- Pay as little as possible for your staff and hope to eventually get moderate software built on expensive commercial platforms.
That they can get in cornflower blue.
Save me Jeabus!
Here is an Ask Slashdot for you: Does anyone who asks Slashdot actually read through all this Noise to find a Signal?
Ack! I refuse to be another AC contributing to the problem.
A "Policy" is not a selling document, nor even a how-to. It provides guidelines to make decisions, biased to what the corporate executives want. In this case, a policy should contain items like:
1. When planning a new software activity, see if there are any open source candidates.
2. If there are any candidates, they must be investigated (with criteria like the parent of this comment proposes): risk, history of support and bugginess of releases, real adequacy for the task, TCO estimates, etc.
3. Produce a report comparing and contrasting the proposed solution with alternatives, and the rationale for a choice.
I.e. in terms business people can understand. Other information should be elsewhere.
Between the FUD that Microsoft and SCO have been throwing about, most non-technical people will have a very confused view about things like the GPL and open source IP issues. You have to be prepared to address these in simple, easy to understand terms and examples.
For instance, a lot of people get scared by the 'viral' GPL FUD, and think using open source products means they have to release all their own IP crown jewels to the public. You might counter this by pointing out that you can write closed source software with open source tools all you want, and only run into trouble if you actually incorporate their code into your product. Because this is something you couldn't do with non-open source software anyway, as you never see the code, the percieved risk isn't a factor for doing things the way you're used to.
Anti-open-source people have been throwing a lot of FUD around lately. The people you are trying to pitch this policy have heard some of it, and probably don't spend lots of time on Slashdot or Groklaw finding out the whole story. Part of your role is going to be to dispel all this FUD about the GPL, IP issues, and such.
These people http://www.ibm.com/linux/ can help. Worldwide, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Look at http://www.openafs.org/ , http://www.opendx.org/ , http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/news/2003111 4_bluegene.shtml
if you want to be convinced they know what they are talking about; both on the 'giving' and 'receiving' sides of the coin.
your topic actually describes with this world is so evil, selfish and doomed. barely anybody is friendly, service to others and self sacrifying these days, everybody only think in terms of profit, power, advantage over competitors and so forth. everything is agains everything and everybody else on this planet. and we are about to export it to other spheres and worlds real soon now. think about what the future will look like. and i thought mankind would finally learn their lesson and globally act together and make some progress. but i guess, we are still too naive and clueless to see the big picture, or what it could be like.
There seems to be this assumption out there that OSS is some sinister conspiracy bent on taking over the world by stealing market share from commercial vendors. The OSS model is nothing more nor less than programmers sharing their code with the world. It's done for pride more than anything else, and it's often the only feasible way to get their creations seen and used by anybody.
They're like musicians without big record contracts who nevertheless put on a hell of a concert, for free.
This is tangentially related, but the seven areas in which he measures benefits to a business of going green can give you ideas about selling OSS to businesses.
There's a good chance we could make a case for OSS in the three main drivers he identified:
One last, important point: the author pointed out how many of these companies (and he only surveyed high-tech ones) kept finding high-ROI opportunities. Go after the low-hanging fruit, stuff that makes a measurable impact in under a year. You'll get better at finding them.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
The support issue for Open Source Software is usually the easiest one to put people at ease on, especially with the Internet as a resource.
Simply explain that others have probably had the same problem before. So a Google search will quickly turn up a page where somebody else has asked the same question you have, and where a helpful person has suggested they go do a Google search before asking such stupid questions.
In my opinion the greater risk is the risk of not moving to open source in a dignified manner. As time goes by licensing from Microsoft is bound to get more restrictive, cumbersome and expensive. With open source your organization is secure in knowing that current apps will be continually improved and there won't be "licensing surprises" in the future. As organizations gradually move to open source Microsoft will have fewer customers from which to derive its profits and, to maintain revenues, prices will go up - leading to yet more people moving to OSS. When the tipping point is reached every organization had better have an open source contingency plan in place. The longer they put it off the harder it'll be at crunch time. In essence it comes down this. Looking into the future 5-10 years from now there are nothing but blue skies in the direction of open source and a lot of dark clouds and uncertainty in the direction of MS. Any large organization would be fool hardy indeed to stick their head in the sand while the predictable market forces play themselves out.
This is a great time to be involved in open source.
Congrats for drawing such a difficult but worthy and rewarding assignment. I have a couple thought s for the policy.
It must encourage and reward people for finding creative and effective open source solutions that save money and increase productivity.
It should make provisions for continuing research, and have a framework for studying recommendations made by individuals. Possibly by committee.
Doing these things will take steps toward the creation of an open source 'culture' in the organization. It gets people interested and involved, and gives the IT management a throwback when people cry that they don't like this or that.
Good Luck!
--Fargo007
They're less costly over the long run, have a BIG company behind
:-)
them so the old "but who do we go for when we need tech support?" dilemma is solved, they run Microsoft Office, are easy to use and powerful.
Even I have a hard time recommending Macs at my job, so I can't imagine what trouble I would have if I were to recommend a flavor of GNU/Linux.
It's all in the way you present it, and how you can educate others. Show them examples of compatibility, have a "test" computer on the network for a month to show that GNU/Linux can not only sit on the network, share files, open those files, and be useful for work, but it is also safe, good-looking and free.
Cost is either a primary issue or a final issue. Meaning?
Primary issue: We need something cheap!
or
Final issue: Sure that's nice, but it's cheap/free so it must have
some hidden costs or be a wolf in sheep's clothing
Either you go to buy something for the price, and not the quality, or you go for quality and price is figured in last.
Show M$FT alternatives based on power, speed, ease of use,
and quality. Once they see that, hit them with the price tag.
At least that's what us Mac zealots do to win over PHBs.
Three little letters: CYA.
The objective isn't just to transition - it's to transition with minimal risk. Lost productivity from a day of everyone saying "What the hell happened to our computers?" will get you, your boss, and probably his boss fired. But before that, your boss will fire you for putting his job at risk.
Although I haven't had the opportunity to give this talk yet, I've been keeping my eyes open to what people are saying where I am. A lot of other people have made good comments, I'll only state the key points I would make.
I got nailed a few months ago in a discussion on this issue by someone asking the question of an internal group that was proposing to develop an application based on an open-source framework. The question was simple: "What happens if you decide to leave, how do we support it?" All the arguments that came into my head wouldn't work, those evaluating this were not technologically savvy and could care less about actually having the source (few people actually do care about that, a point made strongly elsewhere). In a pure George Castanza moment, afterwards I realized that although there isn't a good answer to that question, there is a very valid rebuttal question: "What happens when the private company who you purchased software from goes out of business/gets purchased/stops supporting that product?" At least to me, it was a new way to look at the same question, and since that's probably the most common question that will come up, since people are always looking for support, it's very important.
Other than that, two things: (1) check cio.com because they have a lot of articles and research on how to sell open source to your business people, and (2) don't be a zealot, they can smell it on you, but approach it from a rational business angle and have answers/rebuttals to the typical questions (see above) and it will impress the business types, who could honestly not care less about the religion of open source.
Interesting read: http://www2.cio.com/consultant/report2214.html
They suggest a policy dividing OSS in three tiers where tier one applications would include Apache, and Linux. These are apps with substantial commercial backing and professional support offers. These apps can be used with relatively small risk.
Tier two apps include Mozilla or MySQL. They have commercial support but are less wide-spread. Depending on your own policy/risk-taking-ability you can decide to use these apps or only allow them for internal or development purposes.
Tier three applications include all the rest. They might be great, but it will be hard or impossible to get support and they might be unmaintained. For internal/development use only.
They also give a lot of other information about OSS policies.
It is a sad reality that most companies have this belief that if something goes wrong with a proprietary licensed software product they have recourse to sue. I was having this exact discussion with a colleague recently discussing the benefits of an open product vs. a closed one. The reality is that 99.9% of software makers include a clause in their End User License Agreements (EULA) that specifically removes them from liability. If more executives and corporate council (lawyers) knew that their companies have already agreed to contractual obligations of limited liability they would probably fall over. Know that every time a software product is installed--on a per machine basis--you have to agree with the contract limitations to install it. In the closed-source world, a perfect example of this can be seen in any Microsoft EULA (example included below). On the flip side, in open source, the same limited liability exists by default, however the difference is the availability of a community of software developers around the world to help.
With open source you can post to a user group that reaches at a minimum 100 developers in 20 countries and say, 'I need help, here's the source,' and high quality developers are there to help you find the problem or point you in the right direction. And sometimes even fix it for you. Members of the Open Source community have a vested interest in helping others, improving ideas, and sharing them. With closed source, you are screwed in both accounts: no room to sue because you or your company agreed to the EULA, a contract in itself, AND you do not have the option to track down the problem by yourself or with the help of others because you cannot see the code.
So, the next time you speak with your lawyer, print out a copy of the Microsoft EULA that comes with any of their products. It always has several clauses to indemnify themselves. Look it up on any of your workstations, EULA.txt, you will probably find more than one.
Lastly, I want to clarify, you always do have the option to sue anyone you want. However, any lawyer representing the software developer in a case of poor product quality or loss&damages only has to point to the fact the you, the end user agreed to the EULA. It reads, in essence, 'there is no guarantee this software works, and if it breaks it not our fault.' Your suit will be dropped by any judge unless you can prove negligence, which you cannot, because you cannot read the software code!
Cheers,
Akoni
Each type of user is going to have to be evaluated to see if its better to use OSS or proprietary. Most users are the Word, Outlook, IE all day type. Transitioning them means having to change their lifestyle, so they will resist change. Abiword doesn't have all the features of Word, and even the simplest secretary seems to know every Word feature that exists, and gets angry if they can't use it. You have to retrain to get these people back to their previous productivity if you change everything they do on the average day.
Of course, if Joe Professional sees his secretary using Linux, he can't say that he can't use it without a much more elaborate excuse, or he'll look like he can be replaced by his secretary. These guys will try to contrast their programs and needs, and depending on the programs, they may be right. But if you let them keep their old software, then the new stuff starts looking like its inferior (the boss doesn't have to settle for this crap...).
Just as in any marketing campaign, you need to do your homework on your customer - in this case, the end user of whatever your policy is. Find the more adventurous people around an office you have sway in (and if you're risk averse, doesn't have sway on your job...) and have them try 'upgrading'. Start out with something simple and pretty for the masses - image and ease will get acceptance, functionality can come later. Once you find out the major problems with your sample, improve the process if you can, or make a 5 minute slide show on the biggest problems. People more concerned with form can get the prettiest Linux GUI (your stereotype female), and those with something to prove can get the more functional "hard core" system that lets them impress their co-workers with a constantly opened xterm (even if the only difference between the two is the skin and what you show them how to do on day one). Now, you've got the 'girliest' and the 'manliest' as differentiated spins on the same product. The 'I just want to finish this report' guy, who will be the majority, will want to feel more productive - spin whatever sounds impressive about speed or resources to make them certain they're 'upgrading.'
Make a company website that at least links to tutorials for everything you standardize. Let them retrain themselves once they've been motivated to use the product.
Another way to approach it is by starting with the most impressive cost savings points, and get the resources you need to make it work seemlesly. Make sure management understands that you need a learning experience, and that they shouldnt be afraid of investing capital into something that can save them big dollars. The actual cost savings might not be as big as you'd like, so focus on the marginal savings and that your costs come down as you replicate the system.
I have been let down by more software development houses than I want to remember.
Despite the fact that you pay them thousands of pounds a year, they don't tell you that your management console will not be able to rollout the latest anti-virus update until it breaks. That is what I am paying for.
Or the latest patch of a Major OS will systematically kill every single Network Card authentication signature in the registry. That is what I am paying for.
How about being lied to by sales department that tell you that this software will work with the systems you have in place. They don't check with their technical department and wait till our purchase is complete and when I try to install I find out the bad news. It seems that it crashes your server and has consistently done so for the past month on all other servers of your type that it has been rolled out on. That is what I am paying for. Thank you very much
If you look at it over the past 8 years, I have had more success with every single open source product I have rolled out than the multitude of proprietary software that I have deployed over the years.
So don't give me this will open source live up to the trends set by proprietary code. For me they have already surpassed the quality of proprietary code.
I work for a non-profit org called The STAR Center. We made the switch to Linux nearly 5 years ago. Here's a NewsForge article that Jacqueline Emigh wrote about us a little over two years ago. We've since switched most of our servers to FreeBSD, but OSS is still the way to go.
TCO issues can be addressed in this manner. You have to have hardware either way. You have to have staff either way. The difference is that you can have as many servers and workstations as you need to support your user base, but there are no licensing fees or upgrade fees. True enough, you will probably expend a nontrivial amount of staff resources in migrating from Windows to Linux, but no more than you'd expend in migrating from Linux to Windows.
The other thing you need to keep in mind is that you don't have to be in any rush to do your migration. It's been five years since we migrated our server functions to Linux, but our workstations are still running Win98. Our ultimate goal is to have end users running Linux or FreeBSD, and every project we've undertaken since the initial migration has brought us a little closer to that goal. Slowly but surely, we're making our way there.
Bottom line, this is the real power, to obviate the allways tenous vendor client relationship. You are your own vendor, and bottom line, no-one in the world can meet your own needs the way you can.
You can push that theme in lots of directions, but it all seems to tie back to being able to control your own destiny with your software acquisitions.
Hell that what finally convinced my employer to begin in-house dev again in lieu of buying from an external vendor. (Well, the vendors ridiculous pricing didn't hurt either...)
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Is open minds. I have found in my wanderings around the IT world in the companies that I have worked for that there a large number of people who are only capable of rote tasks in a sandbox of M$ products. The concept of being able to generalize from M$ office to Star Office is totally beyond them. Heaven help them if they see a different gui for their mail program. In that case they are totally lost. This is in contrast to folks who master a number of enviroments and understand what happens when they hit return.
I suggest that these M$ only folks are NOT the folks that a company benefits by hiring unless you want an army of mindless drones. Some places may want that sort of person, but I doubt that they are the companies that suceed in life.
I would have to say 50% of the presentations I want to view don't work in impress. Latex generated PDF slides are the way to go IMHO. --michael
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
In my opinion Gartner would be one of the least reliable sources of information on open source software, TCO, ROI, etc. They earned their reputation on supporting proprietary solutions and in particular Microsoft. In the last two years, however, they gradually modified their stance and now are more couscous, especially since the security problems of Microsoft are undeniable.
One possible place to look for help are actual case studies and down-to-earth approach for business solutions such as Andrew Grygos' article "Should Your Business Use Linux?" - you can find it on: http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit010.html.
Since I also do IT consulting, my advice is to focus on what applications are used by employees in what departments. Can those be substituted with open source software? In growing number of cases most office programs can be substituted with OpenOffice and CrossOver combination, or better yet with SoftMaker suit that is becoming a very reliable solution for office work and includes file formats for MS Word, etc. Their website is: http://www.softmaker.de/index_en.htm
By doing TCO, say with SoftMaker, it is obvious that open source solutions win big time against MS Office, etc.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
Not another open source propaganda fest. *yawn*
Open source is so '03 man.
This year I wanna hear: "Hey slashdotters, I'm a low paid inexperienced geek working in a super huge investment bank thingy and my IT director is obsessed with open source applications as a way to cut costs. Yet I've estimated that the constant upgrades, lack of support and general misconceptions could actually drive costs through the roof, not to mention the effects on my project risk matrix. So dudes, how do I convince this open source zealot that proprietary is the only way to go?"
C'mon people, how many times does this question need to be answered? Why not devote an entire section of Slashdot. What about
Conversion: bringing open source to the masses.
Learn the skills you'll need to convince everyone that community is more important that individuality.
Today's top stories: Profit is evil!
And so on and so forth...
Patent everything and let God decide.
I'm just foolin', y'all. Those were just jokes! You know I love you Slashdot.
"Ceilean Súil an ní ná feiceann..."
Just tell management the real money is in personnel. And tell them you think you need to be outsourced to India. You of course will be the one overseeing this and will be the liasion between the outsources and the company later. Screw open-source think about your career man!
A software company is a special case. You have to prove your OSS code does not contain pieces that belong to your company's intellectual property (IP).
However, take us at IBM. Employees have to comply with a short OSS-and-IP training program, and we have a process in place for open-sourcing projects. IP checks are in place. That works fine.
Very large financial companies such as Merril Lynch have started deploying OSS massively (servers and desktops) and they don't seem to have a legal problem with it. They happily mix OSS and non-OSS, e.g. IBM proprietary products running on Linux along with Apache.
As for sueing someone, this is pure BS. Read the contractual agreement that comes with your MS Windows copy. Short version: MS isn't responsible for anything. Good luck suing them after agreeing to that. Most other software providers have similar provisions. How are these clauses different from the "no responsability" clause in the GPL? Your lawyers are not giving you proper counsel.
..because what you're going to try to do is my very business. We're doing OSS migration and OSS project customization for small copmanies and _very_ large corporations (Pharmacy) and I'd could come up with a billion things to say. Since I've been working this field all day for a few months without an end I'll cut it short:
The world of closed source has ended. Period.
It's that simple. I wouldn't bet another single dime on a company focusing on a businessmodel that concentrates on the selling of closed source. Hell, even Macromedia - one of the few that actually made a steady revenue with closed source, mind you - has set up their newest product as a _service_ ('breeze') and not as the usual enveloped CD in a box of air!
Not convinced? Do it the other way around: Tell me why _should_ a company _go_ closed source? Stick with it till it's amortised? Ok. SAP has another few years, maybe even a decade, and only a maniac would try to migrate a company the size of, let's say, Volkswagen, from SAP to a custom compiere or GNUe enviroment or something simular right now. Nuclear Plants are also a special thing. But they are in various ways and are somewhat another league where closedness or openess doesn't really count.
For all else goes this:
Every day I'm helping companies do the transition and make the first steps. These companies are in time. In 5 years from now we'll all be the computer software craftsmen/women and MS and Co. will have a hard time adapting. The companies without the awareness to leave the update treadmill will just waste another round of cash and lose it in the end.
Closed Source has had it's day. It's really that simple. If you're building something new or restrucutring, follow up or waste big money. That's all there is to it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Folks,
PDFs aren't open source, the reader is free (as in beer $$) but closed tight. Also, you can't cut-n-paste from a PDF to anything. Adobe (lest we forget) is the company that put Skylarov in JAIL. For opening their closed eBooks format so blind people could use it!
So do youself a favor, don't ever send anyone any PDFs.
rant mode off, now.
Thanks,
jr
'So who else has done this?'. Can Slashdot assist?
Am I the only one who read this as a prediction that the IT directors will be asking the poster whether Slashdot can help them decide??
You cant make anything foolproof, they'll only invent better fools.
At first I drew two columns and compared features, etc. to them.
Then I drew two other columns on the board & started writing every imaginable cost (incl. staff training etc.).
It took me less then half an hour to convince them.
fortune is my favourite linux command
I just had to restore our Q&A executables to the network after our ancient librarian decided she needed to get back into her old catalog which was supposedly completely migrated over to a web-based system.
Can you say "I can't learn anything new"
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Don't you know, the entire IT industry in the You Yes of Yay is following the best open source policy = Open the source to Indian programmers, Close the source to American programmers.
As you can see, it is very successful, very profitable, very popular open source policy.
Why don't you follow the same ?
Sorry, simply had to get that off my chest.
YALOOP ( Yet Another Laid Off due to Outsouring Programmer )
Sounds like your company can afford it, so this company might point you in the right direction, they assistedMunich and Paris in open source solutions.
Would be paying your $1499/CPU licensing fee.
>...more people working on it, and hence better software.
Yup, and
more eyes == more bugs spotted == better software
(if reported & fixed, of course)
gewg_
I am sure PJ's (of groklaw.net fame) employer would be haapy to provide you with open source friendly advice!
Also the idea of having an in house geeks as support works very well in practice. (Though not in theory, weird ha? :P) It's getting pulled apart up the page but I have seen this in action and it is impressive. If you are a large company get the software you want, employee geeks and get them working on improving the code (remembering to release all the good updates to the community) and have them there on a minutes notice to fix major problems. (If they are stumped get a street geek and pay by the hour.) I doubt you'd get support from ms to fix a bug you find immediately would you? /me looks at value and hl2
Also I'd say you should make the transition slow on your users (people using your network) like switch to Star Office 7 and get all the newbies used to it, then switch the mail client (thunderbird?) and get them used to it and if you are really hardcore switch the OS and pray that they realise they can use it the same as windows with only a few differences. (This method worked for me, then again my network is far smaller than yours.)
Good luck. And remember 1) open source 2) ??? 3) PROFIT - is always right. :D
I ate your fish.
I am familiar with most of the arguments for OSS on the desktop, having made them as a sysadmin in a M$ dominated network at my previous job. You look at the services deployed on the server, the applications running on the desktop, the database and start thinking... hey, I know! We'll run sendmail instead of Exchange, OpenOffice instead of Word, Mozilla instead of IE and mySQL instead of SQL server! And we can probably all consolidate it onto one system which also acts as a gateway and a firewall with ipchains--
I'll save them about a billion dollars over the next 10 years and they'll worship me as their GOD!
And even in a small environment, that would take some time. Interoperability issues aside (document formats, drivers for that old tape backup-drive? forgot about those) you're looking at a whole new psychology change (getting used to a new GUI, "Where's my internet" kinds of questions), and that will make the end users hate you and the management hate you as well (as everything will seem "broken" to them). Sure, *if* you got them migrated seemlessly, you'd be saving money. Eventually.
But in an enterprise? Forget it. I mean sure deploy OSS on some test servers where they're used to UNIX anyways or whatever, but replacing all the desktops across the entire enterprise would be just crippling in (re)training costs alone. Not just for the users (wasted time) but for the Tier 1 folks as well.
My (admittedly unsolicited) advice would be to give OSS just enough of a reputation that someone says, "Hmmm. We should look at this." Then it'll be piloted somewhere in his organization. Once the kinks have gotten worked out, then he could actually have the company-specific data to induce a global change.
--Have a good night's sleep. Don't forget to brush your tooth.
There are at least two completely different open source code bases for working with PDFs, XPDF and Ghostscript. They are both Free (as in speech).
Furthermore, many open source programs can print to PDF. KDE for example, provides a PDF printer so any KDE program that can print, can print to PDF (or Postscript, or fax, or email).
Also, you can't cut-n-paste from a PDF to anything.
XPDF can copy-and-paste fairly well.
Claim modest cost savings. Open source software can do powerful useful stuff the proprietary desktops can't. You will still need people to plug in kicked out power cords and change toner cartridges. Just making a laundry list of the interesting things your business can do makes me dizzy! Just itemize every open source technology frontier and you will see business value opportunities: GnuPGP - digital signatures and authentication. Morphix - business custom bootable systems. Cluster computing - You have 250,000 CPU hours per day. Email and mailing lists - most underappreciated business tool. Leave the MS desktops intact and add a new disk and RAM for Linux use. Note your firm's potential in asynchronous desktop computer supercomputing. With 60K computers idle at night you can do a lot of financial modeling.One of the major mantras of cluster computing is doing more computing with less manpower.You have so many CPUs available, your cluster computing project may show electricity cost itself exceeding the cost of manpower administering the cluster. Morphix is a great way to demonstrate a Linux desktop (and a great way for you to distribute a business customized Linux application selection).Note Morphix is a recursive way to propogate new and different computer systems. So from the money you save not moving to the next round of proprietary PC software consider this: Out of the $400 not spent, up grade to 1Gig Ram and a 200Gig 2nd disk drive and a $.50 cd copy of your companies chosen MD5checksum applications. On the management side, the kind of work that hundreds of support and admin people do will change. The management task is to figure out how to organize the work so that the tasks are doable, done and delivered. You will need a web site WIKI and a set of email groups for organizing and delegating open source involvement throughout the company.You want some involvement and knowledge about several projects. On the licensing thing... tell em your company is not a programming house, you are an application user. Open source contribution and participation is the appropriate path. Open source programs forked into a proprietary version breeds dead ends and support costs. Business data is proprietary. Configurations and configuration files are a boundary item with a 90 day half-life.
Ernie Ball - maker of guitars, strings and many other things went full blown Linux some time ago with zero complaints:
& oe =utf-8&q=Ernie+Ball+Linux&btnG=Google+Sear ch
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
Yeah, Adobe sells products to accomplish this. Check out Acrobat Professional. Cheaper than Word, too.
In fact, Adobe's put a lot of effort into the concept of a "PDF workflow" -- spanning a whole spectrum of collaboration options, &c.
I quite clearly proved my point on support to the manager of a company I did some work for, when it turned out that the stock Debian Woody package of Exim didn't support MySQL virtual users or domains. I couldn't immediately see whether this was because it wasn't enabled or if I'd done something stupid, so I send an email to the package maintainer. I got an answer back within two hours. Said manager was duly impressed, by the speed of response and the "Oh, it's from the guy who actually wrote it!" (well not quite, but I didn't want to complicate it for him) factor.
Dear All,
/.!
I have received some very useful emails, and have read a large number of useful comments. It's going to take a while to process it all into some semblance of order and all of those who have asked to be kept informed of progress and so on will be.
I think it's fantastic that the community exists at all, and when called upon can respond with such alacrity.
If I don't get back to you directly, please drop me an email (although I fear an email slashdotting).
On a final point, this is the only place this email address has been posted and I am now being spammed into oblivion. Damn you
Stokey
Natsu gusa-ya, Tsuwamono domo-ga, Yume no ato
Quoting ... organisation-specific references removed.
"The purpose of this communique is to advise you that the [IT Department] is currently developing a policy and an approval process for Open Source Software (OSS) that will be published sometime during this quarter.
What is OSS and why do we need a policy? In today's computing environment anyone with an Internet connection has the ability to download and use value-added software products at little or no cost. Unfortunately, this software may or may not be supported, could pose a security risk and may present legal implications. There may be cases where application developers are including unapproved software in application code that will eventually run in the production environment. In such cases, if the software is not adequately tested, it has the potential to cause problems to the computing platform or to the application itself and may pose a potential security risk.
This unapproved software falls into one of three categories:
Development Software - used to assist projects in the development of applications, but will not be included in the application and therefore will not run in the application production environment
Application Software - included in an application and therefore will run in the application production environment.
System infrastructure software - required to run development software and/or application software, or simply to provide or enhance infrastructure services.
All open source software must be supported by at least one of the following:
- A vendor (with a support agreement)
- A support area within the [IT department]
- An identified Functional Owner who agrees to support the chosen software.
The approval process being developed will cover all types of software and will be managed by the [Software Acquisition section].
Until the policy and approval process are in place, we would like to remind all staff that only approved software is to be used on networked devices or any other desktop device.
In the interim, if you are using or plan to use Open Source Software that is not currently approved, you must contact the [relevant area] for interim approval."
My experience is that where Open Source has commercial, paid-for support, the quality of that support is significantly better than the support from closed source software - for the same bucks. Of course, if you don't pay for support, you don't get it - TANSTAAFL.
Think about it: the closed source software got most of their money off you up-front. Support is not the main profit earner, it is a sideline. They will do the minimum they have to to keep you on the hook. Their best staff are probably routed to the development side of the business and have nothing to do with support, because they are busy implementing new bells and whistles under orders from marketing.
For an open source support outfit, however, support is the main money earner. If they don't keep you happy, then the paycheck goes away. They are therefore strongly motivated to do it well. Of course, they may be developers as well - probably are. But unlike commercial companies, the motivation is to keep the developers working on support because that is where the dollars come from. So the guy who handles your support call may well be a developer with a developers insight into the system, even if not the bit you have problems with.
In the Open/Closed argument, support is a winner, not loser, for OSS if there is commercial support
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
This tidbit comes thru email from Slashdot Reader Walt Scacchi: