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Small-Town Open Source Adoption
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has a piece on the adoption of open source software by Steamboat Springs, CO. The small resort town has integrated OSS into all aspects of productivity and e-governance. Kent Morrison, the IS Manager for the town, discusses what made them switch and how it has gone." From the article: "What about Linux on the desktop--is this an option for your organization? Morrison: We've discussed it. With Linux's ability to emulate Windows improving every year, we see that as a possibility. We would build a Linux image for the majority of users, but for the 20 percent of users that run Windows-only applications we would keep them on the same platform. We would try to make a Linux desktop look like our Windows environment (the organization currently runs Windows 2000 but will start rolling out XP this year) as we don't want to retrain our users. We don't have a time frame for installing Linux yet, though."
Steamboat Springs, CO may be having a great time moving to Linux, but it helps a lot that it's such a small community. The logistic problems are nowhere near the level they would be if a major metropolis tried to move all their systems to Linux. I think it's a great move, but there's a reason it's happening in a small town in Colorado rather than one of the cities with a high concentration of technology companies.
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
And I especially hate the attitude that we can use Linux, if we can make it look and act just like Windows. Unless everyone working there is a dim bulb, I think they can handle something other than the Start Menu....
That's easy to say when you are not responsible for the re-training for a 10,000 person workforce, many of whom know nothing about computers aside from their specific application they trained on when they were hired.
I can understand this sentiment for now, but I would like to see Linux surpass Windows. Maybe if that happens, we'll see Windows emulate Linux. It already emulates Mac OS9. And with Vista, it will emulate OSX. :-)
What?
Microsoft Fishing for dummies:
1) Install a few Linux file servers (without disturbing your Windows 2000 domain)
2) Talk to the press about plans of moving from Exchange to "open source" software. Mention possible plans of using Linux on desktops.
3) Let the Linux community talk about "another Munich"
4) Wait for the Microsoft call and cut a good deal for the already planned XP rollout
Being a textbook Red Hat customer could also come in handy, in case Microsoft does not bite.
lucm, indeed.
Sadly, there are too many homeless orphans and any Open Source method of adoption is welcome.
What? How does that work? The IS Manager for the town council, maybe.
Get your own free personal location tracker
We get trained not to build in platform dependencies; Java is pretty much sufficient for anything user-interface-ish or back-endish that we need to do. So what is Steamboat Springs doing, that needs Windows ? And can we help them achieve neutrality soon ?
A SourceForge repository for municipal applications would be great.
the organization currently runs Windows 2000 but will start rolling out XP this year
Hmmmm. We're about to start rolling out Windows XP? That means we need to start price negotiations with Microsoft. Hey! Lets call a reporter and tell them that we are THINKING about switching to Linux. That will undoubtedly get us a better price for our Windows licenses, since Microsoft would love to have the follow up story be "Steamboat Springs chooses Windows after all."
You are almost neglegent as the CIO of a prominent organization/government entity if you don't do the obligitory "I'm thinking of Linux" story before you negotiate for Windows licenses.
Look, dopes.
Just because you two can sit in some air conditioned room and have as many systems as you like, doesn't mean that we all have that luxury...
I own an IT Consulting business, and manufacture IP PBX systems on the side, and I'd like to explain something to you.
All in all, you jokers are simply acting like irrational two year olds. Some people simply don't want to use something other than Windows. It's what they know. Hell, it's what they LIKE. And a systems administrator has to take that into account. It's not that Linux can simply LOOK and ACT similar to Windows that is the decision maker for this guy. He's got to make sure it acts EXACTLY like Windows, or he takes the heat. I count my lucky stars every time one of our customers with a Linux box calls and doesn't tell me that it's crapped itself. I thank my lucky stars that we have a sub 20 minute recovery plan for any Linux system we sell. Because without it, I'd go Quake III some days...
Galen
In your face, and always right!
I wouldn't complain too much about "not trying hard enough". It's hard enough to get people to switch to OSS. As I've advocated often here, letting them take their time about it is a good thing if it encourages them to do it at all.
As long as they let a consultant keep them informed about enhancements and changes in the OSS landscape, so they can know when OSS products have gotten good enough to switch out more parts of their proprietary infrastructure, it's not that bad a deal to take their time - especially if it allows their users to adjust.
On the other hand, there are times, as a recent report indicated, when you want to yank the proprietary products out from under the users and tell them there's no going back - otherwise some of the users will sabotage the entire project by continuing to use the proprietary stuff no matter what - even if they just as easily use the OSS stuff. You have to decide this policy on a case-by-case basis depending on each user or manager. You can't decide this sort of thing on an organization-wide basis.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If the only thing they know is the application, then who cares about the OS? Just make that app the only thing they point and click on their desktop, or better up, make it their 'shell' Heck, you could run X with a simple little perl text menu:
Press 1 to launch this app
Press 2 to run that one
etc
"As long as they let a consultant keep them informed about enhancements and changes in the OSS landscape..."
Or at least an internal person who can do the same...
6 of one, half dozen of the other, I guess...
Galen
In your face, and always right!
There may be 10,000 people living in the Steamboat Springs area (give or take a few thousand), but they certainly aren't all working for the local government! It is very clear that this OSS move is very small, very unimportant in this small mountain community. If my little sister can handle e17, I think professionals working for the government should be expected to, especially when it means a significantly lower cost to the public (not that any of the nature-lovers in Colorado care about fiscal responsibility)
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
and that's assuming they've gotten training. we have users who fight us when upgrading from netscape 7 to thunderbird cuz "it looks different". even changing color scheme throws some users off.
This doesn't look so good for Microsoft. If towns (or businesses) are still using Windows 2000, and only migrating to XP this year, how in the world are they going to find people who are going to adopt Vista? The world is still catching up to XP--we don't need yet another version of Windows to create even more distance between where Microsoft is and where many companies are.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
Why all this compassion and caring for employees and the operating system they are used to? First words out of my mouth when I take over as the admin are usually "things are really going to change here. You are going to unlearn many things and relearn many others." and since they're employees who want to keep their jobs, they learn to use the software that's made available...."what!?!? you don't want to learn this new stuff? I'm sure the next guy to apply for a job will have no problems with this". I've gone to work for companies that ran some completely retarded menu systems with archaic commands that ran on DOS(another on top of SCO, IIRC)...I never heard a single employee complain that it wasn't enough like Win98/XP, etc. They learned what they needed to know and never questioned it. It's the employees' duty to fit into the company's decisions, not vice versa.
I've successfully migrated people from Windows to Mac, Mac to Windows, Mac to BSD, Windows to IRIX, et al. and as long as it's shown that the bottom line is taken care of, upper management has no problems with the attitude because at some point in time every employee is going to have to be retrained for every piece of software that gets upgraded, etc. and they see no reason that they should pay for the software and the training too. Give them cheat sheets for what they need to do and you'll never get a call unless something BAAAAAD happens.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
And upgrading to XP is a dumb idea if you really have any intentions of moving to Linux soon.
:)
Especially when the next version is also coming out later in the year
And I especially hate the attitude that we can use Linux, if we can make it look and act just like Windows. Unless everyone working there is a dim bulb, I think they can handle something other than the Start Menu....
They can, but only with training. You and me, we explore and figure it out. You don't really have to be all that smart, but you need to be that kind of person. My dad is, to a degree. My mom? She works with computers every day at work. Every application she uses is on a desktop shortcut. When I set up a computer for them, I honestly couldn't understand the problem if I said "Ok it's in the start menu, just use that and I'll put up a shortcut next time I visit". I had to literally walk her through clicking "Start" -> "Programs" -> whatever.
Actually I have them both on Linux/KDE now, easier to support than Gnome because it's what I use. For my dad, that was just "See that K thingy down in the corner? Works like the start menu." My mom.... well, she won't find anything by herself. You have to step-by-step tell her where to find it, luckily my dad can actually be her support person(!). Like it or not, the work market is still full of people that never learned to use a computer, even though they're on a computer. They don't know it, don't understand it and is typically very anxious to either break it or just start something they don't know what is.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Although that makes sense, I doubt that a small town government has enough weight to really netociate [sic] much of anything.."
:)
Not unless you make enough waves in the press to get posted on slashdot.
This is the reason I said that you need to be from a "prominent organization." I too am impressed that Steamboat Springs managed to make enough waves to get noticed. It's the eyeballs on the press articles that give them leverage. Nevertheless, I agree that they are a bit too small to have much effect. Now, if you were a large government organization like a mid-sized east coast state.....
That was more like an anti-USA publicity stunt than anything else. You see, in their minds, Microsoft == Bush == Imperialism. I don't think that they really understand (o care) what the open source movement is all about. For example, the last two elections here were made with smartmatic voting machines, with propietary software. Of course, there were many doubts about the results of those elections (similar to the Florida voting machines incident). In that scenario, the use of truly OPEN source software is more than appropiate
if I could change the world, it would have a reset button
""what!?!? you don't want to learn this new stuff? I'm sure the next guy to apply for a job will have no problems with this""
I don't know where you come from, but we tend to respect our employees and their associated talents. (Like spelling and punctuation, for example. You just sound like some idiot spouting off inane nonsense. Seriously, have some freakin' self respect and start acting like something other than a pimply faced, sittn' in the dark moron who does nothing but stare at porno in his operation center all day.) You're the exact kind of eastern shore asshole that no on west of the Mississippi would work for. What you're basically saying is that if the CEO of a company you worked for came in and said, "We're changing the company direction, everyone who's not on the board is going to flip hamburgers to compete with McDonald's." You'd either flip hamburgers like the rest of you east coast white sheep, or be the black sheep and leave.
"I've successfully migrated people from Windows to Mac, Mac to Windows, Mac to BSD, Windows to IRIX, et al."
Wah. Wah. We all have our conversion war stories, spare me your boring diatribe of your sister's uncle's father's best friend's . . . Need I go on?
"Give them cheat sheets for what they need to do and you'll never get a call unless something BAAAAAD happens."
Ok, I've just gotta call bullshit on this one. I personally have customers that call because there's a little red light (I.E. the message waiting light, hint, hint.) flashing on their phone. After explaining this to them, and referring them to their manufacturer printed User's Manual, and/or their "cheat sheet" I get a call two weeks later from the SAME person, about the SAME damned light. Like our money minting ReMax customer. She practically prints her own cash because she does so much business, and sells lots of expensive mountain property (The recent 7 million dollar home in Aspen was one of her sales.) But, even after 6 months of using her new PBX, she still can't grasp the concept of a message waiting indicator on a damn phone.
Why don't you go fix your broken website, and let the rest of us have an intelligent debate here?
Galen
In your face, and always right!
If you're really in the consulting business, I have two questions for you:
1) Why are you talking to sysadmins?
2) Why are you letting them tell you what to use?
It sounds like you're really just selling systems that happen to run on Linux. In that case, you're a system integrator or VAR.
Instead of going to sysadmins and saying "here add this other OS to your systems because it's leet," you should be going to CIO's and saying "replace *all* your systems with Linux and save a bundle in support and maintenance, and if your admins don't want to go along we can outsource them and save even more."
Your customers aren't admins. Your customers are businesses.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
That's easy to say when you are not responsible for the re-training for a 10,000 person workforce
Well, yeah, like retraining them to use Office when they scramble the menus yet again. Or trying to explain why their familiar Start menus have changed to something that is totally incrompehensible from the win98 stuff like it did in XP.
Ya know, to think that Windows itself doesn't require retraining when Microsoft keeps swapping shit around to glue yet another new face on the same old whore is just nonsense!
They are all going to get re-trained when the next version of windows and office come out anyway. Why not re-train them on linux instead.
evil is as evil does
- Whether it's 10,000 or 30 people, I hope that your training sessions don't exceed 15-30 people. The difficulties by number of people trained is linear, or you're not managing things well (often users help each other, so your troubles curb should be logarithmic, not exponential).
- A user switching from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 to Windows XP will have pretty much the same level of difficulties as from Windows 2000/XP to Gnome. Many users have told me this (and very non-tech users!).
- If users know only "do this, click that" after being trained, then the trainer didn't do his/her job correctly.
- Motivate users, give them a reason to switch and don't take them for robots.
Sure, YMMV.. but my biggest problem with training users is that they afterwards ask me whether their relatives can install it at home.. and yeah, switching to Linux at home is more difficult when there is not an office tech to assist.
So let me get this straight. Obviously your clients employ some of the dumbest people on the planet. So stupendously stupid that they can't even figure out how to use their fucking phones. And yet these people happily use windows wihtou ever calling you for support? They are never confused by windows? They never need retrainign when windows goes from 2k to XP to vista?
I call bullshit. I bet those retards working there are constantly getting confused by windows and it's cryptic error messages and mysterious slowdowns, lockups, locked files, re-arranging icons, ever changing taskbars etc.
Lets face it this company is hiring people who are too stupid to understand that a flashing light on a phone means there is a message waiting. They are going to need constant attention from you no matter what you install.
evil is as evil does
Dude jews really really love freedom of speech
evil is as evil does
Yes, but could you find those OS/2 servers in a small town in Colorado? I bet the town is trolling for Cheap Sysadmins, who will move there for the skiing/mountain-biking, etc. They're not trying to bargain Microsoft down; they're trying to bargain *You* down. "Sure, we only pay $8000/yr, and half of that is in Beaver-pelts, but just check out the skiing!"
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
People don't know the difference between a window manager, a browser, a desktop environment, etc. Honest, most don't. Now look at just normal acronyms and buzzwords. That's it, you are now officially way beyond the expertise of most computer users. They have a 256 mellowbit email drive client from delltel on a machine named the "computer explorer". And "the computer" is that big glowing thing they are staring at. That box off to the side is...something else, no one really knows, but it must be important....
It's a struggle for most computer users to use what they have, so once they learn to do a few things, that's it, that's as far as they will go willingly. Even people *paid* to "use the computer" have a hard time to do more than a few simple tasks. At best, they know just enough to screw up bad. At worst...
.
It's a real problem. Windows is the default everything on the desktop, again, a real problem (for some viewpoints), because to do ANYTHING a "non windows way" is to invite blank stares and nothing getting done. Right now it's obvious that it is already too complicated for most people, and that's with familiarity and in a lot of cases, years of use. Radical change invites both radical productivity gains and ALSO radical failure, it works both ways. It's not that it is that hard to learn NEW things, it's that it is SUPER hard to UNLEARN things.
Most distros have a taskbar icon that works like the start button anyway!
Bring back Sirius Punk!
Question: What does this have to do with Mozilla?
I'm going to be fairly annoyed if TFA turns out to be a lengthy discussion of how they installed Firefox.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
the organization currently runs Windows 2000 but will start rolling out XP this year) as we don't want to retrain our users
Uh-wha? Even with the classic skin, unless these workstations are completely managed with server policies, the users are going to have to be re-trained on how to do things that are different in XP than in 2000. Never mind where Vista and Office 12 will take them.
They're sure lucky that they started using computers with Windows 2000 because the migration from DOS to Win 3.1 to Win 95 to Win 2K would have been too much for their users - their minds would have exploded!
Or.... maybe their users really are smart and this is just a fallacious excuse.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Great! So tell me about all the benefits of switching from Windows to Linux again?"
"............"
What a bunch of hypocrites. Microsoft is rotten through and through, UNTIL you start releasing your own operating system, and then Windows allofasudden becomes the shining perfect pinacle of excellence to be exactly cloned byte for byte. So, in effect, your ONLY real problem with Microsoft was simply that it wasn't YOUR COMPANY. Well, people who think that are just as damned as Bill Gates, with the extra measure of being even WORSE, since Bill never envied anybody else.
You seem to hate people from the eastern part of the USA. Did some tourist beat you as a kid? Probably not, I'm sure. It's just pride. And while it's good to take pride, you do realize you're calling people morons and saying that anyone from the east coast is worse than someone from the west. And I do realize that you are trying to have a regular debate, but unfortunately this prejudice is severely ruining it.
c id=14801726:
c id=14801666
c id=14801958
eg:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178528&
You obviously live somewhere like New York, where grass doesn't even grow in the cracks of the concrete because there's so much oil in the dirt
Yep, since New York is the only city with concrete, not to mention it's slathered in oil.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178528&
Look, dopes.
Ah, name calling; quite a way to get people to respect you.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178528&
Seriously, have some freakin' self respect and start acting like something other than a pimply faced, sittn' in the dark moron who does nothing but stare at porno in his operation center all day.) You're the exact kind of eastern shore asshole that no on west of the Mississippi would work for
Because there's no such thing as an asshole that isn't from the eastern shore, much less one that's pimply faced.
(\(\
(=_=) Bani!
(")")
Well consider the idea that MS selling one license is still more profitable than selling no licenses at full price. There's no reason for them not to negotiate on any order of a semi-decent size - any business that can sell a set of 25 characters separated into groups of five by hyphens at $150 a pop should be willing to sell those same sets at $50 each if the other option is selling none. The only reason they don't do it with single users is that it's actually not worth their time - that $50 actually would be better spent having the employee(s) involved doing something else. And they know that most end-users seriously considering switching to linux (or smart enough to say as much to get a discount) are the type that would run a pirated version anyways if they can't get one legally for cheap.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
The only problem i have with this article is the comment of "...With Linux's ability to emulate Windows improving every year..." Is this really where linux is going? a great generic emulater brand to Windows? Even if its not, is that the impression the decision makers are getting?
I'm not sure why everyone rejoices when some government organization goes OSS. The only reason they go OSS is because they don't have to pay a single dime for it. Ask them how much they are donating towards the project because it has helped them, and the answer will probarbly be $0. If you worked on an OSS project that helped your town/community, how much of a tax break do you think they are going to give you? My guess is 0. They'll probarbly have 200 different townhall meetings before they come to a conclusive decision on giving a tax break.
Don't be fooled to easily, the last thing they care about is the OSS movement, they just want something for free..
The answer to the question of why you can't do the same with Linux in two minutes that you can do in Windows is in your post.
You said you have spent _forever_ learning Windows.
Of course it's harder to do something with a different tool than with the same tool you have been doing it.
I bet that for someone who uses a nail to make holes, using a drill would be way harder the first time. That doesn't mean it's actually harder. It's just not a fair comparison.
The problem is that most people haven't used Windows forever.
People who are just starting can learn gnome or mswindows at the same speed, in my personal experience. I have made that experiment.
Old farts like me (28 yo), who were used to old DOS programs, 123, WordPerfect, DBase III+, could handle that kind of stuff, so my generation can handle gnome ok.
Of course, there is a big chunk of people (but they don't represent everybody) who has used exclusively Windows for some time, but most of them can't tell IE from firefox, or MSword from OOWriter. For the minority to which _you_ belong, they will have some relearning to do. Tough luck. There are more important things than your comfort. Specially if it makes life easier for new people.
I am managing a project to install and train users in a local government accounting package throughout the Indonesian province of Aceh. We run a programmed front-end into an Oracle database. The LANs will eventually be connected to the internet, although they are not yet. To me, this is a classic OSS situation: developing country, critical data, lots of virii about...
Can I get anyone to buy in? No, and the reason is always the same: After the consultants are gone, local governments need to maintain the systems, and we need to give them what they are familiar with / can support. I know that their people could figure out the minimum amount they would need to, but I have lost that argument. It's a shame, because in a year or two another project will equip hundreds of local governments throughout the country with a full financial management system, and I don't think they're looking at Linux / OSS either.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
Call bullshit all you like son, it still won't change the facts that Fortune 500 companies act on my advice. And the site's down cause I'm presently migrating from IRIX to Linux and that particular site is not a priority compared to the others. If I were someone else who didn't know anything about respect, I'd say you were nothing more than a trash talking pig fucker, but I'm not so I'll just tell you to find a new rock to crawl under.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
What makes you think that just because you can "manage' XP you can manage Active directory and windows 2003 server. Be honest. "managing" a windows sytem consists mostly of rebooting and re-installing if the reboot doesn't fix the problem.
evil is as evil does