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Governments, Beyond the Open Source Hype
An anonymous reader writes "ForeignPolicy.com takes a look at Open Source as it applies to governments and some of the reasons that a governing body may or may not like OSS. From the article: 'Governments around the world are enchanted by open-source software. Unlike proprietary software, for which the code is kept secret, the open-source variety can be copied, modified, and shared. [...] Trouble is, the benefits of open source are not always so clear-cut. Software is too complicated a creation to be captured in rhetoric, and assertions about some of the technical benefits of open source fail to tell the whole story.'"
That's not the way it works. It's those that want to deviate from the norm/corporate standard that must demonstrate the benefits/cost of an alternative, and in many cases it must VASTLY outweigh the standard for it to even be considered.
Something being "Free" in itself doesn't make a solution the best one (or default). If I offered your company "Free" lunches for all your employees everyday, would they hire my services? What if I charged $5000 per plate I had to wash (and you have to use me for dish washing)? "Free" doesn't mean anything unless you also consider all the costs involved with such a purchase. This is something companies are very used to doing, and something that FOSS doesn't do particularly well on in most cases.
The fact is that linux is NOT ready for the desktop. It's come a long ways, and it will get there eventually, but it isn't. Without it being on the desktop, IT shops then have to decide whether it is worth having a single OS throughout the company (Windows) for all desktops, laptops, servers, and even some PDAs, or would it be more cost beneficient to have some machines linux and some machines windows. This entails having two completley different set of tools (Backup, maintenance, diagnostics, imaging), and atleast one more person in the IT department that is a linux person that can support, configure and maintain the linux machines. Then you have to retrain all the people that might need to use the servers (Network admins, email admins, web server admins, etc). You will either have to move some stuff to OS-agnostic software packages, or deal with the inevitable higher maintenaince of dealing with the interoperability issues. Usually, it does right at the point you say it's FREE (But we have to hire another $40,000-$80,000 IT guy to support it). At $30-$50 a license for Windows that most mid/large companies pay for a copy of Windows, it'll take a LOT of licenses to justify that single additional person. Not to mention that in a time when companies are trying to focus on their core products, it's a rather hard sell to try and explain why you need to expand you IT department to support something that has nothing to do with your product at all. Most accountants/CFO's see this a dilution of ROI, which is not a good thing.
I'm not against linux. It has it's place and it has it's uses, but advocate the right tool for the right job when appropriate. There is a lot more than just what is technologically "better" when deciding on what platform(s) a company uses. All good companies keep an eye on what will make it profitable (or more profitable), not necessarily what costs the least to buy, or even what costs the least in TCO.