Charity Shuns Open Source Code

brown-eyed slug writes, "The BBC has an article explaining Christian Aid's decision to use Microsoft software in preference to Linux. It re-opens the classic debate about the total cost of ownership, highlighting the wider availability of Microsoft skills, as well as the beneficial pricing policy of the Seattle giant. From the article: '...one of the things that we find is that Microsoft is viewed as the big, bad organization — but they've actually got some good corporate social responsibility. If you're a charity or an educational institution, you pay pence in the pound for the license, compared to what a major bank might pay.'" While the Christian Aid spokesman makes some good points, he seems to miss totally the idea of open code — confusing code with data.

Comments

pence in the pound

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you're a charity or an educational institution, you pay pence in the pound for the license, compared to what a major bank might pay"

Suuuure.. as if major customers don't get huge volume discounts and other incentives to remain MS shops. The people who end up having to pay full price are the home and small business types who can't get volume discounts- they are the ones that get raked over the coals. It is from screwing the endless little customers over that MS gets fat and rich, then gives back a tiny percentage to charity to get all the glory for having "social responsibility".

It's the classic answer, really

[heinousjay]

Like most people, they don't care about open source code, because they don't code.

It's not like people are going to suddenly develop a love of programming en masse. The ability to modify the operating system, or anything else for that matter, is about as important to most people as the color of the motherboard.

Sometimes the Puppy Analogy is true

[HighOrbit]

The old analogy "Linux is Free like a puppy is free" is not always fud.

The article quotes the charity as saying:

"Microsoft skills are easily available throughout the world in terms of an organisation, and it is more effective for us to have Microsoft software which we can employ people easily for...."

So its easier and less expensive for them to find both volunteers and employees who already know how to use MS software as opposed to having to go through the time and expense of training them anew on something different. That is a valid concern if they are trying to operate on a shoe-string budget. The noted that the licensing cost for the charity is "pay pence in the pound for the licence" (i.e. cents on the dollar). So the training and support become major expenses.

Microsoft's "Charity"

[bigbigbison]

At my university the bookstore sells XP Pro for $10. You can download Office Pro off of the website for free.
Do you think MS is doing that to support higher education? I doubt it. I'm more certain that they see it as a cheap way of indoctrinating people to use MS products so that when they get out of college they are so used to using MS, that they don't even stop to think of anything else existing.

So how about free support for charities with FOSS?

[pandrijeczko]

I'd be more than happy to give a couple of hours a week free support to a charity that was using FOSS software - I'm sure there's a few more people like me also, it wouldn't take too much organisation to create a pool of people willing to pool their resources for supporting FOSS in charity organisations.

I don't really care how much money private businesses pump into Microsoft for software but I'd really like to think that any government department that's financed by my taxes or any charity are doing their utmost to cut costs on any sort of infrastructure spending when cheaper ot free alternatives are available.