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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.
According to Netcraft they run their website on Red Hat servers. They moved from FreeBSD to Linux in September 2005. This might just be a hosting company change, but the fact the netblock is registed to them makes me think that they might run the servers themselves.
Seems a bit strange to me.
Tom.
Of course he does. He's not a geek. Yesterday I convinced one of my customers to use OpenOffice.org over Microsoft Office. The only selling point she heard? "Free". Not "Free as in speech", but "no cost to acquire." And her next door neighbor is Ward Cunningham (this one, not this one,) yet she still didn't quite get "open source". The average person doesn't understand open source, nor do they care enough to learn. It's just the way the world works.
It is disappointing that Linux couldn't make more inroads at a nonprofit, but as the article says, it's much easier to find cheap Microsoft help than Linux help. (For example, my on-site consulting company charges 50% more for Linux work than for Microsoft work; simply because we only have two of us that know Linux.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.