Birmingham Drops Open Source Initiative

eldavojohn writes "Birmingham, England put a stop to a half million pound project to put Linux and open source applications on library access PCs across the city. From the article, 'The council planned to roll out Linux software and applications on 1,500 desktops in libraries across the city, but in the end went no further than a 200-desktop project. Several industry watchers have voiced their concerns about the project, particularly around the number of PCs rolled out. Birmingham's expenditure averaged over 2,500 pounds per PC.' Why did they stop after 200 PCs? Because they claimed with Windows, the project would have been 100,000 pounds cheaper. One may wonder if they paid for initial training of their workforce making the first 200 more expensive than the rest but the article does not say whether or not this occurred."

Comments

would have been

[SkunkPussy]

£333/desktop if they had rolled out the full number of desktops.

Its not surprising that they spent a lot of money to achieve seemingly nothing - Birmingham City Council BOASTS all over the place that they are "the biggest employer in the West Midlands". Probably cos it takes 10 muppets to do the same job that 1 competent employee should be expected to do.

Re:How can windows be cheaper than a free OS?

[jb.hl.com]

It depends, really. It depends if you have to retrain staff to use the new systems, if you need to hire extra support personnel, if you need to buy hardware that works with Linux... all sorts of things could affect the overall cost, not just the license cost.

Not in my experience.

[khasim]

But isn't that the problem with most Linux deployments? When you have the majority of the IT workforce out there not trained in Linux it makes for a tough hiring process to find someone qualified for a rollout like this. Then, when you do find someone qualified (I'm talking qualified here, not someone who has been running Linux at home as a hobby...but a true Linux Professional) the rates are through the roof.

Not really. Anyone who knows *nix can adapt to Linux in a couple of days. And there are lots and lots of people who know *nix out there.

True, they might be more expensive than someone with an MCSE. But the MCSE you'd hire/contract for a migration of this size would be more expensive than the MCSE you'd hire to maintain a site that has already migrated.

Migration specialists cost the same whether they're Microsoft, Linux, Sun or whatever.

However, in the hear and now its difficult to get something like this to go off without a hitch due to just the sheer lack of experience in the world.

Again, not really. The problem is when people do not look at it as a real migration. If you've ever done an Oracle/Sun migration, you'd know the costs involved and the amount of planning. And those are the kind of experts you'd be calling in for a project such as this.

The strange part is how they could spend so much money, so quickly, on so few PC's.

Realistically, they should not have spent 1/20th of that before finding that Microsoft would cut their sales price to come under the Linux figures.

And most of that money would have been spent on identifying all the apps used and which could be ported and for how much.

Linux desktops are cheaper to run than Windows. Particularly if you're using them in a diskless environment.

The HUGE costs are porting the apps or migrating the data to Linux-based apps. This is because most vendors have spent time locking your data up in their proprietary formats in order to make it as expensive as possible for you to dump them.

Which is why migrations such as this are STUPID to rush into.

It makes far more sense to plan them over 5 years. That way, the cost of migrating/porting those apps can be compared to the cost of upgrading them (or migrating anyway when the ISV goes out of business) and the real savings can be seen.

And you can realize the easy savings sooner to off-set the more expensive projects later.

Re:How can windows be cheaper than a free OS?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I'm not making an "argument" here...

You made an unsupported assertion about what you claim people think. That is an argument.

After 30 minutes my predictions are correct.

Really? Not according to the posts I read in this discussion.

For both my points, take the time to go through the comments posted so far.

I did thanks, I just don't see how they support your assertions.

Now did you have a specific point about what I posted or are you just looking for a scrape?

Here's my point, you're making baseless assertions about "what people think" and are ponderously close to being a troll. You throw around random large numbers and apparently did not bother to read the article being discussed. Just because you say, 'Slashdotters all think this" does not make it so and does not mean there is anything valuable at all in what you've posted. How about instead of generalized jabs at your opinion of the consensus here you try addressing specific posts from someone or *gasp* the article itself.