Birmingham Drops Open Source Initiative

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Monday November 20, 2006 @05:50AM from the sad-day-for-adherents dept.

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."

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would have been by SkunkPussy · 2006-11-20 05:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

£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.

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SURELY NOT!!!!!