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

Incompetence

[chill]

A quick read thru the article reveals not a problem with Linux, but with the idiots trying to manage the deployment without knowing what they were doing.

I feel sorry for Birmingham. Not so much for having to use Windows, but for having to live with an IT staff like that one.

Re:Incompetence

[Osrin]

While it is fun to lay the blame outside of Linux, the community should really be looking at the product provided and working out how to make it deployable for every one of the 6.2bn folks on the planet if it is going to get the pervasive desktop deployment that some seem to be looking for.

It will only take a small number of stories like this before IT managers around the world take the decision not to look at Linux at all. Adding the threat of the pointless wrath of the community to that (as per your post) and the decision not to even look at Linux is a really clear one.

Re:Incompetence

[sheldon]

I've been involved in numerous Windows roll outs, from Win95 on... As well as OS/2 and variations of Unix.

Claiming that it's the fault of incompetent staff isn't really an excuse. In every deployment I've seen, the staff has known nothing about the product when the deployment starts. You learn as you go. What you rely on is good whitepapers and documentation provided by the company on how they expect a rollout to occur. Along with some experience on proper communication, testing strategies, rollout scheduling, etc.

Furthermore in every deployment you encounter obstacles... problems interfacing with some piece of hardware or software. This could be a case of them encountering more obstacles than they assumed initially, and/or having no good reliable source for help to solve them quickly.

I realize this is /. and everybody here thinks they are smarter than everybody else in the world, but the real world doesn't work like that.

Re:Incompetence

[toadlife]

"From the studies I've seen, Linux admins cost more, but less per machine. A Linux admin costs around 50% more, but could manage 2x or more in terms of machines."

I see this as a problem with linux (and *nix OSs in general), not an asset. I don't have a study to point to, but IME, a competent Windows admin can manage 2x or more in terms of machines than a normal Windows admin. As your point #2 points out, throwing more monkeys at the problem can work (albeit poorly) with windows, it can't with linux. This reflects a strength of Windows. This is a major problem for many when it comes to the adoption of linux, because in many areas the talent pool is simple too thin, and finding quality people is not easy. Add in the government factor, and you can all but forget finding anyone competent enough to handle the migration.

If I had a buck for every time someone said "The problem is your stupid Windows admins. Just hire some competent people and migrating to linux will be easy.", I could probably buy an extra gig of memory for my wife's computer.

To the issue of "competence" - For linux, I would define a basic level of competence as having an understanding of basic UNIX concepts, an understanding of the UNIX security model, a decent grasp of TCP/IP, and the ability to make #!/bin/sh carry out repetitive tasks. For Windows I would define a basic level of competence as having as having an understanding of basic Windows concepts, an understanding of the NT security model, a decent grasp of TCP/IP, and the ability to make cscript.exe and cmd.exe carry out repetitive tasks.

Every employed *nix admin I've ever met in person meets my definition of "competent", but I've yet to meet an employed Windows admin in person that meets the definition.

That doesn't mean I don't think linux can be adopted successfully. I think the government factor, not linux, is the biggest problem here.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I used a couple of the Linux machines in their main library, and they were rubbish compared to the Windows ones. I think whoever set it up hadn't bothered using the machines themselves! They even had US keyboard layout set, did they just plough through the setup wizards clicking Yes to everything??

Hmm, Not in my Birmingham

[Sneakernets]

In other news, Birmingham, Alabama is doing the exact opposite. Open source has fluorished here, as low funds make one go to low-cost alternatives.

Microsoft and the RIAA - Twins Under the Skin

[Nom du Keyboard]

I think Microsoft is in the same position as the RIAA. They have to win every time.

The RIAA has to win every every court case because, by the legal principal of non-mutual estoppal, if they lose once they cannot use the same legal arguments in any future case they might wish to bring (i.e. if P2P music sharing occurs through an IP address you pay for, you're automatically responsible, guilty, and owe them lots of money regardless of what you actually did, or didn't, do).

Microsoft has to win every desktop every time because, if a large-scale commercial Linux deployment succeeds as a viable alternative to Windows, it will be considered seriously as a candidate in every future large-scale deployment of PC's. Microsoft will have to fight for every future desktop contract, instead of being the de facto only option for 99% of them.

And both groups are willing to do whatever it takes to win at all costs!

Why is Linux so hard for them?

[lmpeters]

I see two simple options. First:
1. Build each computer with 1GB of RAM and no hard drive. A fast CPU is not needed, but the ability to net-boot is required.
2. Set up a Knoppix image on a net-boot server, which the workstations can net-boot from. (The Knoppix image might need to be customized for this purpose, but even if no modified Knoppix image already exists with this feature, it shouldn't be overwhelmingly hard to make one.)

Thus, everything runs off a read-only NFS filesystem, and is impossible to vandalize a workstation on a software level (a reboot undoes any vandalism). Furthermore, Knoppix has proved itself to be very good at autoconfiguring itself on a wide range of hardware. And I don't know ANYONE who couldn't figure out how to use Knoppix if they tried.

Another option:
1. Build each computer with 512MB+ of RAM and at least a 5GB hard drive. The ability to net-boot is not needed.
2. Install Knoppix on one computer's hard drive, and copy the disk image to all other computers. Many tools exist for this, of which Norton Ghost is merely the best-known (open-source alternatives do exist).

Thus, you get the same advantages of the first solution, but with a local hard disk. The first solution would offer easier clean-up on workstations, while the second would result in higher performance. Of course, you could get even higher performance by configuring a net-booting Knoppix to load to RAM, but you'd need more RAM (I'd guess at least 2GB) on each workstation.

Why is it so hard for them? Did they get brainwashed by Microsoft's P.R. trolls, or am I way smarter than than Birmingham's IT staff?

Maybe it failed for bureaucratic reasons?

[s20451]

Let's not forget that most governments have unionized employees, which (if true) is material to any massive IT redeployment. In true Slashdot fashion, the following post is pure conjecture and generalization. But I think it's plausible.

Ideally you would want to hire expert sysadmins on contract to conduct a pilot project such as this one. However, there is likely to be language in the union contract forbidding a contract employee from taking a job that might be done by a unionized employee. Unless a sufficiently far-sighted employer included specific language covering a Linux deployment, the deployment would necessarily default to the in-house IT people.

And you had better believe that the union folks would be vocal about it. Especially if they -- as Windows experts -- could be replaced by Linux sysadmins in a wholesale system turnover. In fact say they believed that Linux might require fewer sysadmins, thus threatening their jobs. Maybe they wanted it to fail for that reason? Again, pure speculation, but plausible given my previous interactions with unions.

This is not to say that unions are useless or evil. Or even that any of this happened or was a factor in Birmingham. But unions do form part of the institutional culture, and if not taken into account, they can cause projects like this one to fail.

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

[Marcion]

"I have no idea how anyone could spend half a million pounds on 200 desktops, running free software".

Its Birmingham fucking council, the council tax (a tax on your house that does not vary with income, only with size) goes up every single year, yet they still cannot even pick up rubbish bags without making a mess of the whole area.

I love my city but everyone knows that Birmingham council are a bunch of absolute losers, so this does not comes as any big surpise.

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

[Bertie]

Knowing the way these things tend to work in the UK, they'll have had to source them from a single approved supplier, who will have subcontracted it to somebody, who will have subcontracted it to somebody else. And all of them knew it was a public-sector job, so they would have more money than sense and hence were ripe to be ripped off.

The person signing the order's primary concern was probably not "is this value for money?", but rather "will I be able to deny all responsibility for this?"