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.