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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."
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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.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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??
The actual article is titled: "Criticism mounts over Birmingham's Linux project"
This is a followup on the project being discarded, mainly focusing on critical comments of how the project was managed.
Notable quote: 'Mark Taylor, whose Open Source Consortium also exited the project in the early stages, said: "I have no idea how anyone could spend half a million pounds on 200 desktops, running free software".'
Anything is possible given time and money.
...when Microsoft is paying you to use Windows.
...the Birmingham city council is using gas lighting because of the cost of teaching their employees how to flip a switch to turn on electrical lights.
£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.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
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.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
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.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
The Munich migration is more expensive than the windows upgrade would have been. They just made a deliberate decision not to use Microsoft.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
To me it seems that the biggest cost with Windows is not the upfront cost per seat, it's probably the cost of maintanance and data lost due to viruses and spyware, but hey, what do I know....
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
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!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Linux is harder to set up, thus it will be more expensive for governments to switch over to linux because it takes more time to set it up. Whereas with Windows, after being in the market for so long and having a lot of people at least be exposed to it once or twice in their lifetime, will not require as much time compared to linux. Therefore it is cheaper to use Windows both in the long term and short term.
Once linux has the same support, features, ease-of-use as Windows has then it has a chance of succeeding and taking a good chunk of market share. But as linux continues to be protrayed as the geekdom of software, it will not be a cheaper solution to Windows.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Ignorance is a very big problem with Linux, which results in unsuccessful deployment and failure. It's not an easy job for making people to switch from one environment to another. Building similar GUI is not a resolution. Most computer users do not know what they use. And people should increase their knowledge if they want to use computer. Using windows is like learning driving on one car. Though you need to learn standards, you need to know what horn is and used for, instead of learning it like 'you push that place and it emit sound'.
We have to put Linux awareness on computer education. Else people would behave Linux as Windows and once they fail they would blame that on Linux. Administrators of Windows think that they know everything due to their computer training and once they encounter something different, they think its broken 'even though they did everything right'. Users thing applications 'do not work', or 'does not do something' because they can't see their familiar GUI in front of them. They don't even check other places, or don't even know where to look at it.
Technical personnel can't report bug reports, can't realize what causes the problem. They mostly get used to 'reinstall' or 'restart' to fix stuff never in need to knowing cause of previous problems.
And even worse, since they don't know deep working of some basic stuff, they design current systems platform specific. They don't use standards but rather using platform specific tools or ways to handle things due to their 'buggy training'. And when they need to change platforms they have to reinvent lots of other fixes they had before.
Summing all that up, they stay in the middle of vendor lock-in. if we can't educate people well on computers, and they think they are educated enough, they would not blame their knowledge but the products.
At current exchange rates, that is $4,736.75 per desktop
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.
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.
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.
It's like considering switching all traffic so that vehicles drive on the *other* side of the road. Even if it made more sense, it would be expensive as hell to do. And it's silly to take into account the learning curve of all those who had to initially learn to drive on the current side of the road. What matters is solely the cost of any changes going forward given that they have a staff already trained and familiar with Windows. If it's cheaper in the long run to stay Microsoft and everybody's already reasonably happy with it then, technical and ideological reasons aside, why switch?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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?
Well, I think I'd like to extend what you said. I think that people should start making their own microprocessors. Otherwise, how do they know how they work? We should mandate microprocessor design in public schools. Otherwise, how can you debug your own kernel panics? After that, we need to make sure that people can make their own hard drives. After all, if you don't know where the 0's and 1's go, how can you fix the problems?
I've already done the same for my car. I won't drive one, until I know how it works. Right now, I'm busy growing rubber trees so that I can make my own tires so I can change one myself. I'm pretty excited. Only another 5 years to go, and I'll have enough rubber to make a tire! After that, I have to learn how to mine iron to make steel for the steel belting in the tires. But hey, I'm not ignorant! I figure in another 200-300 years, I should have the know-how needed to drive my car.
Does anybody know how to make a tire stem and valve? I can't put air in my tires until I know how these little bastards work.
Unit cost for a Linux desktop = £2,5000
.. :)
Unit cost for a Windows desktop = £2,433.00
Where did the money go
davecb5620@gmail.com
Of course this is only news because its a Linux IT project failing. There are so many over-budget, behind-schedule public-sector IT projects involving non-Linux systems that they dont make the headlines any more.
Oh, except the new UK Health Service IT system which has just gone waaaay over budget....
Q: How can windows be cheaper than a free OS?
A: *nix requires real hardware, boatloads of cheap pseudo hardware that offloads all the work to poorly written windows drivers has flooded the market over the years.
The problem of course is that around here it's commonly understood that because I installed Fedora on the two Celeron boxen in my room and didn't spend a dime, that deploying 25,000 desktops across an enterprise should be no more complicated or expensive.
This is a strawman argument. No one else said it did not cost money to roll out 25,000 desktops in an enterprise. The discussion is should it cost as much as they claim to roll out 1500 desktops as workstations in public libraries. The consulting firm that they parted ways with called their costs "ridiculous" and they have a lot better idea of what the project entailed than anyone here.
And looking at the general direction the comments on this story are going I'd say we have a winner. Another great day for Slashdot ad impressions and another "look at what teh evil Micro$haft did" data point to use in the next flamewar.
Who's talking about Microsoft? We're talking about the incompetent shmoes in charge of this project who decided to stop working with two different Linux deployment consulting firms and "do it themselves" with current staff who had no experience and questionable purchases.
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.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
"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.
My little Linux and tech blog
this guy actually has a good point. anyone who has futzed about trying to get poorly supported wireless cards or a soft-modem to work under Linux can attest to this.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
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.
The real question to me is why their Linux workstations were costing that much. 2500 pounds sterling is about $5000 American- I can get pre-loaded, somewhat functional, Linux workstations at Fry's for $199. I could throw in an additional $200 worth of work and $50 worth of memory to make them as functional as any Windows workstation for $450- under 1/10th the amount they were spending.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Any Government project expands till it exceeds the budget. Therefore the deployment cost of a Linux project simply depends on the size of the available budget. If they budgeted for a total expenditure of $100, then it would have come in at less than $500 for all 1500 machines.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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?"
Birmingham, Alabama or Birmingham, England what's the difference they can compare fruit and vegetables as equals, and use numbers equally well. I mean, y'all ain't got no cents, if'n ya don't know Equal is as Equal does.
Who the hell is Equal?
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
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.
I've been using Linux as my primary (and only at home) OS since 1996, and I code on it for a living now.
I know this argument sounds reasonable, that "the community" should put in "more effort" to make Linux pervasive on the desktop, but it hasn't worked this way, and will not.
"The Community," in the guise of various volunteers and companies, (e.g. Ubuntu) have done a lot already, and this pervasive adoption hasn't happened, and it won't.
People will not just use Linux because they don't want to. They don't care. They are not interested. They like Windows because it comes on their computers by default, "everyone else uses it," they didn't see how much it cost, and it looks pretty, even though underneath it's pretty ropey.
"We" (whoever that is) should stop wasting our valuable time casting pearls before swine. OK, that's maybe a bit harsh, but the work has been done now (shiny user-friendly distros and Microsoft-compatible apps), it is up to them to take it if they want it.
What is far more important to me, and I suspect most of "us", is a healthy and diverse hardware and software ecosystem where everyone can play and compete, through open standards so that no one is left out if they don't want to be, and healthy progress can proceed.
"We" do not need Linux (as only one flabour of *nix) to be pervasive, to replace one monoculture with another. It would be better if everyone ran a better OS (i.e. not Windows) but that isn't going to happen.
"We" should be quietly confident and work to improve "our" software, and when any of the Heathens feel ready to convert, we should offer them our patient and friendly support.
If they don't want to convert, respect their decision, whether is is due to ignorance, laziness, fear, legitimate need or personal taste.
There ends my rant for today.
Stick Men
For the life of me I do not understand how each PC could have cost so much. I was the admin for a public library for 25 years. I have installed many hundreds of library public-use PCs. My most recent full-PC installs, on Windows XP, were running about $800 each for brand new fully capable machines complete with per-seat security software of various kinds (the public is REALLY hard on machines) such as Centurion Guard and Fortres. Just before I left I installed thin clients which were running about $400 per seat (including the servers).
I realize lots of folks here see this as a Linux vs Windows issue. It's really not. The OS in this equation just isn't that much. The issue is total cost of installed base: dollars (pounds) spent divided by number of machines. These were 2500 POUNDS! That's got to be something like $4700 per machine.
Somebody screwed up.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
We deployed 120 new desktop pc's which we built ourselves from parts purchased from a trade supplier. Spec was AMD 2800 Semprom, 512MB RAM, 40 GB IDE drive with no CD-ROM as we're trying to encourage the use of USB sticks. Each PC came in at £105 and the build took place in summer 2005.
We installed XP Pro on a volume licence (£35) and then duel booted with Ubuntu Breezy.
Total cost £16800 + the time to build. Without XP these would have been £12600.
Installation of XP consisted of install, update, install all applications and create disk image to be rolled out using Dolly. Install of Ubuntu consisted of popping the disk in, booting, clicking a couple of buttons, upgrading and imaging. The Ubuntu install took much less time as all the apps and drivers were installed at the same time. At the time of building a script was added to run a prompt for a machine name followed by winbinding to the domain.
The image is easy to roll out via our Gigabit LAN using Dolly. Network wide software installs can be done on Linux using a script that checks a directory on the server and after doing an md5 check uses apt to install whatever we want it to.
Given the ease of all this, the Birmingham thing just has to be down to incompetence. Excluding people who know what they're doing from helping is an arrogant act but ultimately one that probably caused the laughably huge bill.
I think that writing to the National Audit Office would be a good move by those Open Source Organisations involved as someone really needs to be held accountable for such a blatant waste of public money. Then again, maybe it was an overtime fiddle by those involved with or, more likely, another public body using Linux to beat Microsoft down on price.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
This is why. Sit there for a moment and consider just what exactly is "Total Cost of Ownership"? In a nutshell it is hardware+software+training+support. You will always have the same formula be it Windows or Linux. So let's break it down...
Windows:
Hardware: $$$$ (As needed to support new OS)
Software: $$$$ (Yearly license fees)
Training: $$$$ (As you add new people. If you are going to save it may be here since Microsoft's dominant position in the market make it feasible that employees already know the system)
Support: $$$$ (Yearly or on an "as needed" basis)
Linux:
Hardware: $$$$ (As needed to support OS but older hardware will work and in fact may work better than newer hardware)
Software: ---- (No cost at all if you stay solely FOSS)
Training: $$$$ (As you add new people. Here is where the cost may go up)
Support: $$$$ (Yearly for the first few years then "As needed" basis. Cost can be high here to start but should go down as you progress)
So you see, right from the start you have a savings in Linux. The only way to save with Microsoft is if they "cheat" and undercut on their license fees. The assumption (often wrong) that is made in the Windows TCO studies is that training costs will be low since "everyone is likely to know Windows" already. It would be interesting to follow a large organization as they deploy Vista. By that I mean follow the TCO from day one. That will give you a huge clue on the true TCO.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Therefore, these folks must be retarded
I'm just guessing you haven't dealt with councils / government departments in the UK then...
These are the same sort of people who told a company that welsh dragon sausages should be made of welsh dragons