Slashdot Mirror
Birmingham To Buy More, Not Less Open Source
K-boy writes, "Last week, the press (and Slashdot) reported that Birmingham City Council had decided to ditch its open source project because a report said its trial had cost £100,000 more than it would have cost to buy Windows. However, Techworld has discovered that the opposite is true, and the Council is actually planning to use more open source software as well as to roll out Linux in the next few years. The head of IT was interviewed and he gives a fascinating rundown of the problems he had getting open source working with his systems. More interestingly, he points out that now the trial is over and he and his staff have the technical skills, they expect to save lots of money in future by going open source. Oh, and the report's figures were based on the special rates that Microsoft gives Councils just to make sure the short-term budget look worse — £58 for a Windows license as opposed to the normal £100."
Yes, but sometimes I can make more money by using the time I would have been fishing to do other things that make more income than the difference in the cost of the fish at the market. For some enviroments Microsoft products really do make sense. For others OSS solutions do. For still others maybe Sun Java Desktop, or whatever it's called now, would be the best fit. Use what works for you.