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EU Commission Study Finds OSS Saves Money
PS3Penguin writes "Groklaw has up a story about an EU Commission's recent findings on the costs savings available from using Open Source Software. From the article: 'Costs to migrate to an open solution are relevant and an organization needs to consider an extra effort for this. However these costs are temporary and mainly are budgeted in less than one year. The major factor of cost of the new solution - even in the case that the open solution is mixed with closed software - is costs for peer or ad hoc training. These are the best example of intangible costs that often are not foreseen in a transition.'"
Wasn't it well established in an open letter that open source is dangerous and could derail the European economy? :)
-It complies with published standards and therefore creates longer-lasting documents
-Since the source code is available, you are not locked in to a single vendor
-There are far, far more people who know the internals of the code and can offer you customizaton services.
-Security holes are easier to spot.
Who wants to do the next four?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
-(of particular interest to govts.) Instead of spending money on licensing fees that go into the Redmond, Washington tax base, you spend it on training, customization, etc. that can be performed by your constituency, and thereby have many generations of return
-Any feature you want/need badly enough can be added. You don't have to hope that your desires are common enough to merit MS's attention.
-You do not have to worry about whether sensitive information about your computers is being sent to Microsoft as part of some newfangled Automatic Updates or DRM "feature"
-On the offchance that your government believes in individual liberty, F/OSS should give you a warm fuzzy feeling.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Vista will make cost irrelevant.
Lots of companies and most governments are going to be mandated to use whole-disk encryption for laptops and desktops in the next year or so. The easiest way to do this is to get your hands on Vista Ultimate or Vista Enterprise.
This is a problem.
Vista Ultimate is a consumer product and you cannot get it via a volume license agreement, so that's out.
Vista Enterprise is available via volume & enterprise agreements but you must have software assurance agreement in place.
To get software assurance, you pay Microsoft a "seat fee" equal to the number of computers that you have that aren't:
- Servers
- Applicances (VPN devices, Google Search boxes, etc)
- Kiosks (ATM's, POS terminals, etc)
- Embedded devices (Treos, Blackberries, etc)
That means that you'll pay Microsoft for Macs, Linux machines, FreeDOS machines... anything that is a workstation. So switching to Linux won't save a time, because you'll pay Microsoft anyway!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Please explain what you mean by "aggregated a [good] group", what "aggregating a group" is, and how a group can be aggregated to a style.
Please tell us, specifically, which closed-source software you run that would have been of lower quality if open sourced.
I'm running a pirated copy of Linux.
Yes, there is good accounting and POS software, IF YOU LOOK FOR IT.
http://www.linuxcanada.com/
Their base package (GL, Recievable, Payable, etc) is free and compares featurewise with QuickBooks Enterprise. Their point of sale is also excellent but costs, albeit very reasonable at $1k + $250/terminal. Server runs on Linux only and needs Postgres or Sybase or Firebird; clients are graphical and run on Linux or Windows.
I have just recently put Fedora Core 6 on my new HP dual core 64 bit AMD laptop which I purchased (no dual boot ether). I did have a few minor issues which could have been solved with a HP configured install and recovery disk instead of the Microsoft XP professional it came with. So far I can actually do nearly all my work with this OS with the exception of some Microsoft specific solutions that requires I use my company laptop but 95% of my work can be done using FC6.
... etc) than a Microsoft one even though you can get most of the applications you like for a MS OS (sometimes free as well) at least you will fully own all your data and never have to be dependent on a proprietary Operating System. Actually IMHO LaTeX is actually easier to use than IMHO most word processors and the result is normally very professional. This is especially true if you need to write mathematical papers. You still need to know how to use a test editor though. As far as any type of development that requires maths a good Linux distro can provide everything you need (if you do any type of statistics have you tried "R" since it is like "S Plus") and again for free or cheaply.
For a scientist or professional engineer I would strongly suggest a Linux solution (FC6, OpenSUSE, Scientific Linux
If anyone writes to me stating "Oh you had problems with a Linux install on your laptop then there is a problem with Linux". My simple answer is I will give you FC6 or OpenSUSE and Microsoft XP (legitimate copy) and then ask you to install the OS and configure it on a reasonably new laptop (I am being fair here) and I am quite sure you are going to have more problems with the Microsoft OS than with a Linux OS. Since I now have a working Laptop with FC6 (what do you think I am using to type this) I can easily create a recovery disk that could be used to configure all laptops of this type. The first install is always the hardest after that you can easily roll out an OS on equivalent machines, this is how most PC vendors install an MS OS.
Now back on topic. If you are a manager and it has been put to you that you need to spend vast amounts of money to retrain your staff to the switch from MS Office to Open Office, then I would suggest firing people and I am not just speaking as a professional engineer I am speaking as a manager. Most MS documents can be imported into Open Office (including many with macros) with little if any changes needed. The only problem you have is when you try to read an OO document back into MS Office. That in itself should tell you how standards compliant Microsoft is.
The biggest problem an organisation is going to have making a switch to Open Standards (note I did not say Open Source) are the managers who will most likely say "Oh it is not like MS Windows" or who have made bad business decisions although to be fair to them they may have made the right business decision at the time, that have locked the company into proprietary solutions.
Sometimes you have to force change (the engineer in me speaking) otherwise things will never change since most organisations are very conservative and won't change unless a decision comes down from the top but sometimes the top managers are even more conservative or love to organise committee's, which usually means nothing changes.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.