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EU Commission Study Finds OSS Saves Money

Posted by Zonk on from the penguins-print-dollars dept.

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.'"

2 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Training cost? by Realistic_Dragon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am a manager with a masters degree in engineering. My charge rate is well past $180/hour.

    I spend about 1 hour a day telling other members of staff how things work in Excel. That's Excel 97 by the way, which we have had deployed for over 6 years.

    Retraining costs only apply if your staff are trained in the first place. In the world where *everyone* puts "Office expert" on their CV almost no one is trained - at least not to a high enough standard to do anything beyond typing a letter.

    With the interface also changing in the next version of Word this cost is even more fictional than ever - but it was never legitimate in the first place.

    --
    Beep beep.
  2. Where is the control group? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I always see the studies about the costs of migrating to Linux. But they never adequately explain the control group.
    To be of any real value, you have to compare the Linux migration costs to some control group.

    Here are some possible control groups:
    1. Group transitioning from Windows95/98 to Window XP to Windows Vista
    2. Group transitioning from Windows95/98/XP to Mac
    3. Group transitioning from Mac to Windows Vista
    4. Group transitioning from Windows95/98/XP to LTSP
    5. Group transitioning from Linux to... Linux?
    6. Group transitioning from Windows NT to Windows 2003 to Windows Vista

    It seems that the control group in most of these studies is only imaginary: Windows XP with no transition.
    That control group doesn't exist. It is never actually included in the studies. It is only conjectured.

    What is the value of a study that uses an imaginary control group?