Large FLOSS Study Gets the Real Facts

Hans Kwint writes "The European Commission's enterprise and industry department has just released the final draft of what could be the biggest academic interdisciplinary study on the economic / innovative impacts of free/libre/open source software (1.8-MB PDF). The study was done by an international consortium led by the United Nations University / University of Maastricht. The lead researcher, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, has overseen a large volume of FLOSS studies in the last few years, including ones on FLOSS policies and worldwide FLOSS adoption. This academic-grade study has a very broad scope and has collected real-world information that is valuable for both companies and government bodies thinking about migration. The study is about the economic impact of FLOSS, not excluding the hidden indirect impact. It compares scenarios of open and proprietary software futures of Europe. The study looks at the FLOSS's competitiveness compared to proprietary software and also provides a few TCO comparison case-studies.

Comments

Well?

[RealGrouchy]

This study compares... This study looks at... It's the biggest FLOSS study since sliced breadboards

Yeah, sure. It's a study. That's nice. What does it say?

I'm not going to read a 1.8 mb PDF TFA unless I know whether or not its conclusions agree with my predisposed bias!

- RG>

Re:Well?

[nxtr]

I'm not going to read a 1.8 mb PDF TFA unless I know whether or not its conclusions agree with my predisposed bias!

You must be old here!

Re:Well?

[Technician]

I'm not going to read a 1.8 mb PDF TFA unless I know whether or not its conclusions agree with my predisposed bias!

You don't have to. Start in the table of contents and you will find the conclusion is on a single page. It's on page 283. It's a PDF so I can't cut and paste and If you are not going to read it, I'm not taking the time to retype the conclusion page.

For me, I like the conclusion. MS will not.

Re:Well?

[Anonymous Coward]

12.7. Conclusions

Our analysis has been performed on six organizations in different European countries.
The majority of them are public bodies. The organizations have followed different types of
migration on the base of their context.

We have investigated the costs of migration, and the cost of ownership of the old and
the new solution differentiating them between the costs of purchasing and the costs of
ownership of the software solutions. Special attention has been put on the intangible nature of
the costs. Costs have been classified in categories defined trough existing studies and selected
by a top down approach called Goal Question Metric. This instrument has been also used to
define the questionnaires used to collect the data.

Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports
of savings on the long term costs of ownership of the software products.

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 manly 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. On the other
hand not providing a specific training may cause and adverse attitude toward the new
technology. Fortunately those costs are limited in time and are not strictly linked to the nature
of the new software adopted.

We also investigated the productivity of the employees in using Microsoft office and
OpenOffice.org. Office suites are widely used and are a good test bed and representative for a
comparison on issues like effort and time spent in the daily routine of work. Delays in the
task deliveries may have a bigger impact than costs on the organization's management. Our
findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of
OpenOffice.org.

Re:Well?

[perlionex]

I have no qualms about extracted good, useful conclusions from well-researched academic papers so others don't have to download a 1.8MB file. (Thanks for pointing out the usefulness of the conclusion, though).

From page 283 (emphasis mine):

Conclusion

Our analysis has been performed on six organizations in different European countries. The majority of them are public bodies. The organizations have followed different types of migration on the base of their context.

We have investigated the costs of migration, and the cost of ownership of the old and the new solution differentiating them between the costs of purchasing and the costs of ownership of the software solutions. Special attention has been put on the intangible nature of the costs. Costs have been classified in categories defined trough existing studies and selected by a top down approach called Goal Question Metric. This instrument has been also used to define the questionnaires used to collect the data.

Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports of savings on the long term - costs of ownership of the software products.

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 manly 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. On the other hand not providing a specific training may cause and adverse attitude toward the new technology. Fortunately those costs are limited in time and are not strictly linked to the nature of the new software adopted.

We also investigated the productivity of the employees in using Microsoft office and OpenOffice.org. Office suites are widely used and are a good test bed and representative for a comparison on issues like effort and time spent in the daily routine of work. Delays in the task deliveries may have a bigger impact than costs on the organization's management. Our findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org.

Re:Well?

[advocate_one]

Conclusions
Our analysis has been performed on six organizations in different European countries.
The majority of them are public bodies. The organizations have followed different types of
migration on the base of their context.
We have investigated the costs of migration, and the cost of ownership of the old and
the new solution differentiating them between the costs of purchasing and the costs of
ownership of the software solutions. Special attention has been put on the intangible nature of
the costs. Costs have been classified in categories defined trough existing studies and selected
by a top down approach called Goal Question Metric. This instrument has been also used to
define the questionnaires used to collect the data.
Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports
of savings on the long term - costs of ownership of the software products.
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 manly 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. On the other
hand not providing a specific training may cause and adverse attitude toward the new
technology. Fortunately those costs are limited in time and are not strictly linked to the nature
of the new software adopted.
We also investigated the productivity of the employees in using Microsoft office and
OpenOffice.org. Office suites are widely used and are a good test bed and representative for a
comparison on issues like effort and time spent in the daily routine of work. Delays in the
task deliveries may have a bigger impact than costs on the organization's management. Our
findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of
OpenOffice.org.
12.7.1. Considerations
With our analysis we achieve a good level of understanding of the costs, benefits and
productivity of a transition. The following are the considerations we have drawn upon.
1. Before buying, upgrading proprietary office software one needs consider that:
OpenOffice.org has all the functionalities that public offices need to create
documents, spreadsheets, and presentations
Upgrading office programs is time-consuming and expensive. It requires installation
time, potential document conversions, and new training. It also poses a risk because some
documents containing code or macros may not be readable anymore
OpenOffice.org is free, extremely stable, and supports the ISO Open Document
Standard.
2. In our study the motivations to transit to OSS are: the exchange of documents in an
open shared format (ODS), reuse of old hardware in some cases, and being independent of
software vendors even when creating a distribution or an application for local needs.
Employees may perceive that their work is under-valued using 'cheap' OSS products
or changing operating model to OSS is problematic.

To overcome these pre-conception it is recommended to adopt a policy of both ad hoc
and periodic training to fill the lack of knowledge/experience in relation to what OSS
products are appropriate and how they might be deployed.

3. It is not always justified to base the migration on the promise of lower license costs,
although in our study initial purchasing costs are lower for the OSS (they includes
deployment and customization for the first run of the configuration). This is because these
costs are too much influenced by factors like inflation and market flow. .
4. A model that differentiates between cost of migration and costs of ownership better
respond to the managers' needs. The former involves high investment for a shorter p

Re:Well?

[Wolfbone]

"Start in the table of contents and you will find the conclusion is on a single page. It's on page 283."

No it's not. That's only the conclusion page for section 12, "Appendix 2: Report on user-level productivity and relative cost of FLOSS / proprietary software." The executive summary is the where the overall conclusions can be found in this paper. The whole thing is considerably more than just a TCO study.

Re:Well?

[WaZiX]

It's a PDF so I can't cut and paste and If you are not going to read it, I'm not taking the time to retype the conclusion page.

I Can:



12.7. Conclusions

Our analysis has been performed on six organizations in different European countries. The majority of them are public bodies. The organizations have followed different types of migration on the base of their context.

We have investigated the costs of migration, and the cost of ownership of the old and the new solution differentiating them between the costs of purchasing and the costs of ownership of the software solutions. Special attention has been put on the intangible nature of the costs. Costs have been classified in categories defined trough existing studies and selected by a top down approach called Goal Question Metric. This instrument has been also used to define the questionnaires used to collect the data.

Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports of savings on the long term - costs of ownership of the software products.

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 manly 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. On the other hand not providing a specific training may cause and adverse attitude toward the new technology. Fortunately those costs are limited in time and are not strictly linked to the nature of the new software adopted.

We also investigated the productivity of the employees in using Microsoft office and OpenOffice.org. Office suites are widely used and are a good test bed and representative for a comparison on issues like effort and time spent in the daily routine of work. Delays in the task deliveries may have a bigger impact than costs on the organization's management. Our findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org.

12.7.1. Considerations

With our analysis we achieve a good level of understanding of the costs, benefits and productivity of a transition. The following are the considerations we have drawn upon.

1. Before buying, upgrading proprietary office software one needs consider that: OpenOffice.org has all the functionalities that public offices need to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations Upgrading office programs is time-consuming and expensive. It requires installation time, potential document conversions, and new training. It also poses a risk because some documents containing code or macros may not be readable anymore OpenOffice.org is free, extremely stable, and supports the ISO Open Document Standard.

2. In our study the motivations to transit to OSS are: the exchange of documents in an open shared format (ODS), reuse of old hardware in some cases, and being independent of software vendors even when creating a distribution or an application for local needs. Employees may perceive that their work is under-valued using 'cheap' OSS products or changing operating model to OSS is problematic. Economic impact of FLOSS on innovation and competitiveness of the EU ICT sector © 2006 MERIT. Prepared on November 20, 2006 284 To overcome these pre-conception it is recommended to adopt a policy of both ad hoc and periodic training to fill the lack of knowledge/experience in relation to what OSS products are appropriate and how they might be deployed.

3. It is not always justified to base the migration on the promise of lower license costs, although in our study initial purchasing costs are lower for the OSS (they includes deployment and customization for the first run of the configuration). This is because these costs are too much influenced

Re:Well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Skip to page 241 for the summary of the results.

(For regular readers I'll give you a hint - in all cases closed source solutions cost significantly more, and in five out of six organisations compared yearly cost savings are predicted.)

Oh yeah - and everyone likes OpenOffice ;)

Re:Well?

[poopdeville]

I noticed a distinct lack of Taco porn in your summary. For shame.

Re:Well?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS will not what???

Re:Well?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Our findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org.

Crap, there goes my excuse. I hope my boss didn't see this.

Re:Well?

[strider44]

Look at his UID - he's not old, but he's learning very quickly.

Re:Well?

[Anonymous Coward]

However these costs are temporary and manly

Conclusion
If yoo use tha Microsoft, yoor jussed like dat Beel Gates -- a weak girlieman!

Re:Well?

[the_olo]

However these costs are temporary and manly are budgeted in less than one year.

Considering the extensiveness of this report, couldn't they pass it through some corrective editing? Or did they really mean that only a true man can budget these costs in less than one year? (ducks)

Re:Well?

[Daemonic]

these costs are temporary and manly

It's official - OSS is manly.

Re:Well?

[Paradise Pete]

MS will not what???

We'll never know. They got him.
Too bad he wasn't dictating. Then we'd have seen the aaaargh.

Re:Well?

[ThePhilips]

To be honest, when I first saw the line, I also wanted to make similar post.

But then - just before hitting "Reply to This" - I recalled all the nightmares of supporting M$Office documents my company have had in past. All the bugs and regressions of OO.o cannot cover experience with M$Office in networked environment.

Our favorite biggest sucker is M$O document with global system architecture spec: opening from network drive of the 20 page (about 200k thanks to diagrams) document takes 2 to 5 minutes. Always. Nobody knows what M$Word does - but it basicly hangs and then later happily pop-ups from background with open document reporting neither error nor warning. Copy the document from networked repository to local harddrive - and it opens instantly. Open it as it is supposed to be open - and locked - on servers and ... here we go. (Actually we also have several document which take ages to open regardless of where from you open them: locally or remotely. But it just everybody has to work with sys arch spec often - so it is major P.I.T.A.)

OO.o is bloated, ugly, slow, feature-poor, buggy and inconsistent. Its macro language is total and utter undocumented crap (N.B. I hate VBA - no language could be worse. Or so I thought. Before I have seen StarBasic (or whatever that thing is called)). BUT. In three years of deployment we found no single major blocker, which prevented us from using OO.o internally.

Re:Well?

[CastrTroy]

Well, you can also program macros in Python an Javascript if you like. Nobody said you had to use StarBasic, or OO.O basic, which is what it's called on my version.

Re:Well?

[Chemisor]

> Yeah, sure. It's a study. That's nice. What does it say?

That your dentist was right and you should floss. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Re:Well?

[ThePhilips]

Okay, smart one, then try to find a single document describing hierarchy of internal OO.o objects - accessible from such scripts.

OO.o documentation is ill with what I call "plug-in disease" and has very nice reference "everything is implemented with plug-ins and thus documented elsewhere" with link to dummy OO.o documentation page. There you can find the same plug-in reference quoted above. With no link to actual DOM documentation/specification/anything.

Analogy. In past we used to joke around "know how to program in assembler": knowing insn op-codes gives one nothing. Programming in assembler is impossible with knowledge of assembler syntax alone - knowledge of computer's architecture is essential. Syntax is simple and fits several documentation pages - computer architecture is described on many hundred pages. So here we have the same situation: I know Python/Java/etc but I can't program anything for OO.o in it since DOM - main subject of programming - is documented nowhere.

VBS is shitty, but you can always record macro and correct it to your needs. For sake of experiment try to record macro in OO.o and see/correct the results. Even "steep" isn't proper adjective for the learning curve.

Re:Well?

[Nite_Hawk]

Get off my lawn!

Re:Well?

[fitten]

But only temporarily ;)

Re:Well?

[bibi-pov]

Our findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org.

I'd like to disagree with that specific point. Although it may be true in the long term, there's definitely an initial adjustment time during which users are slower. I speak from experience here. My gf work in the French administration where everybody has recently switched to XP+OpenOffice. So, sure, they gain a lot of time because they don't have to watch their windows 98 computer reboot 15 times a day since the XP upgrade. But that alone can't compensate for the fact that they lose time trying to find how to do stuff in OOo because they don't know how to. They received training to easy the migration. The teacher was so bad they used 45 minutes just to find a setting alone. I don't remember exactly what it was, but they were searching for something as complicated as inserting a TOC somewhere. Ridiculous. Hopefully my gf who's not as much a luser as her co-workers and has a bit of initial experience with OOo (it's the only office package we use at home), has managed to do most of what she wanted. I couldn't avoid a couple of panicked phone calls from her asking how to do something or how to hide that huge gallery browser in Impress.
So while I'm all for FLOSS (stuff like MS office are outrageously priced for what they do IMHO and I love to be able to do the patch myself if something bugs), I'm pretty sure that habits have a non-null cost that may be underestimated.

Re:Well?

[lysdexia]

Git off'n my porch! An getcher dog!

Re:Well?

[Vitriol Angst]

The above conclusions are a bit long,

Could you please summarize this summary in a manner that my pre-disposed preferences will be comfortable with?

I.e., does Microsoft Suck or not?

Re:Well?

[jayp00001]

Let me get this straight. After 200+ pages of supporting evidence the conclusion is that it doesn't matter what software they use, government workers are working as slowly as humanly possible? Yup, this is definitely an academic study.

Re:Well?

[aardvarkjoe]

Yeah, sure. It's a study. That's nice. What does it say?

That's easy to figure out. Slashdot wouldn't have referred to it as "real facts" unless it said that free software was much better than proprietary software from an economic standpoint.

Re:Well?

[Tenareth]

Yeah, where's the 10k Executive Briefing, so we know if they picked our answer?

Re:Well?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's a PDF so I can't cut and paste...

Just out of curiosity, what type of PDF reader can't copy and text to the clipboard? I have XPDF, Preview, and Acrobat Reader and all of them allow me to copy text.

Re:Well?

[dididothat]

gee thanks folks, i just remembered to add floss to my shopping list. had a bowl of popcorn last night, and you KNOW what that stuff does to a fellers teeth!

Re:Well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most PDF documents are tagged by the author to not allow copying. All PDF readers that follow spec must adhere to this (both XPDF and Adobe Reader follow the spec).

From the XPDF web site at http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/cracking.html it clearly states:

The Xpdf package honors these permission settings. Specifically:
  * xpdf will not copy/paste from a PDF file which disallows copying text/graphics
  * xpdf and pdftops will not print (convert to PostScript) a PDF file which disallows printing
  * pdftotext will not convert a PDF file which disallows copying text/graphics
  * pdfimages will not extract images from a PDF file which disallows copying text/graphics

  - raven morris

Re:Well?

[jellomizer]

Well it says if your FLOSS Regualary the chances for Gingavites is greatly reduced. ...
Rule of thumb to submitters. If you are going to use acranyms Spell them out at least once. So we know what they are, espectilly for lesser used terms. You need to realize that not all people use these terms on a daily bases.

Re:Well?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Most PDF documents are tagged by the author to not allow copying.

What? Where do you come by this info? I produce PDFs as part of my job and probably read 1-3 a day from people outside my company. I don't recall ever seeing one I could not copy text from. I happen to have three professional publishing packages and several word processors on my workstation and none of them default to forbidding copying. I tried this particular file and it did not restrict me from copying and pasting. I went to google and grabbed the first 5 random PDF files it handed me (from the US DoJ, US NIH, EU, W3C, and MS) and none of them forbid me from copying and pasting. I know there are some DRM features in PDF files that can be used to make copying or even viewing them without a password difficult, but I've never seen them used in practice.

While I appreciate the potential, I suspect that there is some sort of misinformation going around as to the fact that, in general, PDFs don't let you copy and paste text. Could this, perhaps, be because the Adobe Acrobat reader and plugin don't make it easy enough by default as the cursor is set to move the page instead of copy text, and most users don't know how to change it?

Re:Well?

[alexandre]

Here's a nickel kid, get yourself a better computer :P

Re:Well?

[rentmej]

Ahhh... Actaully.

Pdfs are great because you can lock them so that people can't cut and past.

Study on the: Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU

Fortunatly they didn't in this one.

Re:Well?

[filesiteguy]

...back in my day, I had to walk f miles through the snow uphill to get to my library to read PDF files because neither my 300 baud modem couldn't download them and my TRS-80 would display them! You talk about being inconvenienced.... ...I didn't even know what the PDF files were about.

Bah!

Re:Well?

[ShakaZ]

It's a PDF so I can't cut and paste Try the Foxit PDF Reader, with that you can easily extract the text from a pdf :)

Re:Well?

[griffjon]

Darned whippersnappers with UIDs with more than a handful of digits!

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

As the article summary clearly states (as does the Wikipedia article on FLOSS), FLOSS actually stands for Free/Libre/Open-Source Software.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[Solokron]

On the contrary. That is a loose description provided. There are a couple. http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?Acronym= floss&Find=find&string=exact

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[LordOfTheNoobs]

On the contrary, a Google search for "Free Linux Open Source Software" +FLOSS yields only `Results 1 - 7 of about 32 for [...]'. There is some proof of usage.

Acronym finder has obviously been either trolled, as I'm sure you were doing here, or adds anything submitted that matches the letters. The `Four Ligers Of Super Salami' will be glad to know that they won't be left out, without regard to not existing or bearing common usage by the public or professionals. At all.

Most of the people using the term to mean `... Linux ...' online appear to be referring to other people that use the term that way instead of using it like that themselves. The other people, you know. Both of them.

Re:FLOSS

[GejTOO]

Close enough. I'd go for "Free/Libre/Open-Source Software".

Re:FLOSS

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

For those that don't know, FLOSS stands for 'Free Linux Open Source Software'.

Nonsense! The 'L' stands for "lossless" - FLOSS is much better than the lossy Closed Source Software out there ;-)

Re:FLOSS

[perlionex]

Rubbish.

Both the article summary, original paper (page 9) and Wikipedia article you linked to clearly state that FLOSS = "Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS)".

Or were you too busy trying to get First Post?

Has everyone remembered to...

[denmarkw00t]

FLOSS and get out all of that grimy, proprietary software - wait, I think you still have some M$ in your teeth!

Summary of Conclusions

[sameeer]

this is pure laziness by the story poster. I don't come to slashdot to read 286 page documents, the whole purpose of a news site is to give me news, and then link to the complete document.

Anyway, for the benefit of others, I shall attempt to quote relevant sentences from the conclusion.

Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports of savings on the long term costs of ownership of the software products.

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 manly are budgeted in less than one year.

OpenOffice.org has all the functionalities that public offices need to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations

We also investigated the productivity of the employees in using Microsoft office and OpenOffice.org....Our findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org.

Employees may perceive that their work is under-valued using 'cheap' OSS products or changing operating model to OSS is problematic.

To overcome these pre-conception it is recommended to adopt a policy of both ad hoc and periodic training to fill the lack of knowledge/experience in relation to what OSS products are appropriate and how they might be deployed.

It is not always justified to base the migration on the promise of lower license costs

Another good crucial reason of costs is training. Although training costs are a substantial part of the migration costs their benefits can be realized over time.

There are no extra costs due to lack of productivity arising from the use of the OOo.

Someone who reads the whole thing might be able to do justice to the summary of the document, but for many, this should suffice.

Re: Summary of Conclusions

[Black Parrot]

> 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 manly are budgeted in less than one year.

Got that, folks? These are manly costs, so tell your boss no one will think he's gay for switching to OSS.

Interesting facts

[omeg]

If you don't want to read through the entire PDF (which I can understand, since it's 287 pages in size), there are some interesting figures in the first paragraph which highlights the study's key findings.

"Europe is the leading region in terms of globally collaborating FLOSS software developers, and leads in terms of global project leaders, followed closely by North America (interestingly, more in the East Coast than the West), Asia and Latin America face disadvantages at least partially due to language barriers, but may have an increasing share of developers active in local communities."

"Weighted by regional PC penetration, central Europe and Scandinavia provide disproportionally high numbers of developers; weighted by average income, India is the leading provider of FLOSS developers by far, followed by China."

"The existing base of quality FLOSS applications with reasonable quality control and distribution would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to reproduce internally. This code base has been doubling every 18-24 months over the past eight years, and this growth is projected to continue for several more years."

"The existing base of FLOSS software represents a lower bound of about 131.000 real person-years of effort that has been devoted exclusively by programmers. As this is mostly by individuals not directly paid for development, it represents a significant gap in national accounts of productivity. [...]"

"Defined broadly, FLOSS-related services could reach a 32% share of all IT services by 2010, and the FLOSS-related share of the economy could reach 4% of European GDP by 2010. [...]"

"[...] FLOSS and proprietary software show a ration of 30:70 (overlapping) in recent job postings indicating significant demand for FLOSS-related skills."

There is a huge amount of information in this PDF, and while it pertains directly to Europe, it's also interesting to read for people who don't live there. Basically, it discusses the role of software libre in the European economy (both its direct and indirect impacts), and its general trends, scenarios and policy strategies. Everything is in great detail, too.

Re:Interesting facts

[Anonymous Coward]

central Europe and Scandinavia provide disproportionally high numbers of developers;

Certainly. When the government is sending you a welfare check every week, there isn't much motivation to go out and get a job.

so why not work on OSS?

Load of FUD

[bh_doc]

This is stupid! It's the biggest load of crap I've ever seen! I wonder who paid them to write this?

What? Generally favourable?

Well, it's about time someone did a proper study! I'm glad to see there are some people who aren't complete corporate shills!

Re:Load of FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sarcasm doesn't come through too well on the first read.

Re:Load of FUD

[init100]

I hope that you're joking. If not, you might find more comfort in the Microsoft Get The Facts web site.

Re:Load of FUD

[Otter]

It's the biggest load of crap I've ever seen!

It's a dupe from last week, so at worst it's tied for the biggest load of crap you've ever seen.

Re:Load of FUD

[Artifakt]

So true. Now how do I give people half mod points?

An even shorter Executive Summary...

[perlionex]

(of pages 9-12 of the PDF article)

FLOSS role in the economy

• FLOSS applications are first, second or third-rung products in terms of market share in several markets
• FLOSS market penetration is also high
• Almost two-thirds of FLOSS software is still written by individuals
• Europe is the leading region in terms of globally collaborating FLOSS software developers
• (more details on specific role in Europe in paper)

Direct economic impact

• The existing base of quality FLOSS applications with reasonable quality control and distribution would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to reproduce internally... code base has been doubling every 18-24 months
• This existing base of FLOSS software represents a lower bound of about 131 000 real person-years of effort that has been devoted exclusively by programmers... it represents a significant gap in national accounts of productivity
• Firms have invested an estimated Euro 1.2 billion in developing FLOSS software that is
• made freely available... represent in total at least 565 000 jobs and Euro 263 billion in annual revenue
• FLOSS-related services could reach a 32% share of all IT services by 2010, and the FLOSS-related share of the economy could reach 4% of European GDP by 2010
• (more statistics in the paper)

Indirect economic impact

• Strong network effects in ICT... risk leading to innovation resources being excessively allocated to defensive innovation. There is a case for a rebalancing of innovation incentives... (to target) publicly available technology for new functionality.
• FLOSS potentially saves industry over 36% in software R&D investment
• ...a large and increasing share of user-generated content is not accounted for and needs to be addressed by policy makers
• Increased FLOSS use may provide a way for Europe to compensate for a low GDP share of ICT investment relative to the US

Trends, scenarios and policy strategies

• Doubling the rate of FLOSS take-up in Europe would result in a software share of investment at 1.5% of GDP, reducing but not closing this investment gap with the US
• Europe's strengths regarding FLOSS are its strong community of active developers, small firms and secondary software industry; weaknesses include Europe's generally low level of ICT investment and low rate of FLOSS adoption by large industry compared to the US
• FLOSS provides opportunities in Europe for new businesses, a greater role in the wider information society and a business model that suits European SMEs
• Europe faces three scenarios: CLOSED, where existing business models are entrenched... GENERIC, where current mixed policies lead to a gradual growth of FLOSS... VOLUNTARY, where policies and the market develop to recognise and utilise the potential of FLOSS
• (goes on to suggest policy initiatives to support FLOSS)

Re:An even shorter Executive Summary...

[DaveCar]

Awww, that's stiiill too long for my short attention span to deal with :(

Can't you trim it down to a simple "yes" or "no"?

Re:An even shorter Executive Summary...

[miro f]

Can't you trim it down to a simple "yes" or "no"?

no

But will it change people's religion?

[heretic108]

I've never seen such a thorough and methodical compilation of real-world evidence in favour of F[L]OSS.

However, the 'proprietary vs FLOSS' debate is a battle which each day seems to more resemble the 'biblical literalism versus evolution' debate. Just like the biblical literalists who hang on to their denials of evolution, despite the evidence, there'll be those who'll never be convinced about the benefits of FLOSS, and will always be there as suckers to sustain the likes of Microsoft.

Kinda puts an ironic twist on the old adage: "To those who believe, no proof is necessary. To those who disbelieve, no proof is possible."

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[paniq]

I don't think you can compare a discussion about whether to use FLOSS or not with whether to believe in "intelligent design" or not.

Unlike with the Open Source issue, believing in evolution or not does not matter. No matter what you believe how the world was born, this will not change the past, and it will certainly have no influence on the way you work.

The benefits of Open Source are nothing you can discuss about once the research has been done. And so far we are only talking about those objective business figures. The whole subjective part of it has only been covered in a handful of books, Eric S. Raymonds "Cathedral and Bazaar" being one of it.

Now this is entirely subjective, and needs to be backed up by objective research, but I'm confident I'm not the only one:

I am 26. I started programming when I was 9. For 15 years, I was exclusively using non-free products. Since I switched to working with open source products 2 years ago, my productivity has boasted. I have more work-related contacts than ever. I participate in various projects. I learn so much every day - about programming, and especially about working with other people. Because of those contacts, I get inside scoops and information that in non-free terms would be regarded as "classified". I feel that I shape myself into someone who will be able to do quite good consulting one day. I can safely say that my knowledge has never grown this fast.

Now show me anyone who can claim the opposite: "I used free software for 15 years, now I switched to non-free software, boy my productivity sky-rocketed! And I know so many people now!" - in fact, try to twist arguments and see if the shoe still fits. I can not see free software going away, and I can not see longtime users migrating back to Windows.

This is not a question of religion. This is a question of performance and optimal work flow.

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[Anonymous Coward]

"To those who believe, no proof is necessary. To those who disbelieve, no proof is possible."

Fortunately, the bast majority of us still live in the middle. "In medium virtus." ;-)

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[10101001 10101001]

No matter what you believe how the world was born, this will not change the past, and it will certainly have no influence on the way you work.

I have to disagree pretty substantially with what you've said. For starters, the discussion of evolution vs intelligent design/creationism isn't one of the creation of life. Instead, it's the creation of most species. The difference is pretty significant. The former is a very dynamic viewpoint while the latter two are more static (well, unless intelligent designers think that their "designer" is still around). This is important because there are many jobs that involve nature, and one that views species as fundamentally unalterable creates all sorts of problems, from the overuse of antibiotics to the short-sightedness of becoming dependent on a pesticide without any long-term plans to research and develop new pesticides as current pesticides are adapted to. Hell, even non-life evolves (viruses). If there's enough people who refuse to acknowledge evolution and they vote into office politicians who cut funding and research into combat ever evolving microorganisms, the consequences could be rather catastrophic economically and mortally. Until we're in a situation where there isn't a reliance on large government funding to do the sort of research that seems necessary because of evolution, I think it does rather matter what people think.

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[alexgieg]

Creationists don't deny changes inside a species, such as developing resistances to pesticides and the like. What they deny is that one species can change so much that it becomes another species. In technical terms, what they refuse is the notion of macroevolution. That of microevolution isn't a problem for them.

And in regards to genetic engineering, they also don't see new mixed species, or even entirely new ones created by men from scratch, as a problem either, since these can be thought about as species that in themselves always existed, but just hadn't appeared in any concrete form yet. Men, in this case, didn't "create" them, they just "expressed" them in reality.

It might not be a mainstream interpretation of nature, but it isn't illogical by any means.

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[rohan972]

What they deny is that one species can change so much that it becomes another species.

Or even that speciation can occur, but that it occurs through processes that involve a loss of genetic information, not gaining genetic information. That dogs could speciate (is that even a word?) into sub-species of dog, but not into super-dogs, so to speak.

And life created by men from scratch would be a demonstration of life being created by an intelligent designer.

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[paniq]

i think that it's a bit sad that the off-topic part of this discussion evolved, but anyway, here's my 2c.

And life created by men from scratch would be a demonstration of life being created by an intelligent designer.
since man was result of life processes, the brain could also be understood as a quick and dirty testing ground to speed up development, adding introspection to the process. being able to understand its own laws allows nature to evolve quicker - modify genes purposefully instead of trying to bruteforce the code.

so with man, a combination of genes has been found that puts more emphasis on introspection, since introspection and self-awareness in combination with precise control of extremities seem to be a winning move, or can at least outweigh any other degeneration of physical abilities (no body hair, exposed bellies, slow runner).

thus, genetic engineering is still a self-referencing process of evolution, but at a much faster rate. and like all other experiments, this one could fail or bring unexpected success - to evolution, not to mankind. we are just a middle man for things to come.

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[rohan972]

thus, genetic engineering is still a self-referencing process of evolution, but at a much faster rate. and like all other experiments, this one could fail or bring unexpected success - to evolution, not to mankind. we are just a middle man for things to come.

Your statement presupposes evolution. This presupposition eliminates the possibility that it is evidence for evolution, even if the statement is correct.

In other words, if you believe in evolution producing life through "genetic engineering is still a self-referencing process of evolution, but at a much faster rate." If you believe in creation, producing life through genetic engineering is an example of life being created by an intelligent designer.

To quote the OP: Kinda puts an ironic twist on the old adage: "To those who believe, no proof is necessary. To those who disbelieve, no proof is possible."

In reality, creating life through genetic engineering proves that you can create life through genetic engineering. Nothing more, nothing less. At least, not without knowing more about the process, which we wont unless it actually happens.

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[paniq]

In reality, creating life through genetic engineering proves that you can create life through genetic engineering. Nothing more, nothing less. At least, not without knowing more about the process, which we wont unless it actually happens. Never said I'm interested in truth. It's boring ;)

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[radtea]

Creationists don't deny changes inside a species, such as developing resistances to pesticides and the like. What they deny is that one species can change so much that it becomes another species. In technical terms, what they refuse is the notion of macroevolution. That of microevolution isn't a problem for them.

Which is a huge problem, very nearly a logical contradiction, since macroevolution procedes by exactly the same processes as microevolution, albeit under rarer circumstances (founder events and what-have-you.)

Given the fact of micro-evolution, and the fact that small populations are certain to become isolated now and then, and the fact of genetic disasters in isolated populations (primate chromosome 2, for example) there is absolutely no way to avoid speciation.

Young Earth Creationists have to deny geology, history and biology.

Old Earth Creationists have to deny the laws of probability.

I know which one I'd be on being wrong...

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[alexgieg]

Which is a huge problem, very nearly a logical contradiction, since macroevolution procedes by exactly the same processes as microevolution, albeit under rarer circumstances (founder events and what-have-you.)

What they question is precisely the assertion that both things are the same. Until a case of an actual speciation happens in a way we can observe and measure each and every step of the process, there's no way to know if macroevolution happens due to the same mechanisms involved in microevolution, or if they are unrelated processes working under different and maybe independent mechanisms. To affirm one or the other is to jump to conclusions.

That's assuming macroevolution actually happens. If it doesn't, then we won't know, because we might wait centuries to see something like this to happen, get nothing, but keep waiting, since proving the inexistence of anything is logically impossible. Besides, it not happening anymore doesn't prove it didn't happen in the past. What if the macroevolutionary mechanism is gone or disappeared or ended? We might never come to know what it actually was.

Both evolutionism and anti-evolutionism have some serious logical problems to overcome. I myself prefer to not take sides on the discussion. Pointing the problems in both sides is easier and more intellectually rigorous. ;)

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[mgkimsal2]

This doesn't make much sense. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but the method used to write the software you use has little or, dare I say, *nothing* to do with how many people you know. I have know people on both sides of the camp who've switched to the other side, and both saw productivity boosts, for different reasons. I've known LAMP developers who sit in their cube all day and don't talk to people or join groups or projects or anything like that. Likewise, developers using MS products, for example, can be quite involved in numerous projects and social groups centering around .NET. Some of those projects themselves may be open source, but that's only part of the issue.

The way the software you choose to use is written has little to do with how you choose to use it and participate in the surrounding ecosystems.

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[spun]

WTF? We've observed speciation in the laboratory. It's a dead horse, my friend. Been dead so long it's starting to stink. Stop beating it. This, like most other issues raised by creationists/IDers, has been answered over and over again.

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[paniq]

does that mean that my argument is in no way true and that it is only and entirely a question of belief?

in this case i'm even more happy, since i can choose linux without having to be afraid of missing out on productivity or social contacts!

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[alexgieg]

Oh, this is very nice to know! Thanks!

One might argue, maybe, that lack of interbreeding alone isn't enough for the characterization of what a "species" is, but the article is nevertheless interesting in that it adds a lot of weight to the evolutionary framework. I'll keep it for future reference.

Re:But will it change people's religion?

[10101001 10101001]

For starters, the discussion of evolution vs intelligent design/creationism isn't one of the creation of life. Instead, it's the creation of most species.

What they deny is that one species can change so much that it becomes another species. In technical terms, what they refuse is the notion of macroevolution.

Notice the similarities? One thing that has to be recognized is that those small changes that make a species resistant to a pesticide or an antibiotic could be precisely the change that makes them a new species. The only real issue is that while there are many instances where it has been shown that a "negative" genetic trait has persisted in a society (sickle-cell anemia being a good example) because of the overall positive net effect it gives in resistance to attack from other organisms, I can't think of a laboratory example where this has been demonstrated. So while it's true that macroevolution has been observed in that lab, you're correct in pointing out that macroevolution as the result of a mutation to build resistance hasn't been demonstrated to produce new species. Given that speciation as a result of such a specific genetic mutation would only last if enough of a species developed the same mutation to procreate (and hence create a separate line)--since most bacteria are asexual and hence their species is determined by genetic similarity not the ability to mate, there is no simple definite means of declaring a resistance mutation as that which makes a new species*--, I can understand why such a scenario will take a long time to demonstrate to exist.

*Obviously, this isn't entirely true. For example, like-species might be defined by their willingness to trade plasmids. Or, bacteria switching graham negativity might define them as a new species.

FLOSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did Libre get added? Is this another lame attempt at a cute acronym? At one time it was open source, then the acronym weenies attacked and we had OSS. The GNU zealots came along and insisted that we beat the definition of "free" into the ground, thus FOSS was born. Libre? Idiotic.

Re:FLOSS?

[elf-fire]

Well. You know. Libre as in beer.

Re:FLOSS?

[perlionex]

The Wikipedia article on "FLOSS" states:

"Libre software" was first used publicly in 2000, by the European Commission... The word "libre", borrowed from the Spanish and French languages, does not have the freedom/cost ambiguity problem that "free" does.

"FLOSS" was used in 2001 as a project acronym by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh as an acronym for Free/Libre/Open-Source Software. Later that year, the European Commission (EC) used the phrase when they funded a study on the topic.

Note that Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is the same author of this academic paper.

Re:FLOSS?

[arpy]

Maybe tag with !dental to avoid confusion.

Re:FLOSS?

[mwvdlee]

Actually, going from the acronym OS to OSS was a smart move, considering we already had an OS acronym which would clash with an OS-posterchild OS.

Re:FLOSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah

FLOSS was a new one for me too. once i figured out what it was, i pretty much lost all interest in OSS, FOSS, FLOSS, bla bla.

its getting silly at this point, and hard to take seriously.

and the huge pdf file is very annoying. whats so bad about just plain html? why the need for a pdf file? so we can view a standard, boring document with typical tables and figures the same on every platform? gee, cool. except now i cant cut & paste. i cant bookmark it. there are no hyperlinks in it. i must download the entire file to view just a part of it. i cant change the font. i cant change the colors. surely if they could produce a pdf document, they could produce an html document.

why are people so fucking stupid?

and man, that FLOSS acronym is just fucking dumb. FLOSS is something you do to your teeth. well, at least some people.

Re:FLOSS?

[Flyboy Connor]

No. Libre as in bière.

Re:FLOSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the last FUCKING time, although I know nobody will listen, there is NO ambiguity in the word "free". A closed source freeware application is free software. If the source is free, it's "free source". Get it? There are two things here: source and software. Both have two characteristics: Availability and cost.

Neither software nor source need some frilly new adjective. This is just the same sort of liberal shit that turns a Black Jamaican, who was not born in Africa or America, into an "African American". No. He's Black, dammit, and the software is free or not, and the source is available or not, and if it's available, it's free or not. Damn PC pricks.

Re:FLOSS?

[MikeBabcock]

I'm so sorry your English teacher failed you.

Free has several meanings, not all of which necessarily come to mind when people hear the word, and some of which are much more relevant to FLOSS than others.

The one definition above I find most useful for how "Free Software" works, would be "6. able to do something at will; at liberty: free to choose." Note the specific use of the word liberty to expound on the meaning of free in this context. We don't have a separate word in English derived from liberty to refer to an object's status, but the French do. Thus FLOSS.

PS, what do you think the etymology of the word 'liberty' is? Oh, and check the face of a French coin sometime. You might notice the lady liberty there, just like the one they made for the United States known as the statue of liberty. Using a French word to denote freedom in the liberty sense makes excellent sense historically.

Re:FLOSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't you copy and paste? Never use a PDF viewer before?

Tip: try the text selection tool.

Re:FLOSS?

[charlieman]

Just laught at it and move on with your life. jeezz...

Re:FLOSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jamaica is no longer part of America now is it? Ooooh you meant the US of America. Gotcha! Good thing the word stupid is not ambiguous, at least..

Re:FLOSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't have a separate word in English derived from liberty to refer to an object's status, but the French do

We don't have (as many) gendered nouns either. I suspect that the use of the French libre in this context may be not much less ambiguous than our usage. Aha, so in France, Free Software is "unattached". Who knows, maybe it's even "unmarried". Not being a native French speaker, I have no idea what the non-geek Francophone would think upon hearing the phrase "logiciel libre". Maybe they think of Lady Liberty, or maybe they think it was stolen, as in "we liberated supplies".

No. I must maintain, It's just a huge pile of PC BS. The most common definition in English is the same as gratis, and this pisses off the politicos in the movement. They want you to think that their techno-socialism has something to do with liberty, when plainly it's quite the opposite.

Re:FLOSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

"No. Libre as in bière."

No, sir: libre as in cerveza.

Re:FLOSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Using a French word to denote freedom in the liberty sense makes excellent sense historically."

It's only "libre" isn't French but Spanish. You can ask Stallman about it (by the way, I'm Spanish, so I know what I'm talking about).

FLOSS in PDF??

[Freedom451]

Why not HTML? Does anyone else see the problem here?

Well I do, PDFs kill my laptop, more than a few open and it just dies. And they don't seem to give back their memory when Acrobate.exe is quit. Maybe I'm my own irony-do pdfs work better on Linux than they do on X(pletitive)P?

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm my own irony-do pdfs work better on Linux than they do on X(pletitive)P?

In a word, yes. I don't user or need acroread to view pdfs. My pdf viewer of
choice is KPDF, which among other features allows me to cut-n-paste from a
pdf document any text regions into a copy buffer that I can then paste into any editor.

I haven't observed any OS crashes as a result of viewing a pdf. Also, if you don't want
to use kpdf, you can also use evince, xpdf, zxpdf, kghostview, or any others that I might have forgotten.

--Johnny doesn't use acroread.
P.s. Here's a sample of utilities on my Debian box that manipulate or create pdf documents that I
get for free:

$ apropos pdf
a2ping - convert between PS, EPS and PDF and other page description formats
dvipdf - Convert TeX DVI file to PDF using ghostscript and dvips
dvipdfm - Produce PDF files directly from DVI files
dvipdft - create thumbnail images for use with dvipdfm
e2pall - convert all EPS files in a LaTeX document to PDF
ebb - extract a bounding box from JPEG, PNG, and PDF files
epstopdf - convert an EPS file to PDF
evince - view PostScript and PDF documents
fdf2tex - Convert PDF formular data (FDF) into something (Con)TeX(t) can handle
fig2eps - Convert xfig files in ps|pdf, processing all the text marked as special with LaTeX.
fig2pdf - Convert xfig files in ps|pdf, processing all the text marked as special with LaTeX.
fig2ps - Convert xfig files in ps|pdf, processing all the text marked as special with LaTeX.
gpdf - A GNOME Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer
gs - Ghostscript (PostScript and PDF language interpreter and previewer)
gs-esp - Ghostscript (PostScript and PDF language interpreter and previewer)
gs-gpl - Ghostscript (PostScript and PDF language interpreter and previewer)
gsnd - Run ghostscript (PostScript and PDF engine) without display
kghostview - KDE PS/PDF Viewer
kpdf - a KDE pdf viewer based on xpdf
makempy - Helper script for conversion of (PDF or PostScript) text toMetapost graphics
pdf2dsc - generate a PostScript page list of a PDF document
pdf2ps - Ghostscript PDF to PostScript translator
pdfeinitex [pdflatex] - PDF output from e-TeX
pdfetex - PDF output from e-TeX
pdfevirtex [pdflatex] - PDF output from e-TeX
pdffonts - Portable Document Format (PDF) font analyzer (version 3.01)
pdfimages - Portable Document Format (PDF) image extractor (version 3.01)
pdfinfo - Portable Document Format (PDF) document information extractor (version 3.01)
pdfinitex [pdftex] - PDF output from TeX
pdflatex - PDF output from e-TeX
pdfopt - Ghostscript PDF Optimizer
pdftex - PDF output from TeX
pdftk - A handy tool for manipulating PDF
pdftohtml - program to convert pdf files into html, xml and png images
pdftoppm - Portable Document Format (PDF) to Portable Pixmap (PPM) converter (version 3.01)
pdftops - Portable Document Format (PDF) to PostScript converter (version 3.01)
pdftotext - Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter (version 3.01)
pdfvirtex [pdftex] - PDF output from TeX
pdfxinitex [pdfxtex] - PDF output from e-TeX
pdfxtex - PDF output from e-TeX
pdfxvirtex [pdfxtex] - PDF output from e-TeX
ps2ascii - Ghostscript translator from PostScript or PDF to ASCII
ps2pdf - Convert PostScript to PDF using ghostscript
ps2pdf12 - Convert PostScript to PDF 1.2 (Acrobat 3-and-later compatible) using ghostscript
ps2pdf13 - Convert PostScript to PDF 1.3 (Acrobat 4-and-later compatible) using ghostscript
ps2pdfwr - Convert PostScript to PDF without specifying CompatibilityLevel, using ghostscript
texexec - ConTeXt and PDF auxiliary program and batch processor
texi2pdf - create a PDF file from a Texinfo file
thumbpdf - generate thumbnail images for a PDF file created with pdftex
tiff2pdf - convert a TIFF image to a PDF document
update-xpdfrc - program to generate xpdf's configuration fi

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[Anonymous Coward]

Use xpdf on Linux to read them. If you want to stick to proprietary, FoxIt Reader is much better than Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[poopdeville]

You might not realize this, but PDF is an open standard. For instance, pdflatex (free by any standard) can output pdfs.

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for the anon but cant remember my damn details.

If you are on a windows machine, try foxit reader (I think its just www.foxit.com), its a full featured acrobat clone but amazingly lightweight (a few mb's, and tiny memory foot print). The only time it has ever let me down is trying to open encrypted pdf's - I refuse to use acrobat, there is generally no point!

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[Bert64]

The beauty of PDF being an openly documented format, is that you don't have to use adobe's reader to view it!
There are plenty of PDF viewers out there, try a few and settle on one you like, most of them are better than adobe's. If the format was closed, you'd have no choice but to use the supplied reader.

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[Anonymous Coward]

The beauty of HTML is, is that any browser can read it.

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[Petrushka]

Foxit is faster to load than Acrobat in Windows -- if you disable the Acrobat Speed Launch, that is -- but I find Acrobat much, much, much faster at rendering complex layouts. (At the moment, I'm mainly thinking of music scores.)

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Why not HTML?

HTML is a markup language. It is fine for online viewing but a huge pain in the ass to e-mail to someone and it does not guarantee exact layout, and the ability to print it properly is questionable on a given machine.

Well I do, PDFs kill my laptop, more than a few open and it just dies.

One of the main advantages of open standards is that you have the ability to pick the best tool, rather than being tied to just one tool for the format. PDF is an open format and there are any number of applications to read and write that format. If you are using one that kills your laptop, why haven't you looked into other tools? Others have already mentioned Foxit if you are on Windows.

Maybe I'm my own irony-do pdfs work better on Linux than they do on X(pletitive)P?

In my experience PDFs work well on all platforms provided you avoid the combination of Windows+Adobe Acrobat Reader plugin+IE. Unfortunately, that is the most common combination of tools used to view them and it is complete crap. Even the Adobe Acrobat Reader, with all the extras turned off seems to work just fine on Windows. For some reason the above combination hits Window's weak resource allocation and IE's failure to multitask and Acrobat plug-in's failure to do anything while downloading and tendency to hog memory. As a result users tend to click a link then their whole Windows box just freezes until the PDF is finished downloading at which point if they have limited RAM everything slows to a crawl.

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[Anonymous Coward]

You should use Evince on Linux or Preview on OS X to view PDF files. Either is much more responsive than Reader. If you use Windows, you should really replace that with Linux or OS X ;)

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The beauty of HTML is, is that any browser can read it.

Yeah, I'm thinking about trying to get more OSS used here at work, why don't you e-mail me a copy of that report as an HTML file and all the associated images and I'll forward it to my boss so he can read it offline while on the plane. And that will print perfectly on the same pages no matter what browser we use to print it right, cuz I have Safari and he has IE5 and we want to be able to reference the same page numbers while talking about it over the phone, right?

HTML is a great format for some things, but a really shitty format for other things. If you have a computer that can't read PDF files, you're probably about a decade out of date.

Re:FLOSS in PDF??

[Bert64]

Assuming you actually follow HTML specs, and even then not all browsers will be able to read it or display it the same, not to mention special purpose browsers which will display it differently by design.

Makes sense

[Freedom451]

M$ is 'intelligent design', and FLOSS is punctuated equilibrium.

No one gets fired for buying Microsoft is similar to the fall from grace: simple ideas that stop thought in it's tracks and stop the discussion of a whole host of inconsistencies in the record.

Remember, "Balmer doesn't play dice with the Operating System..."

Re:Makes sense

[ajs318]

No one gets fired for buying Microsoft

They would if they worked where I did.

Re:Makes sense

[Freedom451]

...and if you worked for the Discovery Institute, you wouldn't get fired for 'buying' Design:-).

Re:Makes sense

[joeljkp]

M$ is 'intelligent design', and FLOSS is punctuated equilibrium.

I saw a bumper sticker once: "Honk if you understand punctuated equilibria!"

Re:FLOSS in PDF?? [Somewhat off main topic]

[akohler]

In my experience, PDFs always work better on Linux, but the best thing to do is:

pdftotext 2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf

It makes my laptop happier.

there's an executive summary

[jilles]

The report starts with a four page executive summary, which is worth a read. Seems to include a few nice conclusions. I'd have to read the full report to assess credibility of course but I guess for most people here the executive summary should provide some nice new ammunition.

Excellent paper! But...

[Psychotria]

What is the point? The conclusions in the paper (paraphrased or abbreviated):

Upgrading office programs is time-consuming and expensive
...Yes...

OpenOffice.org is free, extremely stable, and supports the ISO Open Document Standard.
And?

...it is recommended to adopt a policy of both ad hoc and periodic training...
Well, that's insightful

This is because these costs are too much influenced by factors like inflation and market flow.
Ok, good. A non-conclusion

A model that differentiates between cost of migration and costs of ownership better respond to the managers' needs.
Wow, what a breakthrough

5. There are no extra costs due to lack of productivity arising from the use of the OOo.
I thought the paper was about FLOSS; not just OOo. Hmm, this is a strange conclusion to make considering the report title.

Re:Excellent paper! But...

[strider44]

So you got the conclusions of one section looking at case studies with an emphasis on the impact of the common program OpenOffice.org (that's in the appendix - not even the actual paper!) and then complained that the entire paper is only about OpenOffice.org?

Something tells me you didn't read this paper very thoroughly!

Re:Excellent paper! But...

[Psychotria]

Well, actually I did. However, a conclusion is a conclusion, no matter which way you look at it (unless, of course, you look at it the wrong way).

Re:Excellent paper! But...

[strider44]

Don't be idiotic. I might just extend my assumption of "not read the paper" to "not read any serious paper". Your "conclusions in the paper" were the conclusions for the last section in the appendix. It wasn't even part of the paper - you obviously flipped to the end and read a subsection called "Conclusions" without realising it wasn't part of the actual paper. (even though there are several other subsections throughout the paper labelled "Conclusions", and you never ever put conclusions for the entire paper in a bloody subsection) Look at the Executive Summary for the real findings - that's what the Executive Summary is for.

Re:FLOSS

[Potor]

a slashvertisement here, but it is of topical interest: I am putting together a peer-reviewed journal issue on the ethics of floss - the deadline is past, but the panel will still consider papers. see the link in my sig. please contact me via the link if you have any interest.

Document Properties

[OhneWorte]

Well, if you look at the document properties what do you find? It was created with PScript.dll under Windows.
I hope they have learned their lesson from their study themselves... :-/

Ohne Worte

Re: Document Properties

[Dolda2000]

Phew, I was just wondering what tool could produce such a hideous typesetting. At least now I know that it's a program running under Windows. :)

I wouldn't be surprised if it's OOo Writer or MS Word. Is there any other tool out there which matches the output quality of LaTeX?

Re: Document Properties

[OhneWorte]

None.

Some people use DocBook, though.

Re:Document Properties

[Anonymous Coward]

That is pretty sad, considering that OpenOffice.org creates beautiful PDF files for free/Free. Or if you want full desktop publishing, there are apps such as Scribus with far more detailed PDF output options, also free/Free.

  - raven morris

Re:Document Properties

[Demerara]

Well, if you look at the document properties what do you find?

Leading to the inevitable RTFDP calls - Read the F$#kin Document Properties!

Funding sources

[l2718]

Based on project homepage, especially the list of parnters, it seems that this study was mostly financed by the EU. The secondary sources include interested parties (an association of Indian IT companies, Mitsubishi) and non-interested ones (e.g. the Soros foundation). This leads me to trust the study more than ones funded by Redhat and Microsoft.

Re:Funding sources

[poopdeville]

The Soros Foundation?

Oh christ, I'm conflicted now.

On the right, the study supports FLOSS. On the left, it was funded by George Soros, a vomitus inducing individual.

Re:Funding sources

[16K Ram Pack]

Yeah, the EU is a highly reputable organisation and not at all a bunch of crooks.

Re:Funding sources

[spun]

What do you have against Soros? The fact that he was a vicious anti-communist, the fact that he supports the decriminalization of most drugs, or the fact that is rich and yet not a conservative (except for the whole 'viciously anti-communist' thing)?

Re:Funding sources

[poopdeville]

Member of the Carlyle Group. Worked for the Council on Foreign Relations. Convicted for insider trading. Destabilized the Thai and Malay economies.

Re:Funding sources

[spun]

Well who hasn't destabilized a few third world economies? Bill Gates can't take a crap without destabilizing one somewhere. ;-) But I didn't know Soros was a member of the Carlyle group or the CFR. That's enough to hang him in my book.

Re:Funding sources

[poopdeville]

To Soros' credit, Lyndon LaRouche hates him. :-)

Re: Difference of opinion is not religion

[Anonymous Coward]

For someone who has actually studied religions, I deem it ill-advised to continue describing any contrary policy about how to use a legal framework as "religion", "religious" and proponents for either side of a debate as part of an "evil empire", "zealots" and so on. Firstly, just because you passionately believe an argument does not qualify as having anything to do with "religion". Secondly, it is entirely possible to have two or more co-existing, complex thoughts/philosophies at the same time that are not compatible - I would expect Slashdot readers to know that already.

It is of course okay to describe Microsoft developers as probably nice people, who happen to continue to choose to work for a convicted monopolist, and free software developers as probably nice people, who happen to continue to choose to work on giving users freedom from monopolies. See - lots of ways to be nasty to other people - juvenile, isn't it? Now, go document, translate, develop or debug some free software till you can say "Work completed!"

Current Usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Figure 12 claims FLOSS systems used in European public bodies (900 bodies across European Governments):
46.6 % GNU/Linux
33.7 % MySQL
33.4 % Apache
26.0 % Mozilla
24.1 % PHP
21.5 % OpenOffice.org
17.0 % Samba
14.1 % Squid
10.2 % KDE
10.2 % Perl
05.5 % Gnome
04.7 % Zope
03.0 % Free/Open BSD
33.9 % other

Remember

[ms1234]

To floss daily, keep those teeth healthy.

FLOSS and Moore's Law

[Jeff_Kaplan_88]

Reading stats on open source makes me wonder whether there is some equivalent to Moore's Law that applies to expansion of the open source code base.

Re:FLOSS and Moore's Law

[h4rm0ny]

If Something A is better than Something B, and the only barrier to Something A's adoption is its minority status, then when it reaches a level of adoption that this no longer matters as much, you're going to see one HELL of a tipping point!

Re:FLOSS and Moore's Law

[marcosdumay]

Well, the more FLOSS code outr there, the bigest is FLOSS developers productivity. So, the codebase grows always faster. That thre is a gain is obvious, but the amount insn't, I am trying to measure it, but I bet on a proportional gain. If it is really proportional to the amount o code out, the code will grow exponentialy with time (like moore's law, and like this study finds).

Floss

[Anonymous Coward]

FLOSS OR DIE!! Think of the ch...Dental hygiene...

Invaluable for Execs in Open Source companies

[PHPfanboy]

If you're on the commercial side of an open source company, it is imperative you read this report.

This report answers bucketloads of questions about where to approach the market and how to do so. It also provides clear impartial metrics which you can present to decision makers and strategy people at your customers. Miss this at your peril.

Re:Invaluable for Execs in Open Source companies

[SiggyRadiation]

This report is a must-read for anyone interrested in questions regarding open-source versus closed-source/proprietary.

For example, there is a complete chapter about user benefites, interoperability, productivity and cost savings. About cost savings a lot has been said on slashdot (and on the "get the facts" advertisments). When the report talks about TCO and the compatibility-problems that result from switching from (for example) MS-Office to Open-Office: (pag. 98)

The issue of compatibility losses could be taken furgher. Arguable, the losses of compatibility, and the losses caused bu migration in general, can be devided into two categories: those that would be incurred by migrating to a specific new system, and those that are incurred by migrating away from a currently used system. Compatibility losses are in the latter category - migrating away to any alternative system would result in the compatibility losses (assuming the use of proprietary standards, without which compatibility losses could nog occur). Such exit costs should be evaluated as part of the cost of the current system, not the future system.

Such insights are truly invaluable!

And what does it say...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weeell...... Open Source is just this software, you know?

In other news, Sirius Cybernetics Corporation say they are happy with Windows 4003 .....

Wow.

[joshier]

Did anyone see the star at 0:58, he is clearly the on of Christ.

Either that or he can see 'microsft users... All The Time!'

FLOSS in Europe - In reality

[PietjeJantje]

FLOSS in Europe is mainly about leaches. Here in the Netherlands for example the government has subsidized various FLOSS studies and initiatives..GOOD you might think. But then you look a little furhter. First, what you see is they never pour money into the open source projects themselves, so to all you code monkeys, tough luck, but thanks for all the fish. No they are pouring it into Commities to Determine How Good The Fish Is. You got organisations who pretend to be -the- portal to open source, but it's only for companies to want to deploy it. You got studies how open source fares compared to closed source, they are very good at pouring 50K here and 100K there to find out what's best and what the consequences will be.

Now this is all very good. (Until you realize it's always the same people and it's more about networking, the money and the jobs involved). Except, again, they never ever put money into development. To me, this is shameful, all these people going after the money and getting it, and not a single eurocent to what should be the first priority if you're giving away money. But they don't have to - that's not the point. Just start USING open source and stop talking about it/studying it for once, because it's a make money quick scheme, and don't waste tax payer's money on for example 286 page studies.

Re:FLOSS in Europe - In reality

[mwvdlee]

Actually, I think the Netherlands are funding a national group which is working on the Dutch spellchecker and thesaurus for OpenOffice. They are funding the work that programmers don't do, that's why you're not seeing it.

As for the need for studies; I'm thankful they are researching before making decissions.
You seem to assume OSS is always better and think a government should assume the same. What studies like these show is parameters for when moving to OSS is a good idea.

There are already pretty large scale OSS migrations in the EU, so they are actually using OSS. I wouldn't be surprised if non-development related use of OSS is far greater in governments than in corporations at the moment.

Re:FLOSS in Europe - In reality

[beric]

But still, according to the report, the majority of FLOSS developers live in Europe :

The combined FLOSS (MERIT/FP5) and FLOSS-US (Stanford) developer surveys form the largest survey-based dataset (4282 cases) providing the geographical distribution of developers (see Figure 17). According to these surveys, more than three fifths of the worldwide FLOSS developer community live in the EU, one fifth in North America, and another one fifth or so live in other countries.

Re:FLOSS in Europe - In reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Very good point. I would rather see a slow successful adoption of FLOSS, than a rapid catastrophic adoption. This is why studies like are important.

Re:FLOSS in Europe - In reality

[PietjeJantje]

From "4 Interesting" to "1 troll". This leaves two possibilities:

1) It was a good troll attempt - but not good enough; 2) Instead of writing another report on Open Office, these guys are reading Slashdot on tax payer's money and trolling the "opposition" (a FLOSS developer) down.

You choose.

Re:FLOSS in Europe - In reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it news to you that business people make bad technology decisions?

When you ask me why I think open source projects are useful, I'll state a myriad of reasons which pretty much lead back to, it's Unix, and Unix is good. Eventually you'll get it out of me that I don't want to pay for something if I can get something better for free. But my arguments why FLOSS makes me more productive are quite limited, and somewhat weak (unless we are talking about building on FLOSS, but we're talking about using it rather than developing with it, kinda).

Do you see in there why my argument doesn't convince a business person? They're only interested in how it'll impact their bottom dollar, never the technical reasons (directly), so they need to be convinced of something that is a little intangible. This is why FLOSS studies are required, we need to convince PHBs that FLOSS is better for them too.

Also, these kind of studies can also be used to cover someone's ass. If a PHB goes out on a limb and FLOSS disappoints their higher-ups after implementation, then they have a defense (albeit weak). After all, nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft.

Re: Difference of opinion is not religion

[heretic108]

< For someone who has actually studied religions, I deem it ill-advised to continue describing any contrary policy about how to use a legal framework as "religion"

It's obvious you've never been in an IRC channel during a flamewar on vi versus emacs, or gtk+ versus qt etc.

FYI, the word 'religion' has grown a new usage, largely in technical circles, to describe a dogmatic adherence to a choice or set of choices of software tools or components, where the adherent steadfastly refuses to be 'converted' to another, possibly superior set of choices despite even the strongest evidence in favour of making the switch.

This study doasn't have a real impact

[laplace_man]

The truth is that every country in EU made their own study on office software. I live in Slovenia and I just found similar study comparing transition of government 11.800 workstations to Open Office. It clearly says NO to open source for 3 years. It's a document dating 14.11.2005. This study has a conclusion that migrating software from MS to Open Office is possible and functionality of both packages are more then enough for government needs. The things that changed their mind and are considered greater risk that brings higher costs over this 3 year period are:

- retraining people
- doc-> odf conversion (especially concerned about automatic conversion of documents-especially macros in doc files)
- and of course very concerned about support (there is no company's supporting Open Office - or they have no real business plans) what they see as the greatest risk migrating to ODF !!

This is 5 page document giving some numbers WITHOUT ANY EXPLANATIONS where those numbers came from. The only thing I noticed is that they ware waiting what happens in Munich at the time.They clearly know for IDABC initiative for ODF - ISO format. Their strategy is making public tenders to create support Open Office.
What I'm really concerned about is that there is no plan for gradual adoption of ODF. If there is a serious intent for adopting ODF I'd expect at least .gov sites offering ODF formats as well as .doc and .pdf. THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE REAL TRANSITION SHOULD START AS WELL AS INSTALLING OPEN OFFICE ON GOV COMPUTERS FOR TESTING AND GRADUAL ADOPTION.

Anyway I see this document as excuse to FLOSS community without any REAL intent to change things in the future.
This is the real picture of FLOSS support in EU. The point is that country's in EU take this reports as consideration but on the end they make their own conclusions based on MS deals because they can't make or don't want to make a real cost comparison.

Re:This study doasn't have a real impact

[Bert64]

Sun will support Open Office, as will Novell... I imagine RedHat will provide support for it too in so much as it's part of their linux distribution, as will any other distro maker that provides support.
On the other hand, support for MS formats is only available from one place, surely this is a bigger risk?

Re:This study doasn't have a real impact

[laplace_man]

Yeah I know that. I think they want to have Open Office support on Windows OS not on Linux. The RISK is about small number of company's that support Open Office (there is no real market here so prices for support are very variable). The ideal company would be based here in Slovenia with strong ties to Open Office developers with training,and support especially on document conversion from doc to odf. They are also considering their own team of Open Office experts.

Re:This study doasn't have a real impact

[Wylfing]

- retraining people
- doc-> odf conversion (especially concerned about automatic conversion of documents-especially macros in doc files)
- and of course very concerned about support (there is no company's supporting Open Office - or they have no real business plans) what they see as the greatest risk migrating to ODF !!

Ahem. Surely you knew that these "problems" with OSS are in fact the Holy Triumvirate of Fuddiness? You could time-travel back to 1980 and see IBM naming almost identical "problems" with competitor's products.

1. Retraining: This is a non-factor, because workers need to be retrained on each new version of MS product as well.
2. Document conversion: This is a non-factor for two reasons. (1) There is absolutely no need to mass-convert existing .doc files. (2) MS changes their file formats too, so you'll have the same problem either way.
3. Support: This is a non-factor for two reasons. (1) No ordinary worker, while using Office, calls up MS support. They turn to their own IT staff. (2) For things that the IT staff needs support on, the MS support staff are inadequate, so you're going to need to turn to specialized support sources, which, aha!, is exactly what you need to do with FLOSS.

Re:This study doasn't have a real impact

[gnugnugnu]

>> - and of course very concerned about support (there is no company's supporting Open Office - or they have no real business plans) what they see as the greatest risk migrating to ODF !!

bzzt wrong

the correct answer is: Sun Microsystems

for partial credit I would also have accepted IBM since they support OpenOffice in the form of their Workspaces products.

Re:This study doasn't have a real impact

[laplace_man]

When they ware talking about support I was talking about company's that could retrain this large number of people using this new office software. The truth is there is just a few small company's offering Open Office training in our language right now. It's a small company and the only company offering this kind of training (low demand) in our country so prices for Open Office courses are variable because there is no market that could control/lower price. This is the kind of support I was talking about. I know there is no problem with technical support for Open Office. It's true even with Microsoft's new versions of Office suite they have to retrain people.

Gradual adoption of Open Office could be even cheaper. Just install Open Office besides MS Office...right ??Where is the catch? If they do that they spoil partnership with Microsoft what will on the end probably raise prices for MS software/computer.

We all know it's all about keeping a good relationship with Microsoft that they depend on.That's probably also why they don't put public documents on .gov sites. Good old vendor lock in.So ideal transformation to ODF would be.

-give them a good way to convert old .doc documents to ODF (large scale document conversion)
-have a large number of teachers for Open Office suite in the country
-switch without raising prices for MS software that they still depend on (this is probably the RISK they didn't mention in report)
-good technical support (that probably isn't such a big problem)
-more Munich examples to convince them to switch to new OS (so that MS dependency doesn't exist any more)
-awareness of existence of Open Office suite in the country

Just in case you don't know Slovenia has largest percent of Firefox users in the world http://www.xitimonitor.com/en-US/Technicals/index- 1-2-3-52.html so trust in OSS in general is high.The truth is most people don't even know they are using OSS with Firefox they just know it works.

Re:This study doasn't have a real impact

[Bert64]

Small number of companies? There are considerably more companies supporting OpenOffice than MS... Sun IBM and Novell will support OpenOffice running on several different platforms anyway. And all 3 of these companies have as much, if not more global presence than microsoft and all have strong ties to OO developers, in that all 3 companies contribute to development at some level.

Groklaw has the Conclusions

[giafly]

Conclusions and Comment

One interesting negative point concerned those people (sometimes found here too) who believe that you only get what you pay for.

Employees may perceive that their work is under-valued using 'cheap' OSS products.

Re:Groklaw has the Conclusions

[init100]

That might be true. Some people might feel more important if the employer spends a lot of money on software for them. They won't care that this is actually taxpayer money, that they are morally required to put to their most effective use.

And some people certainly has the "you get what you pay for" attitude towards any software that is distributed free of charge. It has to cost money, preferably a lot, otherwise it cannot be good.

Large FLOSS Study Gets the Real Facts

[Skythe]

"Flossing in combination with toothbrushing can prevent gum disease, halitosis, and dental caries."

Study gets what?

[archeopterix]

Real facts? Real facts?! This Slashdot bias is getting out of hand!

What about a study with the false facts?!

Re:FLOSS

[Solokron]

http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?Acronym= floss&Find=find&string=exact

Don't mind the cost reduction (or lack of)

[Psicopatico]

It's a bit of time that I hear some execs (not all thb) state that keeping investments in proprietary & closed source software (clearly referring to Microsoft's ones) will take good money overseas, which is in any case a loss for the european economy.

Re:FLOSS

[Solokron]

I must also add that considering Free and Libre are synonymous having them slashed in an acronym is very poor and a sad attempt at an acronym resembling a word. Much like "ASS" - Acronym synonymous synonyms. At least Free Linux Open Source Software makes logical sense without trying to skate by for an acronym that sounds like a pronounceable word.

Re:FLOSS

[Aeternus]

Free can be either Gratis or Libre, stating Libre in the acronym emphasises that the intent of the acronym is to describe software that can be freely developed on and is not encumbered rather than describing software that is free as in price.

foxit pdf reader URL

[Anonymous Coward]

Its www.foxitsoftware.com

best section: 9.4. Scenarios

[nickos]

IMO, one of the best sections is "9.4. Scenarios" which starts on page 201. This will be very valuable when trying to explain to politicians why they should oppose software patents and any legislation that penalises the exchange of ideas.

code or functionality

[jesterpilot]

FTFMS: The existing base of quality FLOSS applications with reasonable quality control and
distribution would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to reproduce internally.

It's surely possible make that many lines of code for 12 billion euro's. But could it provide the same functionality? One of the strengths of FLOSS is the recycling of code. A closed system would need many more lines of code to get the same functionality.
 
On the other hand, would a closed system build 287 different end-user apps for playing mp3's?

Re:code or functionality

[stavrosg]

On the other hand, would a closed system build 287 different end-user apps for playing mp3's?

Actually, there are as many (even if some on that list are open source, the most significant portion isn't).

Academic-grade?

[Tim C]

Now, I realise that I only have a degree and dropped out of my Phd before completing it (due to intense boredom), but what is "academic-grade" supposed to mean? (Before anyone suggests it, Google is being less than helpful...)

Re:Academic-grade?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having exstenisve experience in industry and academia, I can tell you that when it comes to software, 'acadmic grade' means 'the bare minimum to get a publication'. It can also mean 'something industry developed years ago, didn't publish, and was just rediscovered by a grad student (e.g., Grid->Web Services)'.

Anyway, snide comments aside, what really worries me about this study is that the applications cited as the most used are server applications and development tools (with the exception of OpenOffice). These are tools that matter to developers, not end users. To conclude that all software should be open source essentially screws everyone who is not a developer.

Re:Academic-grade?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume that refers to the liberal sprinkling of poor grammar and misspellings, judging from the excerpts posted.

Religion or dogma?

[HangingChad]

However, the 'proprietary vs FLOSS' debate is a battle which each day seems to more resemble the 'biblical literalism versus evolution' debate.

To me it's more like dogma. There are so many people who accept conventional wisdom without spending any time actually learning anything and refusing to listen to those who do. I'm continually surprised how many managers exhibit a depth of understanding of IT issues that one might get skimming an in-flight magazine.

History lesson

[Per Abrahamsen]

First there was free software, and all was well.

Then some people noted that free software were easily confused with gratis software (freeware) that preserved none of the freedoms we care about, and they invented the Open Source tag.

Microsoft started to note that some potential customers would choose solution from none of their known competitors, and started to investigate what this was all about in the "Halloween" papers. They invented the OSS acronym to describe this new alternative.

Finally EU got involved, and combined it all with libre (for the Latin-speaking part of EU) to get FLOSS.

Re:False fact studies?

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem. Just take a look at any M$ study, or any study financed by them. You'll get lots of false facts...:-)

More study is needed

[Black Parrot]

> Since when did Libre get added? Is this another lame attempt at a cute acronym? At one time it was open source, then the acronym weenies attacked and we had OSS. The GNU zealots came along and insisted that we beat the definition of "free" into the ground, thus FOSS was born. Libre? Idiotic.

OSS -> FOSS -> FLOSS. If you project this trend 20 years into the future, you'll find a great deal of lost productivity just from the time people spend typing the name of it!

Re:FLOSS? - Came late to the party did we?

[zotz]

"At one time it was open source, then the acronym weenies attacked and we had OSS. The GNU zealots came along and insisted that we beat the definition of "free" into the ground, thus FOSS was born. Libre? Idiotic."

Actually, at one time it was Free Software. Then some people came along and called it open source for marketing reasons....

all the best,

drew

Linux ROI written in Excel...

[secutoris]

Does anyone else think that it is weird to write a financial analysis for linux using MS Excel?

[Linux ROI] Return on Investment on Linux Migration/Purchase.
www.linuxvalue.com/linux.xls

Opps, someone didn't move their metadata from their office doc...i got your username, muahahaha
"BMC Software, Inc. dkanwar Microsoft Excel"

CALL FOR PAPERS

[Anonymous Coward]

the parent is a call for papers

Re:FLOSS

[Anonymous Coward]

My dentist recommended that I try FLOSS the other day. But I noticed that HIS computers were all running Windows. Perhaps there was no good FLOSS equivalents to the neat dental programs he was running. It must be some dental conspiracy...

On the other hand, what is with this Libre guy? Is he Nacho Libre's brother or father?

Mod Parent DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to show your complete ignorance of open source philosophy. And the fact that you have mod points is even more sad. Open source software is supposed to be free (gratuit) as in 'free beer' or 'without monetary cost'. OSS software is also supposed to be free as in freedom (aka Liberty or Libre or Openness). While the words might be synonymous, each has multiple additional precise meanings.

Also, keep in mind that people in the FLOSS community come from different countries, and language differences seperate these two concepts into two distinct words.

Lastly, Free Linux Open Source Software does NOT make logical sense, since OSS software can be made for other platforms besides Linux, such as BSD, AIX, Windows, etc. Just admit that your wrong. We all make mistakes with acronyms. I didn't even know FUBAR was an acronym until a few years ago...which incidentally, aptly describes your defense of your original post...

ZOMG!

[ThePhilips]

Page 254 has table with M$ stack costs.

All I can say is - ZOMG!!!!! That freaking expensive. Especially costs of maintaining install base of M$Office (I expect most used application by bureaucracy organization) - 289€K/year.

Now I'm slowly getting why the topic of migration is so annoyingly pushed by so many - and everywhere.

Business Opportunity

[ajs318]

There's a business opportunity out there, migrating users to Open Source, and somebody is set to coin it in.

"I want to totally own you. I want to hold your data to ransom, and if you don't keep paying me, I will make it unreadable. I want to force you to upgrade your software and your equipment when I say so. I will send my hired goons around when I feel like it, just to make sure you're behaving yourself, and if I so much as suspect you're even thinking of doing anything I don't like, you'll pay" really isn't much of a sales pitch, and the only reason anyone falls for it is they don't know there is an alternative. Well, ignorance is curable.

Start by recruiting a bunch of school leavers, all of whom must hate Microsoft with a passion; just put "Send CV - NO MS WORD DOCS" on the advertisement. And mean it. You'll need one or two machines running Windows and Office; but these will be on a private network, air-gapped from the Internet, so no need for anti-virus/anti-spyware. Files will be transferred from the Linux machines on this network to the rest of your network by physically transferring hard disk drives. One of your staff must be absolutely fluent in some distribution; and it's best if you have at least one expert from each side of the deb/rpm wall.

Document conversion isn't the problem you imagine it's going to be. Most of any user's old documents only occasionally ever need to be looked at, maybe reprinted, but probably not edited. So first off, archive all those legacy documents as PostScript files. (Emulating a standard JetDirect print server is as good a way as any of doing this.) You can (and should) gzip or bzip2 the files to save space, since none of the standard Linux file viewers mind about compressed files. In the course of doing this, you will identify those documents which might conceivably need to be edited and can begin prioritising. You will also, in all probability, run into a situation where a newer version of Microsoft software has trouble with a file generated by an older version of Microsoft software. If this happens, milk the sucker.

Now work on replacing existing Office macros. This will come as a bit of a shock to the Windows power users, but: Many customers don't actually use macros for much, because they simply don't know how to. It's not uncommon to see people cutting and pasting between Word and Excel, or even dictating from a screen to another person at another terminal. And don't just go for straight work-alikes: look at the bigger picture. If data is coming in regularly by e-mail and normally gets handled by some contrived manual process, you want an end-to-end solution, beginning with a procmail recipe, that will do the whole thing automagically. "As good as" is not good enough. You have got to do better.

Some documents will need to be recreated from scratch by hand in order to render them editable. This should not be overlooked. Slightly less drastic than retyping everything is transferring as plain text, then recreating the formatting -- which doesn't take long if done properly. Don't forget you have the Postscript "reference renderings" to work against.

If you can get a foot in the door with a business that has recently been raided by FAST (and they don't suspect that the raid had anything to do with you), so much the better. Just convince them you can convert them to 100% FLOSS for half what they'd be expected to pay for licences for the proprietary stuff they're using.

Re:Business Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Please can you explain your statement
'It's not uncommon to see people cutting and pasting between Word and Excel'

What else are people meant to do to get information from one document type to another? How would macros help in this situation? I'm generally curious, as I'm forced to transfer lots of information from one to the other daily, and would appreciate any tips on how to do things better

Re:Business Opportunity

[ajs318]

What else are people meant to do [beside cut and paste] to get information from one document type to another?

Use open, documented formats in the first place? :)

How would macros help in this situation?

Someone who has actually used the Office macro language might be able to explain this better; but within a macro (written in a VisualBasic dialect which has varied from one Office version to the next, so make sure you match any textbook you buy against the version you are currently running), you can access portions of your document as though they were variables and even create new documents.

I'm generally curious, as I'm forced to transfer lots of information from one to the other daily, and would appreciate any tips on how to do things better

My first tip would be use something other than MS Office :) My second tip would be to ask someone who knows MS Office. I personally don't use MS Office at all (can't, even -- I'd need a Windows workstation for that), and we don't even use OpenOffice.org much -- most of our work is done using custom in-house-written web applications. Anytime I've had to create a spreadsheet (which is whenever the beancounters want reports), I've just created it as a CSV file. And if what was wanted was something to print, like a "fill-in-the-gaps" letter, then I've created it as a PostScript file (ssssh ..... don't tell anyone, but it's surprising how little PostScript you actually need to know just to be able to print something). But I've also had the advantage that the original source material usually was not a Word document, but a text file or SQL database. That's what comes of not being dependent on MS, I guess. Or say we have an e-mail from one of our suppliers, containing data that needs to be added to one of our databases. As long as the format is consistent from one batch of data to the next, a machine can process it without problems. We just have the supplier e-mail it to a certain address; Procmail picks it up, and pipes it to a script (I use perl, but that's considered a bit clunky and old-fashioned nowadays; you young-and-trendy types probably want to use something like ruby or python) which extracts the important stuff and generates the necessary INSERT statements.

What exactly are you transferring from where to where? It certainly sounds probable that you could automate the process, but I -- or, if your heart's set on sticking with Microsoft, whoever helps you out with the job in the end -- would need to know a few more details.

Re:Business Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

First, thanks for taking the time to reply to my question.

I need to bloody cut 'n paste hundreds of tables and charts from Excel and the even crappier Business Objects into Powerpoint. My heart is definitely not set on sticking with Microsoft products, but I have no choice - our workstations are locked to specific applications and we can't install anything, though the installation of pocket firefox on my USB stick attests that this policy is not watertight. Procmail!?! If you can tell me how to achieve the same functionality from a locked down Outlook installation, then we're talking.

I do have access to Python (does this make me young-and-trendy? Thank you very much!), so when I have to produce something, I too make sure it's CSV or HTML, if there's the suggestion I may have to use it again later.

I realise the problem I'm moaning about has far deeper causes and can't be trivially waved away, and I'm looking into the problem to suggest some alternatives and how to construct better plumbing to pipe the data around. In the short term, however, I thought you might have a few tips or tricks to ease the pain, which is what prompted my question...

Re:Business Opportunity

[ajs318]

I haven't got the answers you want, but I'm sure someone else has and I hope you find what you're looking for. Google Is Your Friend. Have a look here too: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ExcelVBA/ at least for the excel stuff. Outlook probably has its own VBA too, which you could use as an alternative to procmail, but I'm really not sure of that. Best of luck, anyway.

You're right that the problems are deeper-rooted; flashiness has a tendency to blind some people to what a Power User would consider absent functionality. (Give me a spelling checker for my text editor first, and I can live without proportional fonts *cough* Wordpad *cough*.) I once got a bollocking for spending 4 hours writing a program to automate something that would have taken me half an hour to do by hand. Do you think my boss apologised to me, the ninth time anyone had to do the same job?

And now BIG one.

[ThePhilips]

Page 257 of TFPDF.

As we have already said, productivity is a measure of the "speed of working" (the number of documents produced divided by the time spent working). Daily productivity is higher when using OpenOffice.org documents proving at the first sight that OOo users work faster than MSO ones. In Figure 10, the productivity of OOo is somewhat twice as high as the productivity of MSO.

That's really big blow into M$' face - with all its "studies" of how M$O improves productivity. That's real numbers - real statistics - gathered from whole lot of people ("1525 PCs" divided by 3 since "... one third of the users never used OpenOffice.org ...") using OO.o (mostly along with MSO).

Re:And now BIG one.

[Slithe]

The problem comes from Excel vs. OOSpreadsheet. I remember that when I had several rows (and a graph) with several thousand datapoints, OO DDRRRAAAGGGED along while Excel handled the datapoints very nicely. I can see that some financial work might require that many data points.

Re:And now BIG one.

[badpazzword]

OOo users work faster than MSO ones. In Figure 10, the productivity of OOo is somewhat twice as high as theproductivity of MSO. I'm using both Word and OOWriter and the only two tasks OOWriter is faster is: - Word does not always replace ' - ' or ' -- ' with the better looking ' - ' - OOWriter has automatic completion for long word (8 chars or more by default, pretty useless in Italian anyway) Please enlighten me :D

Software validation.

[CrankyOldFart]

The answer is simple.

Proprietary closed source software cannot be validated. You cannot trust that it will always work properly, because the source is not available for validation.

http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/comp/guidance/938.html

http://standards.ieee.org/catalog/olis/se.html

http://hissa.nist.gov/HHRFdata/Artifacts/ITLdoc/23 4/val-proc.html#233_SEC

http://www.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/cfrassemble.cgi? title=200621

Software pricing has nothing to do with it. The validation process in regulated environments will cost many times more than the actual value of the software itself. The cost of the actual software is trivial.

Closed source software has no future in regulated, mission-critical applications.

Belief and faith are irrelevant.

Yet another...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another study, and (wait for it) this one has the REAL facts! None of the others did, obviously. Of course, this one agrees with our religion so it must be factual and unbiased and, of course, the truth.

Re: Difference of opinion is not religion

[hackershandbook]

emacs ... ... OO.o.ps ... PS: a small comment such as the above does not mean I have to "slow down cowboy" (who ever cowboy is .. or what I have to do to "slow down cowboy" .. like .. introduce wait loops of something ..) bah .. some of us CAN TYPE you know (and sometimes even without looking at our hairy feet ...)

PDF from Windows?

[wandazulu]

Does anyone else see the irony of a report on free/libre/open software being delivered as a pdf?

(Yes, I know there are plenty of free/libre/open pdf creators, but this report, according to the properties, was created using "Acrobat Elements 7.0 (Windows)").

Re:PDF from Windows?

[EvilRyry]

You beat me to it.
"You should use OSS because it adhears to established standards and its cheaper in the longrun AND it has the functionality you need. We're still gonna use Windows and Adobe, but you should really try this Open Document and open source thing!" --Some Guy

A real study?

[DevStar]

Did this study not read like something that was trying to prove a point rather than a real study? There seemed to be a fundamental lack of questions, that had two answers: one that would show non-FOSS was better and another that would show that FOSS was better. This seemed to start on the premise that FOSS is better, and then I'll give you the data to support that claim. There is nothing wrong with that in propaganda or politics, but from an academic research study, it was sorely lacking.
Note that this does not mean that the conclusions are not correct, but you can't tell any better from this than you can from any "sponsored" piece of research. It's just that this one is quite a bit longer, with a lot more authors.

to extract text from PDFs

[greenguy]

Google for it, and then use the "View as HTML" option. Considering that it's a very long document, use "search as you type" (also known as Control-F) to jump to what you're looking for.

Alternatively, download the document, and email it to yourself. Assuming you have Gmail, that is.

Re:to extract text from PDFs

[fbjon]

Why not just select and copy the text in your PDF reader?

Isn't the author on the OSI Board?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and so he wrote a paper that says OSS is superior, more productive, etc.... shocking.

(go ahead OSS weanie heads, mod me down, flame me, etc.)

OOo API -- whatever happened to "discoverable"?

[zooblethorpe]

Okay, smart one, then try to find a single document describing hierarchy of internal OO.o objects - accessible from such scripts.

I know Python/Java/etc but I can't program anything for OO.o in it since DOM - main subject of programming - is documented nowhere.

VBS is shitty, but you can always record macro and correct it to your needs. For sake of experiment try to record macro in OO.o and see/correct the results. Even "steep" isn't proper adjective for the learning curve.

Thank you for making these points! I've had to use MSO with VBA for years due to in-house automation requirements (joy), and while the language isn't exactly fun :\, the DOMs and application APIs are immediately discoverable thanks to 1) generally extensive and useful documentation, and 2) autocomplete. So I can get something simple up and running usually inside of an hour.

Meanwhile, in OOo land, I've spent hours simply trying to dig through the documentation to figure out the hierarchy of objects and APIs for one frigging object. Who the hell wrote the API docs? I'm not familiar with Java, but the docs seem very Java-oriented -- is that terrible disconnected API soup a Java thing? I'm baffled. And frustrated enough (by other things as well*) that I've been unable to seriously recommend OOo.

* Lousy Asian-language support makes OOo a non-starter in my field of Japanese translation. It's galling, because OOo is sooo close to being a good idea, yet falls painfully far from the mark. <sigh.>

"OpenOffice.org -- it's almost a Good Idea!" TM

Re:FLOSS

[Tesla Tank]

4 out of 5 dentists agree, FLOSS is good for you!

Re:And now BIG one. (Errata corrige of parent)

[badpazzword]

OOo users work faster than MSO ones. In Figure 10, the productivity of OOo is somewhat twice as high as theproductivity of MSO. I'm using both Word and OOWriter and the only two tasks OOWriter is faster is:

- Word does not always replace ' - ' or ' -- ' with the better looking m-dash
- OOWriter has automatic completion for long word (8 chars or more by default, pretty useless in Italian anyway)

Please enlighten me :D

Straight up readability

[The name is Dave. Ja]

From TFB (blurb): ... about the economic impact of FLOSS, not excluding the hidden indirect impact.

Sounds like a Real Networks EULA or something; I guess I won't not be staying away from the article.

---
All-Bran is people! All-Bran is people!

... and won't work in USA

[EmbeddedJanitor]

... Metric...

OSS --> FOSS --> FLOSS --> GLOSS

[mysticgoat]

Free can be either Gratis or Libre

I like the direction that this is evolving toward. Let's start calling it GLOSS.

Talking about bringing more GLOSS into IT operations, and the desirability of getting our documents up to accepted GLOSSy standards— that will work in my institution. I could easily get my Director comfortable with explaining Gratis/Libre Open Source Software concepts in those high level meetings where Grand Strategies are developed. "Free as in beer" was such a show-stopper.

Let's move forward with GLOSS.

TCO Defined?

[dave562]

Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports of savings on the long term - costs of ownership of the software products.

When I read "costs of ownership" I focus on ownership and then consider that ownership implies the responsibility for development and upkeep of the source code. In other words, the people who own a software product are the people who develop the product. For example, Intuit is the company that owns Quickbooks. The thousands of offices that use QuickBooks don't own the software. If you don't believe me, just read the license agreement. They are granted the right to use the software.

I will not for one second argue that developing applications in FLOSS might be less expensive in the long term than developing similar applications using Visual Studio or whatever other proprietary applications are still out there (is PowerBuilder still alive?). The main reason I wouldn't argue in favor of MS et al is because I've seen how Microsoft comes out with a new version of something all of a sudden the API doesn't work the way it used to and you have to rewrite code that worked just fine. Once you've gone through that once or two, you've racked up some pretty substantial costs. So from that perspective, the perspective of the developer, I can see how FLOSS has a lower TCO.

What about the TCO of people who just use the software? What about those people who are still running QuickBooks 2000 because it gets the job done? People who are still running Windows 2000 on Pentium III desktops because they still work just fine. People who aren't modifying the source code and simply want an off the shelf product that offers all of the functionality that they need? Is FLOSS really less expensive for them?

My perception as someone who has been reading both sides but not actively developing the software is that FLOSS is great if you have programmers on hand and you have a dedicated Development department as part of your IT organization. FLOSS is great if you're out there on the cutting edge of technology and getting requirements from management along the lines of, "We want to share this data with our vendor in (insert random country here). Make it work and don't spend too much money on it."

The downside that I perceive is FLOSS lock in which in many cases is worse than vendor lock in. If you're locked into Microsoft, at the very least you can ask just about any "computer guy" (even a FLOSS, Linux zealot) to make your MS stuff work and they can make it work. On the other hand, what happens if someone codes you some great FLOSS accounting package and then disappears? What if that person didn't bother to comment their source code? What does the business owner do when he has to compete with the rest of the market place to find a decent programmer to maintain reams of custom code? I think in that perspective, it is a lot less expensive to just run PeachTree than it is to run, "Uber Accounting 1.0.23 developed by Tim Thorton and four guys in India with some help from Dimitri Haxalotanov."

The other downside that I see a lot is that there seems to be a pretty big section of the FLOSS community reinventing the wheel simply for the sake of doing it. There seems to be a running joke on /. about FLOSS POS systems. The POS systems are a niche market, but there are hundreds of niche markets that are pretty much dominated by Microsoft. In those arenas, FLOSS is playing catch up. If FLOSS and Linux are ever going to replace Microsoft they need to get into all of those niches, but I see the barrier to entry being pretty high. Most Small and Medium Business owners want to deal with a known quantity. They will talk to their peers and ask them how they are doing business, and their peers are going to say they are using Microsoft. They are using PeachTree or QuickBooks. They are using Office (even if it's Office 97 or 2000). Beyond their peers, their vendors are going to say the same thing. T

linux desktop at 4% in US

[Anonymous Coward]

that's more than I would have thought. 8% mark in europe desktop market

Is that a turd holding a wet blanket?

[Anonymous Coward]

the GNU is not Linux image?

Is that a turd holding a wet blanket?

captcha: thermal [blanket]

Re:FLOSS

[TeknoHog]

Nonsense! The 'L' stands for "lossless"

Even in things where it makes sense, such as FLAC, it's a little funny that an additional letter denotes the lack of something. For example, when you take Wires out of LAN, you somehow have to add the W to make WLAN.

Re:FLOSS

[tehcyder]

Free can be either Gratis or Libre, stating Libre in the acronym emphasises that the intent of the acronym is to describe software that can be freely developed on and is not encumbered rather than describing software that is free as in price

At least no-one was silly enough to drop the "free" and just leave LOSS. Imagine suggesting that to your Finance Director.

Under-valued employees

[Visual Echo]

This is the one that's getting me confused... (page 283)

"Employees may perceive that their work is under-valued using 'cheap' OSS products or changing operating model to OSS is problematic."

What?!? You're not willing to shell out the bucks for a real copy of M$O for me? You cheap losers!

"To overcome these pre-conception it is recommended to adopt a policy of both ad hoc and periodic training to fill the lack of knowledge/experience in relation to what OSS products are appropriate and how they might be deployed."

Oh, but now you can actually afford to send me to class and pay me more?

Re:Under-valued employees

[Anonymous Coward]

To the "percieved undervaluing of work using OOS" point. I did a convertion of a management training centre to GNU/Linux and used OOo as the office suite. The comments that I had back were almost all good, no-one even suggested that the software, being free, devalued or undervalued anything mainly because the users didn't actually know that it was free. The main thing for them was that it worked, was intuitive and did what they required of it. The only complaint I had was when someone recieved a PowerPoint file (I kept one machine with duel boot so opened it there) and replied to the sender that we were unprepared to accept doumentation in non-open format from now on - they haven't since :)
The extent of the learning curve was negligible (less than a couple of hours to sot out what did what) but the savings made against the cost of proprietary office suites was immediately appreciated.

Sorry, I'm on a test machine so have not got access to my sig. and sod's law says that this gets modded higher than my normal 1!