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

Re:FLOSS

[GejTOO]

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

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: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.