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Cost-Conscious Companies Turn To Open Source
Martyr4BK writes "BusinessWeek has a slew of special reports today on open source software discussing the benefits for buyers who are cost conscious and open source being the silver lining for the economic slump. They even have a slideshow of 'OSS alternatives' like Linux, Apache, MySQL, Firefox, Xen, Pentaho, OpenOffice.org, Drupal, Alfresco, SugarCRM, and Asterisk. These are all good examples (we use a bunch of them already); what other open source software can I use to drop my company's IT costs, and maybe get a decent bonus for the year?"
I use planner.
Have you tried it? I find it is adequate for my needs. Mind you I am not the most hardcore project management user out there...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I used to think the TCO argument was rubbish. But then I did some research this year on bug tracking software for my company. At least in this one area, it was obvious that while you'd save a few hundred initially on open source solutions, these solutions were much less polished and supported than their commercial competitors. I would have had to do a lot of additional installations and customization to get things working right. And there was no quick answer from a tech support email address when I would have trouble. And in another recent purchase of music production software, the open source versions were an absolute joke in comparison to commercial varieties. Open source is great. I use Firefox and Open Office all the time. But for business and specialty applications, commercial applications are still often much more solid and cheaper in the long run.
-- http://ninthagenda.com/
And what about the _total_ cost of ownership?
I'm all for open source software, don't get me wrong, but switching from a known solution that Works For You(tm) even though it's horribly expensive to a $0 one but with a steep learning curve can be disastrous.
Would you replace Oracle with PostgreSQL if "all" you had in house were Oracle gurus?
I know, this is one example, others may not be that extreme. But taking this kind of decision has to be done with some caution.
In addition, the open source IT staff seem to just want to constantly be changing everything when something newer and flashier comes out (read that as closer to functionality to a purchased project). In one year we have had 3 different email servers, with the associated problems of swapping over. Or the IT recommended web casting software works on MAC and windows but doesn't have full functionality on the Linux boxes. I was hoping that would change when we change the IT staff lead, but the new guys seem the same.
I also find it amusing that the anti-MS IT staff bitch about things like MS Outlook, but then celebrate when Thunderbird adds a function bringing it closer to MS Outlook.
Over half the company just use their own personal laptops due to the hassle, which ironically, defeats the crippling obsession with security that the IT guys have.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Ever since I started using Nagios, I've been able to slowly help the rest of the IT department consider open source when starting projects. Now we use Nagios, Backuppc, MySQL, Perl, Splunk, Snare and Ubuntu LTS for servers. The clincher was not having to pay for licensing for a SQL server, OS and all. We're all so tired of dealing with the behemoth of a licensing scheme that Microsoft uses, and that's really what pushed us to alternatives.
Just goes to show that anything can be implemented badly...
Where i work we have 2 separate networks serving different parts of the company, one is all OSS while the other is primarily MS based.
The OSS one is faster, has better uptime, cost very little to build (runs entirely on hardware that was discarded by the MS oriented staff), and requires minimal maintenance. Users don't really notice any difference until something goes wrong, which happens far less frequently on the OSS network. The bean counters notice because of how under-budget the OSS based network is.
The MS guys are jealous of some of the fancy kit we have to play with, but we've still spent a lot less overall.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Obviously, you've never worked for a corporation using commercial software. Try emailing, for instance, Oracle's tech support. At one time, it took me *two months* to get the response I needed from Oracle. Or rather, a response that *didn't* solve my problem: "that feature has been deprecated since Oracle 8i". It took them two full months just to find that an obscure feature that was essential to my work wasn't supported anymore.
Based on my 25+ years of experience of using software, both commercial and free, today I'd rather have Google and the source code than any paid tech support.
Sorry for the bluntness, but... holy crap! not The Gimp Thread Again. It boils down to:
1) Gimp is nice
2) Gimp gets better with time
3) Gimp's interface is horrible
4) Gimp's interface gets better with time
5) Gimp doesn't have CMYK support
6) This is not important to a whole lotta people
7) But it is a show stopper for some
8) iterate until hell freezes over
There, one less gimp thread!
-- dnl