Australian Senate Hears Open Source Is Too Expensive

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 10, 2010 @09:58PM from the you-get-what-you-pay-for dept.

schliz writes "The Australian Government Information Management Office says that a platform change to open source could cost more than it saves. It was pushed to investigate open source software to reduce its AUD$500m budget at a Senate meeting yesterday. From the article: 'Agencies are obliged to consider value for money on each occasion they apply a software,' spokesperson Graham Fry said. 'If the cost of assessing it [open source] was greater than the cost of the software, you would have to think twice.'"

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Think long term by bguiz · 2010-02-10 22:20 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Yes, vendor lock in, training costs, etc, will cost more than maintaining the status quo, since the licenses for proprietary software are still valid for next few years.
But long term?? Without a doubt open source is the cheaper option there. Bite the bullet now, and several years down the road, you'll be thinking what a good choice you made when the current version of Windows, MS Office, et cetera, become obsolete, and you need to "upgrade".