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Australian Senate Hears Open Source Is Too Expensive
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.'"
> Australian Senate Hears Open Source Is Too Expensive
Well, dear senators, this is a normal consequence of vendor lock-in:
"In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without SUBSTANTIAL switching COSTS. Lock-in costs which create barriers to market entry may result in antitrust action against a monopoly."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in
So, of course, there will be a substantial cost for switching ;-))
In the end, it all depends on how long you wish to stay locked-in. You have to consider the matter in the long term to see the advantages, and long-term thinking is seldom seen in modern politics ;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Yes, there are costs to adopting open-source, that's the basic message when you use a bureaucrat to English translator.
How about these from TFA:
A 2007 AGIMO survey revealed that 68 percent of government agencies were either piloting or using open source software.
Centrelink, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and National Archives of Australia were known to use open source products;
Looks like it's getting a fair hearing.
Switching cost includes more the just the cost of the software its self. Just because you're using open source does not mean you don't face a certain degree of lock-in.
Do they really think it's better to pay for an egg every day than for a chicken today and then nothing for the foreseeable future?
....then pay a little for the chicken feed and pay a little for cleaning up the cage and pay a little vaccinating the chicken etc.. Clearly, you have never bought a live chicken for the eggs :)
Sorry, it's too expensive to even assess if there's any money to be saved by switching. Next item on the agenda, can we get some sort of magic machine that makes sure no-one is watching anything dirty in their computer?
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
...or of mere stupidity, if that's a simpler explanation?
On the developer front:
If you have a lot of database stuff, Visual Studio can be much cheaper to develop for, so long as you ignore Microsoft's Architectural Group. For me, moving to Linux isn't just about saving money, really, its to break free from the corporate brain cramp that is Microsoft Architectural guidelines. Visual Studio and C# are great tools, but, if you have to use evaporate 2x as productive multiplier to do 10x as much stupid stuff, there's hardly a savings.
On the office front:
OpenOffice's spreadsheet is not even close to Office 2007 Excel. We developers can say Open Office spreadsheet is good enough, but telling that to someone who lives and breaths Excel is only for laughs.
This is my sig.
As usually, price is the only criterion. And I remember a letter of prime minister of Peru to Microsoft. He explained clearly and plainly that the TCO was moot. It doesn't matter if the analysis is good or bad. It matters that proprietary software is not suitable for government.
Government must not allow for vendor lock-in. It must not create a situation where their data is hostage to a private company.
Government must be transparent in all its processes. Their software included, being open for public scrutiny.
Government must use secure software. No black-box encryption can be considered secure.
Government's duty is to be as accessible to wide public as possible. That means, amongst all, open API for their services, and software available to all citizens no matter what their material status. No paywall of any kind to let only the rich have their way.
OSS is not a choice of "cheaper". It's the choice of "doing things the right way".
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
What the very short article DOESN'T mention is what we in the industry have known for years:
1) A software LICENSE isn't always cheaper than software SUPPORT. And you DO need support for your platform, open source or not.
2) Using a well established vendor software (like say windows), means it's easier (cheaper) to educate people in the software they'll be using, and similarly easier to find qualified support (in house and outsourced alike).
3) Open source doesn't mean the software is FREE, it just means it is open source. Many companies supply the source code for review when they sell their software to customers.
4) The lifecycle of "well established" products is well documented (and generally very long lived), and may factor into the choice, as noone wants to scrap the software again in 3 years (and incur another switchover cost) when there's no longer any support for whatever you chose as your platform.
5) Techonologically, a lot of software just inst available as open source. You may be unable to find the software you need for your platform, thus again driving the costs up if you have to develop it yourself. Noone wants to be stuck with a legacy system for the next 15 years (again).
So for a long term saving, it's often cheaper to stay with what you've got (or for a new installation, choose the same as everyone else) and pay a lot of licensefees, than to change to something that's cheaper in licensing and have a shitload of other costs.
That said, I LOVE linux, open source and free software. But for commercial use, it just isn't always optimal.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
There is definitely a "certain degree" of lock-in, but it's like being trapped in a prison with a key-making machine and full details on every lock in the place. Sure, it'll take a bit of time and effort, but you can get out pretty simply.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The egg production industry has economies of scale and security of supply that a single-chicken-owner can't match.
The bureaucrats last far longer than that and ultimately they are often the ones that make decisions by undermining decisions more often based upon power plays and ego, rather than upon sound economic decisions. In this case one person was making statements full of if, could, necessarily, assumption, all to cover the fact that they had not bothered to conduct any research. The reason for the lack of research, that research could cost more than $500 million dollars a year, one could only guess that Graham Fry was intending to contract out the research into using open source software to a closed source proprietary software company.
Obviously Fry has no concept of foreign debt, no understanding of maintaining control over software upgrade cycles, no idea about monitoring historical trends and how many times they have bought the same software, no concept at all of life cycle costing, believes the lie that closed source proprietary software is free of maintenance costs and, fails to understand how governments choices in this sector impact upon private industry choices and further impact foreign by a nominal factor of 10 (500 million becomes 5 billion). A true asshat that does not belong in a role that legacy, longevity and, political astuteness has provided him, rather than expertise, national economic awareness or even basic common sence. Sounds like the Green Party in Australia is far more technologically aware than the rest (they also oppose censorship).
It seems that global trend of the right shifting to the loony bin and the left shifting to the right of centre leaving the humanity and environment (over greed and power) based parties, in this case the Greens, to take up the centre left position, holds true. With FOSS the bulk of the money in software can always be spent locally and that's down to state and city level, not just country.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I work in state government and what bugs me is we don't put at least say Open Office on every single machine.
It literally costs nothing to do and could at least begin the transition to open source solutions.
Sadly we use document management crap for users incapable of using a filesystem properly, so the saveas and save dialog boxes are replaced by a front end which hands documents being loaded to a specific server. I am not aware if this system can tie in to the open office system.
Stage 1 should be, firefox on every workstation, open office on every workstation, imgburn on every workstation and VLC on every workstation. We should also be virtualising with Virtual Box.
We do in my dept actually put VLC on as default (in conjunction with media player and so on) but it's not enough.
Slowly slowly get the users used to multiplatform open source packages, it doesn't matter if it's a 10 year, very very slow transition, it results in completely free systems in the long run.
I for one am a Windows guy at home but I'd be more than happy to be forced to learn that stuff and support it, from what little I know of linux is it may be missing some UI polish and some enterprise level administration stuff, you can on the other hand lock things down exceptionally well, diagnose problems remotely very well and overall have a pretty reliable system.
It's really sad, but I guess this goes back to the 'no one ever got fired for buying intel' saying, it likely applies to MS applications and OS's as well :/
Different solutions, open source or not, aren't always as functional in the ways you need as what you have now, or what you are considering buying. Now, it's easy to say "Well it's open source! Just hire some programmers to write the functionality you need." However that is a problem for three reasons:
1) That costs money. All of a sudden the "$0 per copy" thing isn't true anymore. You have to factor in the cost of the development team. That is not cheap, at least if you want it done well. Good programmers don't work for minimum wage. So that cost must be factored in.
2) You have to support it. If you are doing major development to something you need, you'll then have to support that development for yourself. This means ongoing support personnel costs. While you might not need to keep the whole dev team on, you'll still need some of them because they are going to have to maintain the software. Again, most costs to factor in.
3) It won't be ready right now. If there's an off the shelf solution that meets you needs now, you have to weight that against the development time for what you'd need to add. It isn't as easy to put a dollar figure on, but it factors in. Saying "Oh just wait 18 months," isn't so easy to do.
One area I've personally seen this as a real problem is video editing software. The OSS solutions are pretty abysmal next to things like Sony Vegas Pro or Apple Final Cut Pro. Now those aren't cheap, but in most cases I bet they are way cheaper than trying to fix up an OSS solution. I mean say you've got a shop with 20 editors that all need their own copy of Vegas. That'll run you $12,000 for the licenses. You decide that the included 40 network rendering licenses are enough for the farm for the workload. You also decide that you want to purchase their yearly-ish upgrades, so about $5,000 in maintenance per year. This assumes no discounts.
Ok, you think you can develop OSS to be the same level of quality for that price? Not likely, you can't even hire a programmer for that, never mind that it'd probably take more than one as well as other people (like designers to make it nice and usable). Never mind that your work either has to wait until its done or you need to buy something now. Makes much more sense to just buy the commercial solution.
So while OSS can be a cheaper solution, and can be a better solution, there is no guarantee it is. All the costs have to be evaluated and that includes things like "Does it do everything we need?" and "Is it easy for non-technical users to make use of?"
According to the headline, the Australian senate says that open source (I guess they mean free software) is expensive, but they actually said that switching is expensive. The headline is supposed to provide us with the best possible understanding of the whole article, given the restricted space, not require us to read the article just to check if it agrees with the headline. Set higher standards, Slashdot!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Switching costs > Licencensing costs
X$ > Y$ per year !? something about this equation doesn't make sense.
Wouldn't you have to know how many years we're talking about?
Yes. in this case it also includes the cost of training people that have never worked with anything but Windows. That is, of course, if you assume you *have* to retrain your existing admins, rather than firing two of them and replacing them with a single Unix admin. In the end, it all depends on how you make the calculation. Sure, a switch *could* cost more, but it *could* also cost less depending on the scenario you choose to follow.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I worked for Vic Roads all the way through their experiment with OS/2. They back end was AIX and department level servers were OS/2 as were the workstations. The rumour going around was that IBM had spent a lot of money making a few senior managers in that organisation very happy to get that deal through. Around about the time I left staff were pushing for Windows98 to be deployed in place of OS/2. I came back to do some contracting and people were betting on how many hours it would run without crashing.
To get anything different in I think you have to have a lot of money behind it. I can see the same thing going on where I work but the product being pushed is clear case.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
cost(assessing) > cost(software) where cost(assessing) > 0 and cost(software) = 0
That's true, but doesn't mean anything, so it's a bullshit reason.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
It's fairly uncontroversial, isn't it?
* there is a cost for running proprietary, closed source software - usually made up of licence costs plus support costs
* there is a cost for running FOSS - not licence costs, but support costs
* there is a cost for implementing any new software to an organisation, in terms of cost of change, reskilling, downtime, training etc.
Just because an app is free, doesn't mean it costs you nothing to implement it. Any decisions regarding moving from one set of software to another should consider the total cost of change
On top of this, governments do not consider the long term - they want to make finances look good for the period they are in power, so they can get a good economic soundbite at the end of a term and hopefully get re-elected.
Is that most CS talent in Australia *should* be classical Unix, the Darl SCO kind ready. .gov.
Australia did not just print out MS CS degrees, they actually funded real Unix CS.
We like our mini military-industrial complex and did fund some maths/CS aspects of our top educational institutions.
So where is the brain *gap* ? We do not have a bunch of xbox playing cubical chumps running our
Someone fixed something with this.
As someone in Australia did with Saddam Hussein and wheat, Australia can do with software and Redmond.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Sounds like we have a difference in administration approach between open source and closed source software.
Open Source
- It's Free
- But if you want something special you will need specialists to write the software and test it for you - Cost lots
- You'll have to pay for your own training
- If you change your computers in future, chances are the software may still be able to be made to work
Closed Source
- It's expensive
- Carefully researched product - will probably meet the needs of your business without much tailoring
- Training will be provided as part of package
- If you change your system in future, chances are you will need to buy the latest version of the software at greater expensive
Options for legacy systems
- virtualisation or emulation - but both have their own administration costs
However, there is one factor that I haven't discussed yet, that is the attitude and stability of the software vendor.
- Some vendors write such highly specialised versions of software that they change little between versions. If you are using such a system then is it probably worth risking the software being closed source.
- But some vendors want to maximise profit, so they will revise the software with short lifecycles and sometime be sneaky enough to remove commonly used features on more basic versions of the software, so that when you do upgrade you have to pay even more or change your processes around the lack of that particular feature.
The horrible truth is that IT companies have a habit of pulling wool of the eyes of governments. This is partly due to the fact that the requirements are often vague and incomplete, but also due to the complexity that governments insist on without understand the consequences. Fact is programming time is like any other engineering type function, it costs money.
With regard the the article, there is too little information to say whether the Australian Government have made the right choice. However, if you want to base the information on the experience with UK government, chances are the politicians have made a complete hash of whatever decision they have made, because they when want a system to perform too many different functions without realising that they are trying for levels of efficiency that could never be achieved, cost more money and finally ending up with a system that doesn't work properly due to fundamental design structures.
Sometimes it is best not to try and implement a one size fits all policy, but too break parts down into their constituents and build systems on a more modular basis. For example two departments may use software from different vendors and have to exchange data, with each other in a define way - the interface software could be open source based and maintained either by the company/organisation/government or a contractor. However, there will be a point when you get to the lack of diminishing returns when trying too hard costs even more, at which point you implement risk management and move on. The problem is that governments are full of people that think they "Know it All", but they in fact "Know everything about nothing" and don't understand when to stop arguing a case as they is no more benefit to what they are saying, obstructing proper process.
So to answer, Open Source or Closed Source - it depends on the application and how you understand the pitfalls.
If you can call the product of a pumped-full-of-chemicals, non-species-appropriately fed, mentally crazy chicken, still an “egg”.
Have you ever tasted the egg from a chicken that lives and eats, like it’s supposed to? After that, a industrial cooked egg tastes like a piece of nasty jelly, void of any taste.
And with the healthiness it’s even worse.
You get what you pay for...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Users of open source software don't exist in isolation; the economy of scale is huge in their case, too.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Yeah, you also have vendor lock-in with reiserfs.
Microsoft isn't the ONLY choice when it comes to vendors. Microsoft is just a supplier of OS (and a few applications). For mission critical stuff, most companies use stuff that's a LOT more expensive than what microsoft charges. And frankly, yes, when I have a business critical error in an MS product, I WILL get it fixed, one way or another, that's what I do for a living, and I'm good at my job. But when all else is said and done, show me another OS that'll run for instance a SAP gui, Toad, Quest Space Manager, Business Objects, Dimension and Oracle, has decent text editing, integrated network support, spreadsheet and is intuitive. Show me, and I'll happily try to convice my customers to choose that platform. But thing is, MS being the single OS that EVERYONE supports, you're pretty much locked in on that platform because of your application needs.
That doesn't mean I can't choose MySQL over Oracle (if my applications support it) and similar. It doesn't mean my server side HAS to be MS if I can do it with something else. However, if I do choose the OSS product, I still have to get my business critical support from someone who will charge a bundle.
And when all else is said and done. It's all about my business. Software should adapt to my business, my business shouldn't have to adapt to the software. So IF I choose a software that can do what I want, that'll be a lot easier (and cheaper) for me to live with, than with software that needs millions of dollars in development before it can do what I need it to. And that's just the initial business costs, think about the TCO and added support costs aswell, the investment in knowledge and manpower etc. and you may understand why so many businesses are choosing the "easier road".
In essence it's the inhouse vs outsource debate in a nutshell. With inhouse, you have total control, but also total responsibility and have to carry the total cost. With outsource, you put everything into the hands of someone else, and they provide you with a service (hopefully) equal to what you pay for it, and that payment is pretty much transparent for a number of years.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
Still too soon. His wiki page makes sad reading BTW.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"If the cost of assessing it [open source] was greater than the cost of the software, you would have to think twice."
Newsflash Mr Fry - if you're using free software that's what you'd expect. Since when did zero multiplied by anything become a number?
Imbecile.
I would like to see open source used more, but it won't save taxpayers money.
If the government has a billion pounds in tax money and spends £500 million on Microsoft Office and £500 million on limos, coke, whores and personal swiss bank accounts, what will happen if they ditch MS Office and get free software?
a) They reduce tax by £500 million.
b) They reduce tax by more than £500 million by also paying back the money they embezzled.
c) They spend £1 billion on limos, coke, whores and personal swiss bank accounts.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
While document handling, such as the replacement of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word dependent operations, benefit massively from the switch to standards compliant software, I'm afraid that CAD isn't there yet. Try designing circuitry or hardware with open source software and you'll see what I mean. Tools like AutoCAD for your metal work and the circuit libraries for PowerPCB just aren't avaialble in the open source equivalents.
For Active Directory, though, that monster should have been replaced by Bind and Kerberos and LDAP years ago.
...software costs are so low that for me they're not even on the radar. For me the biggest factor in TCO is people costs, not hardware or software.
In the quantities I procure what used to be called the MS Desktop Pro license (a copy of the current desktop OS, copy of the current version of MS Office Professional Plus and Windows server and Exchange CALs) costs me ~$200 per year per workstation - chickenfeed, really.
A call to the helpdesk costs about $25, a deskside visit costs about twice that but since it isn't my field I'm not gonna address application development costs, even if I did think our developers were smart enough to code in something other than Windows. Hell, they can't even figure out how to make existing applications compatible with IE8.
But I digress - support types generally have little love for software developers and vice versa ;-)
Anyway, over the long term open source software would probably save money but in the short- and medium-term (let's say three years) migration costs would be ridiculously expensive - sticker shock alone keeps it out of the budget.
Part of the up side is I'd be able to extend PC and server lifecycles for a year or so since Linux generally requires less hardware than Windows, but as mentioned earlier OO Spreadsheet is not an acceptable replacement for MS Excel for power users and there is no direct migration between MS Access and OO Database - the only way you can get them to play nice with each other is through an ODBC connector.
I've got one 500-user Access database (yeah, the person who thought that up should be fired but it happened before I hired in) that simply can't be migrated to OO - right now I'm trying to get it migrated to either SQL or Oracle.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
In the end, it all depends on how you make the calculation. Sure, a switch *could* cost more, but it *could* also cost less depending on the scenario you choose to follow.
Having actually replaced proprietary systems with open source alternatives, I can tell you none of the expense talking points that usually get thrown around by people invested in Microsoft products have ever materialized. There are always minor disruptions, but no worse than moving to the next version of a proprietary product. The license savings have been huge, but it's more than that. You don't realize how often proprietary companies come back and back for another drop of blood until they're gone. It's like Little Shop of IT Horrors. The up front license costs are only one layer of cost savings.
This may not be a great example, but the last company I worked at saved big when we replaced Exchange with Gmail, which I don't consider an open source product. Not only did we scrap Exchange and the associated server OS licenses, we let the Exchange admin go and replaced them with a lower cost developer. That saved a ton of money and we were able to channel that savings into increased productivity. Double bonus. Gmail is simple enough the help desk could manage the administration.
Really, it's all in how you implement the changes. The barrier for most companies is that their IT decisions are being made by people invested in proprietary technology. They'll never get out from under it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
For governmental use open-source is preferable even if it initially costs more -- you end up paying to your local software support and programmers, creating more jobs, supporting local IT industry and, most important, contributing to own GDP. Money payed for foreign company is money lost for your country, while money payed to local developers stays and works.
This is the Australian Public Service. Sacking people is all but impossible based on my experience.
Australian government keeps paying drug addicts new doses instead of drug rehab treatments because is cheaper.
Exactly!
So switching your office from Windows XP to Windows 7 and switching the Servers from Server 2003 to Server 2010 would actually have MORE of a cost than switching to OSS alternatives as the costs you talk about are exacerbated by the fact that you have to buy all new software licenses from microsoft, bot all new Apps as well AND new hardware.
I just saw a client do this, their upgrade from XP and 2003 to current cost them a whole lot more than expected. Drivers for Windows 7 did not exist for a lot of the older hardware that was chugging along on XP, so that hardware had to be thrown away and replaced with new.
Then the final insult, they did all this and discovered their upgrade to Exchange 2010 caused their room scheduling system that interfaces to the touchpanels at each conference room to break.
OOPS! that scheduler they relied on now does not work, they tape printouts on the doors until the vendor certifies their plugin with microsoft.
ALL switching has costs, Microsoft upgrades cost as much as Switching to OSS lately and it will only get worse.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.