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Convincing Your Employer To Go With FOSS?

Posted by timothy on from the ask-him-his-favorite-browser dept.

mark72005 writes "My employer is currently looking at adopting a content management system for use by our technical support staff (primarily first-line end user support, but hopefully it will include deeper levels of support personnel eventually). The candidates are currently Plone (OSS) and Confluence (proprietary, closed-source). For those with experience in each, what arguments in favor of Plone could be made to managers more interested in pragmatism than idealism?"

4 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Stallman's answer by drsmack1 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Stallman is the Michael Savage of software. He seems reasonable until you hear him speak or read his writings.

    Both are unhinged advocates for changes that will NEVER happen without first finding a genie.

    --

    Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind

  2. Re:Confluence is Open Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    And what's the license to this so-called Open Source product?

  3. Re:It's tougher than you think... by sexconker · · Score: -1, Troll

    Our company is even worse than that - we have shown them the cost savings of switching from Microsoft Office (Standard) to Open Office, demo'd the interoperability and the ease of switching, but because it's not Microsoft they just can't consider it "reliable".

    It makes me want to rip my hair out. Then glue it on their faces as silly mustaches. Point is it makes me have crazy thoughts.

    The problem with Open Office is that it's trash for anything beyond a simple text document.
    Excel makes Calc look like a fucking joke.

    And of course, the very real cost of having to retrain people (you WILL have to retrain people) will ALWAYS trump whatever per-license cost savings you'll get.

  4. Re:It's tougher than you think... by sexconker · · Score: 0, Troll

    Calc is useless for anything other than a flat list where you sum columns up and make a pie chart.

    Real businesses do far more.
    Calc either can't do many of the things Excel can, or it claims it can and then proceeds to fail.

    ALL evidence is anecdotal. If Calc works for you, great. Lotus notes and fucking File Maker work for some people. I hear there's some guy using MS Access for a database.

    But for srs bsnss, there is NO question that Excel is leaps and bounds beyond Calc. It's like comparing Paint to Photoshop.

    As for the shitty ribbon UI, I completely agree. It's shit.