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Indian State Saves $45 Million As Schools Switch To Open Source Software (factordaily.com)
From a report: The Kerala government has made a saving of Rs 300 crore ($45 million) through introduction and adoption of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) in the school education sector, said a state government official on Sunday. IT became a compulsory subject in Kerala schools from 2003, but it was only in 2005 that FOSS was introduced in a phased manner and started to replace proprietary software. The decision made by the curriculum committee to implement it in the higher secondary sector has also been completed now. "It's not the cost saving that matters more, but the fact that the Free Software license enables not only teachers and students but also the general public an opportunity to copy, distribute and share the contents and use it as they wish," K. Anwar Sadath, executive director IT@School said.
No, they always switch back after Microsoft bribes the right people.
I wouldn't comment on the quality (or lack thereof) of open source software compared to their main commercial competitors, since I haven't enough experience of the former to make a proper judgement.
What I would say though is that just because the software is FOSS, that doesn't mean zero cost.
Sure, you don't have to buy licenses, but you still need all the infrastructure to deploy it, and especially to support it. If your users have more difficulty using the open source alternatives for whatever reason, you will spend more money on staff to provide sufficient support. If your support staff aren't good with it either, you might need to invest in training courses and/or more qualified staff. Heck, you might even need an expensive support contract with another company to provide 3rd line support.
- yet. That is exactly what people used to say about IBM products - up until the day in 1993, when IBM posted massive losses and had to lose something like half its workforce, if I remember correctly. If nobody has got fired for buying Microsoft, it may well be because management simply are blind to the very significant cost of keeping a Microsoft only environment in the air, especially on the server side.
In the beginning, when Linux started to be taken serious, there was a lot of nonsense being said, like 'You get what you pay for'; then more and more engineers started wailing about how much trouble Windows servers were, compared to Linux, and in the last several years, even management in many companies have moved away from automatically going for Microsoft software. As far as I can see, Microsoft products are beginning to be regarded as legacy software that you can't get rid of yet. It could be that we will see the day when people will get fired for buying Microsoft, when there clearly are much better options available.
If your users have more difficulty using the open source alternatives for whatever reason, you will spend more money on staff to provide sufficient support.
True - but that comes down to investing in education, and that hurdle is a lot smaller than you might think. A lot of universities teach their students Linux, either directly or indirectly; when most of the advanced SW is available only on Linux, and the teachers all speak from a UNIX/Linux perspective, the students have to either translate everything to Windows terminology - or just pick up Linux. Inevitably there will be a large crowd in the technical jobs, who know and like Linux and are reluctant to use Windows; the last pocket of resistance, in my view, is from the administrative staff, who find they have enough trouble getting their Windows based systems to work and fear that it might be even worse if they have to move to something unfamiliar. Proper education is the obvious answer - once people get used to a Linux based system, they will appreciate the fact that there are fewer problems overall.
So you want India to be patriotic to America?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
But if you have employees who have difficulty learning Foss, you can figure out who to fire in the future. If they are so slow to learn and inflexible, they WILL be a problem in the future. It's a great screening tool.
This is one of those posts that you desperately hope is a joke, but deep down you know the poster actually means it, and thinks they're being clever.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This complaint "it just takes far too long and costs far too much for the city to implement software that's available as standard on the market" is something I have herd repeatedly of several different UK local government IT set ups, all of which are near-pure Microsoft. A report by a Microsoft partner highlighting that people thought that their large central IT is slow to respond and too expensive is a joke, like a bear pointing at another bear and going you s*** in the woods. The actual report given in Munich did not even manage to make a clear case to switch. Despite this the politicians still said jump, which may have something to do with the new Microsoft headquarters in Munich, you scratch my back I scratch yours, and all that.
As far as I can see, Microsoft products are beginning to be regarded as legacy software that you can't get rid of yet.
I agree. After using Microsoft products for 30 years, we are moving away from them at home and at work. And Linux does almost everything we need. Quickbooks and AutoCAD are two things that are making it hard to make a clean break. At home, I'm running Quickbooks 2009 on an early-2000s era Windows XP computer for now - simply because to me, Intuit Quickbooks Pro for Windows is the ultimate accounting software for home/SMB. This could be run in a VM on Linux but my old PC needs a job. I am investigating switching to GnuCash at home to solve this dependency problem. At work, the CAD engineers will get Macs when its time to upgrade their machines. Its just a different set of evils there with Apple but at least we won't have to contend with the Windows 10 subscription model, telemetry, onerous privacy policy, forced updates and upgrades and constant UI changes, et al ad nauseum.
They are talking about savings based on money they don't have.
The linked report says the assessment is based on Rs 150K ($2200) per machine cost for using proprietary stuff. No government in India will spend that sort of money on software licenses, forget about the spent on educational sector. This is imaginary stuff.
Here's the annual budget for the state of Kerala - https://kerala.gov.in/documents/10180/3793571/Revised%20Budget%202016-17_3 Go to page 4, and you can see a section for "Office Expenses" (which should include hardware, software, chairs, hammocks, water coolers, desks, fans and whatever else) for the whole state, including Department of Education - its Rs 220 CR, less than the claimed cost savings.
Its like claiming "I saved $100 million when I decided not to purchase an Airbus."
I am from Kerala. I have heard about the chappie mentioned in the report...a self aggrandizing fool.
Tat Tvam Asi
For some weird definition of good.
If you were discussing switching away from Apple, I'd at least seriously consider your point. Lots of people seem to like Apple. With MS the most you can say is it's what they're used to...but many actively hate it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Micro$oft moved an entire department to Munich and that's what did the trick for the mayor. As a complany, they know how to address the "real" problem.
I'll certainly grant that you're correct in the situation where MS products have been in use for some time and workflows have been built around customizations, templates, etc., as you rightly point out. Migration could indeed be difficult and expensive, although retraining would be far from the largest part of the cost. (I'm obviously a big FOSS supporter but I won't ignore reality.)
In a case where there is a clean start, however ... or the possibility of a relatively clean start ... I think the situation would be a lot different.
Take a small business startup. Do they really need to have MS products? Or will FOSS be more than good enough?
FOSS will be more than good enough. I'm not wedded to Microsoft. Even they have embraced open source so why wouldn't I? I love having the ability to dig into the tools I work with and would find it much harder if I couldn't.