Re: [Fsfe-uk] BECTA discriminate against FLOSS?

[Alex Hudson]

On Sat, 2004-01-03 at 12:58, ian wrote:
> > I think the big problem with all "official" bodies is that they are very 
> > risk-averse (for good reasons - nobody wants to get a drilling in front of 
> > the PAC or equivalent for "wasting taxpayers' money").  So they will tend 
> > to 
> > go for something that "everybody else is using". 
> 
> True, however they still have a fair track record of wasting taxpayers
> money ;-) They are quite able to do that with whatever systems they use.

I think Kevin's point is better stated as "they seek to minimise risk",
as in they assume they will spend money, and they seek to spend as
little as possible while realising the goals.

To be fair to civil servants, if you can show risk is reduced in other
ways (i.e., lock-in and upgrade cycles) they will generally understand
that language. The real problem with proprietary systems is a bit more
ingrained than the surface purchase decision; training and all sorts of
other things come into it. If you have a team full of MS engineers,
they're not likely to want to learn GNU/Linux admin for example. Change
will affect an organisation in a number of ways, and generally people
don't like it for that reason. Unpredictability is another risk, after
all.

For a long time, though, I've been saying that I think Government /
education / health / etc. will be one of the last sets of people to
really take up Free Software, and I still think that's the case. That's
not to say that the take up won't/hasn't started, of course.

> Tide seems to be turning even if slowly so we just have to keep plugging
> away. Once they do believe FLOSS is here to stay - and the whole of
> China going over to it is reasonably persuasive - things could change
> very rapidly.

There still aren't many "big wins" for Free Software yet, though. The
various Sun desktop announcements are mostly vapour (as far as I've
seen), in the same way a lot of our UK Govt. announcements have been. I
think the few American cities that have taken it up still remain among
the bigger movements. 

I don't believe in big switches anyway, it's always going to be more of
a gradual change than an overnight change. I think next year (i.e.,
2005) we will see GNU/Linux desktop usage overtake MacOS usage, and once
that happens I think it will be unstoppable.

> advantage. If things do start to tip, those who have buried their heads
> in the sand stand to lose out big time to those that have taken the
> trouble to learn the reality. Knowledge is power.

Exactly.

> There is plenty of this type of evidence about. It doesn't take much to
> find it. Just type Open Source Software and Industry into Google.
> Question is Do they want to find it?

They're unlikely to go looking hard, to be honest. 

Although, I think there is a lack of actual rigorous evidence. Most of
it is marketing goo, and doesn't really hold up. Even when rolling out
Windows-based solutions, people still have large case studies: take a
look at the MSDN site, and see the various ActiveDirectory whitepapers
and whatnot. There is a lot of evidence of working Windows networks,
whereas there isn't a huge amount for GNU/Linux (or, any Free OS). I
don't think it's because they're not out there; it's just that they're
not documented.

Cheers,

Alex.