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

[ian]

On Fri, 2003-12-19 at 22:56, Simon Waters wrote:

<SNIP>
> In free software it is inevitable that the earlier projects will be
> relatively more expensive than later projects,

It surprises me that the "investment" angle is never highlighted much.
Most companies will invest say double in year one if it means year 2 to
10 give even a 20% pa payback in return. Its pretty obvious that it
doesn't take 10s of billions to maintain and distribute an Office suite
so taking those 10s of billions out of the equation simple reduces the
global cost. You don't need a TCO study to work that out. In fact it
would be more efficient for BECTA to do a specific analysis of what it
is in OO.o that is missing that is vital to schools and then for the
DfES to pay for the necessary development to fill the gaps (if any). I
suspect that the reason they don't think like this is that they can't
get their heads round the fact that the conventional commercial market
models are not automatically the most efficient or effective. They need
educating rather than being ranted at.

<SNIP>
> 
> Despite having run Desktop Linux and Unix boxes for years it has never
> been the cheapest option. It may have been the best value, as we were
> using a lot of them for scientific, and development work, as well as
> desktop work. Recent developments in Linux may make it the cheapest
> option,

We have 10 schools with significant Linux at the desktop installations
and we do it commercially. There is no doubt that these solutions are
less expensive than equivalent MS ones. I'd be willing to go head to
head with anyone on a tender. The only significant reason not to do it
everywhere is that a lot of specific software is dependent on Windows.
And this is despite the license costs being much lower for schools than
outside.

>  but I'd still sell on stability and security, unless I was doing
> a big desktop roll out where the licence costs saved allowed a lot of
> customisation and new development work.

The most effective initial sales pitch to individual schools is cost.
Most of those with purchasing authority know little of security and
stability and simply don't believe things like there is no virus problem
with Linux. In my view the most important reason to use GNU/Linux and
OpenOffice.org is to move to open standards for as many of the
fundamental IT operations as possible. This is bound to lower longer
term costs. The only reason we need Windows is to run applications so
its far more important to have an open OS than it is to have Open apps.
Ideally everything would be free but at present I'd settle for the OS,
major office tools and data formats. OpenOffice.org is likely to be the
key for the masses which is why I treat supporting that community with a
high priority.

Regards,
-- 
ian <address@hidden>