How is the UK doing for Open Source Adoption?

munchola writes "CBRonline has put together an article looking at the state of open source adoption in the UK , bringing together data on central government policy and adoption within local government, public services, education, and the private sector. While overall the transition to OSS has been successful, there have been a few setbacks." From the article: "Not all of the organisations involved in the open source proof of concept trials have proceeded with open source adoption, however. In particular, the Central Scotland Police dealt a blow to open source supporters in August 2005 when it abandoned Linux and Sun's StarOffice in favour of Windows. The police force moved to StarOffice in 2000 and later adopted Linux for a new Area Command office at Falkirk. It also worked with IBM Corp to adopt Linux for a server-based document management system to meet Freedom of Information Act requirements, claiming savings of between 20,000 and 30,000 pounds ($36,000 and $54,000) over five years on hardware costs."

Adopt the right product for the job

[deletedaccount]

I think it's a case of evaluating the costs/benefits of different products be they open source or not. It may sound like an obvious process, but often overlooked.

In my experience (middleware), many of the open source products do the job well but require massive investments of time and expertise to get of the ground and maintain, whereas the comercial solutions come with proper support, documentation and decent GUIs. The question that needs to be asked is does it cost more for the licences or more for the manpower?

Don't get me wrong, I'm writing this on ubuntu, I develop using open source technologies and I contribute to various OS projects, but I've watched the UK government pour millions of public money into open source products that would have been beter spent on licences for comercial ones.

University researchers tend not to use Windows

[AndyTheSayer]

While the government and public services are discussed, I thought I'd point out that almost all computation-requiring research done in University science departments I have come across is on Unix machines. Granted, that's only 2 universities I've been at, but speaking to my friends in other science departments and institutions it seems to be rare for scientists to use Windows.

My friends working in the arts or social sciences do tend to use Windows--although they're using it for writing up, as opposed to computations for research.

UK Free Software Network (UKFSN)

[thingie]

The UK also has some initiatives such as the UK Free Software Network (UKFSN) [ukfsn.org] which seem to be doing really well. It's a zero-support ISP which donates profits to open source projects.