Birmingham To Buy More, Not Less Open Source 232
K-boy writes, "Last week, the press (and Slashdot) reported that Birmingham City Council had decided to ditch its open source project because a report said its trial had cost £100,000 more than it would have cost to buy Windows. However, Techworld has discovered that the opposite is true, and the Council is actually planning to use more open source software as well as to roll out Linux in the next few years. The head of IT was interviewed and he gives a fascinating rundown of the problems he had getting open source working with his systems. More interestingly, he points out that now the trial is over and he and his staff have the technical skills, they expect to save lots of money in future by going open source. Oh, and the report's figures were based on the special rates that Microsoft gives Councils just to make sure the short-term budget look worse — £58 for a Windows license as opposed to the normal £100."
Teach a man to fish... (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case the fishing classes cost some money, sure. And the report basically said the would have saved money by purchasing some fish... well duh. - but how long would that fish have lasted?
They now know how to get unlimited fish themselves and are free from the stinking fish market.
Re:NO! (Score:4, Insightful)
Other possibilities are:
-acquire the expertise
-hire someone who has it
Are you trying to paint possibilities as a drawback?
Re:Teach a man to fish... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we need a new saying:
"Threaten to learn how to fish, and get a discount from the fishmonger!"
Since MS seems to give discounts to anyone who looks at OSS, if I was the head of a large city's IT department, I'd put a cheap student intern on the job of writing up a migration plan and publicize the plan loudly. It may be impossible to get everyone to move to OSS (especially with local politics and entrenched technologies), but Microsoft seems to be willing to give discounts on the next round of pricing. ;)
not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:3, Insightful)
It strikes me that thay attempted a roll out of a Linux desktop solution with no previous experience. They would have been occupied in bringing in an experienced company to do the job.
"half-a-million-pound cost of designing and implementing the system cost more than the estimated cost for a Windows XP installation"
What were they implimenting on the Suse desktop that required spending half a million pounds.
"usability problems with the original Gnome interface
Like what, Gnome is specifically designed to provide a rich user interface. Either of them can be replaced by a Windows look alike.
"For instance, existing Windows 3.1 public terminals used a program called Deepfreeze that rebooted the system at the end of each session, something that had to be re-engineered for Linux"
He's kidding, put a line in
"Staff also found that the OS was storing information about the contents of public users' removable media, and for privacy purposes had to develop a script to delete this information"
Like where and how, Linux mostly uses
Re:Site getting slow; article text (Score:2, Insightful)
As would anyone contemplating a move to new systems and new technologies.
From my perspective it appears that both sides have a point. Free software has costs associated with it, just like "paid" commercial software. Those costs can be purchase price, future upgrade costs, support fees, training, planning and implementation time, helpdesk time, lost end-user productivity, and so on.
Anyone considering either needs to review the TCO and impact on the organization at large.
Re:GNOME usability has several elements (Score:1, Insightful)
Short term budget (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people think Microsoft produces nothing but crap, and other people think Microsoft produces the nothing but the finest. Both views miss the point of Microsoft. Microsoft is about consistently delivering mediocrity, year in, year out.
This sounds like damning with faint praise, but consistent mediocrity has its advantages. Think of all the once great products that were run into the ground; or the promising projects that ended up going nowhere. Microsoft might be mean old Mr. Potter, but too often the alternative is like the Bailey Building and Loan without George Bailey. Do you really want Uncle Billy managing your nest egg?
Birmingham chose SUSE; how much trust should you put in Novell's future stewardship of SUSE, even granting the best of intentions?
It's important to acknowledge the leap of faith that Birmingham is making here. Pretending that short term costs don't matter underestimates the guts it takes to do that. Somebody has to take a leap of faith, every now and then, but it doesn't always end happily.
Re:not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:3, Insightful)
You really do have to think about some things in a different way with Linux. Part of the problem is years of preconditioning to the way Windows has (arbitrarily) chosen to do everything blinding you to the alternatives.
Re:not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:2, Insightful)
You're overlooking the fact that they were using Windows 3.1 systems. Why do you think they were doing that? Because they thought it just couldn't be beat?
What's more likely is they're using Windows 3.1 because the terminals are ancient and they don't have the cash to upgrade or replace them. So its rather unlikely that they have CDROMS drives, or flash drives, or gobs of memory for RAMDisks, or the money to equip them any of the above.
I wish that you would not do this (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:NO! (Score:3, Insightful)
I groan everytime i see a pro-linux person complain "all you have to do is recompile the device drivers!"
They just don't get it.
Re:NO! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:1, Insightful)
No, it's consistency, something a GNOME fanboy should be all in favour of.
If I can see the file, I can right-click it and operate on it.
Re:not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting???? You mean "stupid," don't you?
In this day of virtual, all of this could be done with starting a new virtual machine for each user. Once the user is gone, so it the virtual machine. Yes, it would take longer to boot than windows 3.1, but you could have a second virtual waiting in the wings for when the logout happens, then start another one up to be waiting for when the current one is logged out.
There's always more than one way to skin a cat. If you like to have the cat screaming and scratching while you skin it, that is possible, but I prefer to skin my cats when they are dead. People too often want the elegant solution when the right solution is far simpler.
Re:I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:2, Insightful)
(Agreed, I think it'd be nice if the dialog had a button that says "open in Nautilus" for the rare cases where file management is needed.)"
And the reason why Gnome will never be taken seriously.
Are you honestly telling me that in today's world of operating systems, (Mac and Windows), that you are going to force people into a two step process for something that other operating systems do in one step! You obviously fail to understand the user. If Linux cannot do the simple things that Windows and Mac do, then most users will not bother to switch. User in the Windows and Mac world want simplicity. They don't care how complex it is on the backend.
The short comings of Windows and Mac operating systems are not enough to force MOST people to switch to Linux because the simplicity is not there.
Power users and people who are willing to tinker, because you have to tinker: DVD playback is disabled by default and you have to go through hoops to enable it, whereas DVD playback just works in Windows and Mac. Most users just want it to work.
Re:Site getting slow; article text (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Safety: so people can download various trojans, spyware or virus, without hurting other users who use the same terminal down the line.
2) Copyright: People download all sort of copyrighted materials on public terminals. If we allow those to stay on our harddrives, the liability issue is a concern. With those software, it just flush everything out, so it's all good when SBA showing up for audit.
3) Privacy: We don't have to give FBI the information we don't keep. And users don't need to see what any of the history or cache files other prior user, either.
Now, in linux, I suppose each session would be a new user with their own
Re:Site getting slow; article text (Score:5, Insightful)
No, always use the same user account, such as "publicusr". At the end of a session, just run "rm -Rf /home/publicusr/*". That will leave the publicusr home directory intact, but remove all of its contents, including any downloaded material (copyrighted material, malware, etc.) and clear the browser settings and browser history.
If you want to have certain settings exist in the user directory, copy them in from a pre-defined directory, after running the delete.
Don't force a capable athlete to ride in an expensive wheelchair, just because all of your professional experience comes from working with cripples.