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."
Site getting slow; article text (Score:5, Interesting)
Birmingham City Council has defended its year-long trial of desktop Linux, claiming it to be a success, despite an independent report showing it would have been cheaper to install Windows XP.
In an exclusive interview with Techworld, head of IT for the council, Glyn Evans, argued that the higher cost resulted from the council having to experiment with the new technology and build up a depth of technical understanding, as well as fit it with the complex system already in place.
The 105,000 saving that the report says would have resulted from going with Windows XP has also come under question as it was calculated using the special discounted licence rate that Microsoft offers councils - something critics argue is a calculated effort to prevent public bodies from building up technical knowledge of open source offerings.
With Birmingham's trial period over and with lessons learnt and understanding gained, the Council now expects to make cost savings over time, and contrary to press reports which claimed Birmingham had scrapped the Linux initiative, it will in fact "significantly increase" its use of open-source software, Evans said. The trial also had other positive results, he claimed, such as demonstrating the ease with which Firefox and OpenOffice.org can be substituted for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office.
The trial was carried out with the government-backed Open Source Academy (OSA), and planned to install Linux on 330 desktops in the council's libraries service, split between staff PCs and public access terminals, in an effort to build up practical experience that could be drawn on by other public-sector bodies.
It ran from April 2005 to March 2006, but is still ongoing, with the council refining its Linux desktop image and planning further rollouts next year, according to Evans. "The project did not end when the element of original funding ended, because it is part of the Library Service strategy," he told Techworld. "This project is still very much ongoing, and now that a stable image... has been developed, we would expect significant movement forward."
Over-ambitious
He admitted the council's original plans were over-ambitious, with rollouts of Linux-based staff and public PCs originally scheduled during the one-year trial period. In reality, ongoing testing of the desktop configuration means no Linux desktops have yet been installed. Instead, 96 public desktops and 134 staff desktops are running open source applications such as the OpenOffice.org office suite and the Firefox browser.
The council does plan to begin migrating those desktops to its Suse Professional 9.3-based desktop OS, however, a plan that should go into action in the near future, according to Evans. He said that far from scrapping the Linux initiative, as has occurred in some other high-profile cases such as the London borough of Newham, Birmingham is planning to "significantly increase" the number of desktops involved with the project.
Evans' description of the project is a sharp contrast to the findings described in a case study authored by iMpower Consulting at the formal conclusion of the trial in March, which is available from the OSA's website [pdf [opensourceacademy.org.uk]]. The case study found that the council had failed to make a business case for its Linux desktops, largely because the half-a-million-pound cost of designing and implementing the system cost more than the estimated cost for a Windows XP installation.
The difference is largely down to high "team costs", including setting up the project, technical definition and design, development and testing and training, all of which amounted to roughly 100,000 more than the estimated team costs for a Windows installation. The total cost of the trial was 534,710, compared to an estimated 429,960 for Windows XP.
"The project showed that there are considerable costs incurred in de
Re: (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, trai
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (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 whe
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.
Re: (Score:2)
TCO hype --debunked! Up yours, Microsoft! (Score:3, Interesting)
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: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. ;)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean:
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day
Teach a man to fish and he gets rammed by a US submarine [pbs.org]?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Teach a man to fish... (Score:5, Funny)
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Mod parent stupid (Score:2)
What is this, the next generation of Solviet Russia jokes? Come on.
Re: (Score:2)
Teach a man to fish, and he'll spend all afternoon sitting in a boat drinking beer.
Re: (Score:2)
Teach a man to brew beer and you waste a lifetime.
Re:Teach a man to fish... (Score:4, Interesting)
Now if you are a programmer, and your desktop linux is somehow reducing your ability to write code (IE you spend an hour each day dealing with software updates or something) then windows is a better fit... Although I'm much more productive coding under linux than windows....
Show a man the ocean (Score:3, Interesting)
Wisdom vs Intelligence (Score:3, Interesting)
With all of the rigged numbers originating in incumbent market dominators showing up in city council policy and budget analyses, it's obvious the councils need guidance. I know that the NYC City Council doesn't have any resources with "BS logs" of ongoing vendor distortions, except for consultants like me. State/federal or even international organizations that serve the people administered by these city councils should produce research to weed out the lies. Sort of like a "City Council Consumer Reports". In the US, the GAO (now "Government Accountability Office"), or the Office of Management and Budget, or some team at Treasury at the federal level, could produce them. Or the state Comptroller. Or maybe a "City Councils Association", that could reach internationally.
Government is really big. In the US it's about 25% of our economy, though that includes the military (about 30% of total). So maybe these guidelines are already being produced, perhaps redundantly. The government response would be to produce similarly obscure guidelines on finding the guidelines. That's how government gets so big (especially the military). Is there a better way for City Councils to share wisdom, not just knowledge, about the information used to make these decisions?
Re: (Score:2)
I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ... (Score:4, Interesting)
At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE.
I use Gnome, but it sure has usability issues. I hope the Gnome developers will take the trouble to understand why Birmingham dumped Gnome - sfter selecting it initially.
what usability issues... (Score:2)
What specific usability issues would the average user have in Browsing, Emailing and Wordprocessing ? was Re:I hope the Gnome folks read this bit
Re: (Score:2)
There is no easily-discoverable user interface that allows a user to type in the name of a file they wish to open.
Save-file dialogs use a totally different layout to open-file dialogs, requiring the user to learn two different user interfaces where the job can be trivially simplified to just one simple interface.
Gnome: Logical but not Practical (Score:2)
Yeah. Yeah. Let the flames about "Microsoft's way; Not 'natural' way!" begin. But who do you think has spent the most on usability studies? Who's studied how people like things presented, the most? Nerds should deal with
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical (Score:4, Informative)
Instead of "Do you want to save the changes? Yes / No / Cancel" you get "You have unsaved changes. Save / Don't Save / Cancel". All of your choices are verbs. This avoids monstrosities like "Click Yes to do xxxx, click No to yyyyy", which I've seen in numerous Windows programs (Microsoft Access comes to mind).
From: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExper ience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGControls/chap ter_18_section_2.html [apple.com]
"Button names should be verbs that describe the action performed--Save, Close, Print, Delete, and so on. If a button acts on a single setting, label the button as specifically as possible; "Choose Picture...," for example, is more helpful than "Choose..." Because most buttons initiate an immediate action, it shouldn't be necessary to use "now" (Scan Now, for example) in the label. Don't use push buttons to indicate a state such as On or Off (where it would be more appropriate to use checkboxes).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I sometimes wonder how much better GNOME would be today if all that energy spent arguing over button order was spent instead solving real usability issues.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyhow, ignoring the GNOME vs. KDE issue (which I hope won't flare up), there are other questions here: how did they come to initially decide on GNOME? Perhaps their decision-making process wasn't very thorough, if they later spent 3 months of work to arrive at a dead end. If they really didn't know the subject matter, then the decision to go GNOME may have been premature; they shou
Re: (Score:2)
This can't be good (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't (yet) run Linux but have fiddled with a Slack 10 and Debian installation but the above comment can't be good for the folks developing Gnome.
Can someone with a bit more insight explain why one would work better in the above scenario since, presumbably, both do the same thing?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Gnome vs KDE? Toss 'em both! (Score:2)
Gnome and KDE are both big, bloated, and slow. I have a lot of older hardware, and have spent some time hacking on Slackware 10 and 11 to set up an environment that's far from perfect but good enough. Knoppix will tell you it just can't run KDE in a measly 64M of RAM.
A 4G hard drive is a bit cramped these days, so I've been experimenting with Reiser4, but who knows what will happen to that file system now, and "bzexe" (gzexe using bzip2 instead of gzip), and installing as few packages as possible while
Re:This can't be good (Score:5, Informative)
To Grossly over simplify, Gnome sacrifices customizability for usability and simplicity. KDE sacrifices simplicity for customizability In environments that demand a certain configuration which doesn't match Gnome's ideal usage case, KDE is often a better fit.
They're both great desktop managers, and each has strengths in certain areas. And yes, I know "customizability" isn't a real word.
BBH
Re: (Score:2)
KDE==Practical/"Don't make me think"/Get-stuff-done
Re: (Score:2)
Gnome has the start menu (well, Applications) at the top left, with the clock also at the top right, but open windows are at the bottom.
This makes things wildly confusing for clueless Windows users, who franticly search for their precious clock and start button (laugh all you want, I've given more people KDE than Gnome because of this).
Re: (Score:2)
Right click the clock, select move, and move it to the lower right.
Right click notification area, select move and mave down beside the clock.
Right click the top panel, select add to panel, select main menu.
Right click the main menu button, select move and move it down to the lower left.
Right click the top panel and select "delete this panel".
Optional: Remove the "Show desktop" button, Workspace switcher, and trash from the panel.
And now you have the screwed up UI that i
So far behind? (Score:2, Interesting)
What's the logic of going with a version that is so far behind? I know that you don't go bleeding edge with such a project but 9.3 is ancient. I guess it is still supported but it seems like being *that* far behind would be leaving yourself open to a number of security/compatibility issues.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Suse Professional 9.3 was released, what, a year and a half ago? That's not precisely ancient, especially given that the council apparently took time to take an existing base and then do their own customization.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? My desktop machine is on 9.1. I installed it from the latest available version substantially less than 3 years ago.
And yes, I am rather annoyed that they've stopped issuing updates for it.
Under question? (Score:5, Interesting)
How could the savings be "under question" because of the discounted rate? What, do you expect them to calculate the savings while pretending that they would have had to pay full price? If so, Microsoft would have rightly stated that they were massaging the numbers just to make open source look good.
What's more interesting is whether their numbers for open source included the costs of Windows XP, as they didn't actually install any Linux systems. (Not exactly a big win for Linux there, either.) How do you spend £534,710 on installing OpenOffice and Firefox on 230 Windows computers, and playing around with Suse for a year, anyway?
Re: (Score:2)
My impression is that they've been messing around with trials of different replacement technologies, agree that Firefox and Open Office are clear wins and are still trying to decide on spots where Linux would make sense. The money is probably mostly salaries of people putting in full- or part-time work on it.
But, yeah -- that "based on the special rates" bit is brai
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well... this is a case study. As such, one question that comes to my mind is "how does this apply to my environment?" If I happen to be the Burmingham City Council, or another such Council it seems, then there's no question. But what if I'm representing another entity that doesn't get the special discounts? Obviously that's a part of the case study that needs to be highlighted as highly situational.
There's also a whole slew of i
oh dear.... (Score:3, Funny)
start the Gnome vs. KDE bun fight... 3, 2, 1...
Great news (Score:2, Funny)
Thees is bostin' nyohs! Oi main, an' all, oos Brummies 've bin pronaincing it as Leenux, and not Loinux, seence forever, loike. Way don' naid no steenkin' Moicrosoft!
Anywy, are yo mashin?
I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have long said that Gnome had a problem for most users in a typical business environment, and was met with comments referring to me as a troll and as one who was just a KDE fanboy.
This article articulates just one of the problems with Gnome.
For this particular problem, there are folks who say that I should use "ctrl + L". Though this keyboard shortcut is not even documented anywhere near where one would want to use it. Imagine that.
These are just *some* of the issues that make Gnome a non-starter for me and I am glad the Britons found out as well. This will make the developers think about what users want. How can a desktop environment take three months to configure? This is insane! These are not my words but quotes from the article.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh... what file selector dialog and where? And what are you trying to type in it anyway? File names? Love letters?
Because GNOME-VFS is basically inadequate and no one has got around to writing a system that actually work
Re: (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 Wi
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
As to convincing users to switch from Windows and Mac to Gnome... Is that the goal? Hate to break it to you, but it's not. In fact, that isn't even on the list of Gnome goals.
Ratboy
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Fedora Core is a free operating system that offers the best combination of stable and cutting-edge software that exists in the free software world."
"Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS to
Re: (Score:2)
Both GNOME and KDE are doing this the hacky stop-gap way, and the only difference is that KDE folks have a solution that works, kind of. The elegant way would be to allow this stuff to work on any application. I'm not calling the present situation elegant until I can do "cat http://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] ".
You are aware that there's a FUSE/kioslave bridge available, aren't you?
It's no
Their calculations ignore Opportunity Cost (Score:2)
That is, several questions come to mind:
- What's the cost for not being able to do something? That is, if there end solution doesn't support a given task, what's the cost? Perhaps they don't even know they could perform this task right now.
- Imagine instead of spending time on this project, you did something else with your resources.
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or just don't fit public terminals with HDDs -- boot them from CD, or read-only Flash drive, with all writable directories in RAMdisk.
You
Re: (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
Re: (Score:2)
You answered that with your first observation I think: they were bringing their own staff up to speed with Linux administration.
This shows their inexperience. Deepfreeze returns the machine to the exact state in which it was previously. It's designed so that people can screw up the machine and it'll be fine for the next person. You need somet
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (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 scra
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: (Score:2)
Only Microsoft can sell you Windows.
That's the important difference. It's about the song, not the singer.
British Pounds in Alabama? (Score:2)
Interesting Comments On Usability (Score:2)
I thought usability was Gnome's strong point? Time to re-evaluate perhaps? I've done some small trials of Gnome and KDE with some office works and they all seem to come down on the side of KDE. Whether it's because there
Re: (Score:2)
Just my personal opinion, which is all you can really give here: no, it isn't. If anything, I'd say GNOME's strong point is its slavish obedience of the directives of so-called usability experts. The fact that most people seem to struggle to use it should tell us something: a lot of usability experts don't have a clue what they're talking about.
Vendor lock in logic. (Score:2)
Vendor: Ah! let me tell you all about the suite tools an licensing for the 2007 roll out.
Cust: Well, our budget is thight. We have a team working to port part of the application to Open Source servers.
Vendor (smiling): Do you have ANY idea how much is going to cost?
Cust: Well, the actual numbers are a big point of contention.
Vendor: I'll save you the agravation, IBM? Oracle? they have R&D and D stands for deep pock
Applications good, OS problematic (Score:2)
Of course it shows that actually making Linux the centerpiece of your FOSS change is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If you make applications that people don't need to install a new OS to use, and then make sur
Typical media report: clearly false (Score:2)
The cost of proprietary applications (Score:2)
See where you went wrong here? You bought non-portable software, and also it was proprietary, so you were locked into doing business, in a world full of millions of programmers, with one entity in order to get the maintenance that you wanted. See all the IT workers whining about having a hard time finding a job (i.e. people you could hire very cheaply)? You can't use them. You don't get to take advantage of the market. You did
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
You need some level of support agreement with either solution - Windows or Linux. Comparing the costs of a MSFT support agent or a Red-hat/Novell/Ubuntu support agent is another choice (and cost driver) altogether. As is training and converting users.
My guess is it is a similar cost of support with either solution. I also expect the USER training required to migrate to Vista is similar cost to migrating to L
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:4, Informative)
Unix-like systems don't usually fail without good reason. So anybody working on them really needs to know their arse from a hole in the ground. This means Unix techies are expensive -- because they're good. They have no choice but to be. And there's more transferrability of skills between software: much of what you might learn about Linux can be applied to Solaris and the BSDs, some of what you might learn about MySQL can be applied to PostgreSQL or Firebird, Perl is a bit like PHP, ProFTPD and Apache have similar configuration file syntaxes, and so forth.
Basically, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Re: (Score:2)
In short, there wont be as many *nix tech's because it does actually require a decent amount of understanding into what is happening within a system to administrate a *nix implementation successfuly. Windows is just too easy to administrate (A point in its favour if "out of the box" configurati
Re: (Score:2)
Of course what everyone else is doing in your area plays big into how much admins cost. If you traing/hire linux guys, and the next big hire in your town/industry/country is for a big windows install, then your employee's don't have the experience to be as desireable to be sucked away (=lower admin cost.) But if the next big job is that 5 other companys decide to transition to linux also, then you got a bidding war to keep an admin.
'sed s/l
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
NO! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (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: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is not that $39 is really unreasonable. The problem is that the lock-in makes it so that more and more can be added to that $39 as time rolls on.
Re: (Score:2)
But that's not the point. In "theory" I could get a compiler, a debugger, OOo source and analyze why my documents are crashing.
I really *want* to go to OOo. It's just not there yet and even as a programmer, there is no way I can justify spending the time to make it meet my needs when my n
Re: (Score:2)
I used to be one of those sort of, and I finally listened to the others saying how much modern Linux has changed and decided to move up from "compiling my own device drivers" to "just a GUI user". Surprisingly it has worked very well.
I installed Debian Etch on my laptop with KDE. Synaptic works at least as well as aptitude for package management. Abiword is excellent. CUPS had no problems working wit
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
one of the problems with adoption of foss is in my opinion that people don't know how the whole mentality works. i sometimes wonder if the average worker goes into his local computer shop, doesn't find any software on shelves for linux and therefore concludes that there
Re: (Score:2)
i sometimes wonder if the average worker goes into his local computer shop, doesn't find any software on shelves for linux and therefore concludes that there isn't any. it wouldn't occur to him/her, that you can download software which would for windows cost tens of thousands of dollars free of charge from the net for linux, because he/she just wouldn't look there for software.
It is because the average Joe knows that the only software that you download from the internet is pirated software. :)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
A fact which is completely irrelvant to about 98% of the population.
You have this totally backwards. Who exactly do you think it is that has specialized apps? Companies do. If they have to be rewritten, thats gre
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In many cases, they continue to rip it off, so they view the security and low cost of OSS as a none issue.
Yep. Most people I know never bought any software (except possibly games and the software included with their computer), they just just pirate it instead. So cost is not an issue, has never been an issue and the probability of getting caught is next to nil. They'd rather continue to pirate Windows and Windows applications than try Linux or other open source software.
And then there is the "don't trust unknown people on the internet" advice, which for them translates into "I know Microsoft, ther are well-k
Quit feeding this troll, guys (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, if you are living in a cave.
In truth (and in reality), no piece of software is ever truly *free* -- you invest it in other forms. The things that you invest in with may not be very valuable to you, but they are investments neverthless (e.g. time).
Now, this is true for everything, and softwware, free or otherwise, is no exception.
TCO, maintenance, support and other things are not free, even if a piece of software is free. In some ways, *paying* for something wo
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)