EU Commission Study Finds OSS Saves Money 128
PS3Penguin writes "Groklaw has up a story about an EU Commission's recent findings on the costs savings available from using Open Source Software. From the article: 'Costs to migrate to an open solution are relevant and an organization needs to consider an extra effort for this. However these costs are temporary and mainly are budgeted in less than one year. The major factor of cost of the new solution - even in the case that the open solution is mixed with closed software - is costs for peer or ad hoc training. These are the best example of intangible costs that often are not foreseen in a transition.'"
No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
This does not come as a surprise for people having worked in IT and with OSS for some time.
Now, if this report gets public bodies to use and require use of OO/ODF, the large corporations (whose customers or legislators the public bodies tend to be) might move to OO/ODF as well, and then also us small subcontractors could finally junk the P-O-S, all-defaults-are-nonsensical, pay-for-incompatible-upgrades MSOffice. Someone just needs to get the ball rolling...
Damn, it's good to see the EU bureaucracy sometimes produce sensible results!
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Stand by for a least one patent-imdemnification-fud post in this thread
A surprise for some people (Score:3, Interesting)
More interesting would be to do the research on the hidden costs of using Microsoft OS and applications. I, for one, waste plenty of time dealing with updates, reboots after updates, etc. with the various Microsoft OS's that I have to use.
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Anti virus
Anti spyware
Remote administration software (the default remote desktop has unfixed security flaws)
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And that's all???
What about normal web-browser? what about some basic office suit and/or text editor? PDF reader? performance monitoring? usual for servers management software?
From my POV, hidden costs of Windows has nothing to do with M$ software - but what the M$ software lacks. And what it lacks - is very very long list. Normally installed separately from 3rd parties. I can install desktop Windows in couple of hours - just to later on waste couple of days brining system to usable state. Same goes
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"and then also us small subcontractors could finally junk the P-O-S, all-defaults-are-nonsensical, pay-for-incompatible-upgrades MSOffice"
do as I do, use an oss office suite and reject ms office formats.
[ after all, they are KNOWN malware carriers, it comes from being a binary format ]
So anyone sending ms office format files is trying to infest your network with malware.
windows / microsoft free for 10 years and proud of it.
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Open Office is an office suite, ODF a file format.
The functionality of Outlook & Exchange can be replaced through the use of CalDAV/LDAP/IMAP/SMTP/NNTP & Evolution.
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resistance (Score:1)
Even if the damage had minimal impact, it seems they still need assurance that they can sue the crap out of someone.
Sad.
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I think the Windows EULA, in addition to disclaiming liability, attempts to limit liability to $5.
But (Score:4, Insightful)
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It, like other methods and philosophies has it's pros and cons. I'm glad not everythin is OSS, that way I can use the closed source software that ended up better in some areas, and the open source that ended up better in others.
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There's a lot of free as in beer software that isn't open source. A normal user could care less if it's
free as in beer + free as in source access
or
free as in beer + closed as in source access
I agree, though it's not always the case, OSS generally does do better given enough time... But earlier on, I've found closed source projects tend to get better financing and startup. Then the beurocracy makes the throw-money-at-it approac
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the reason you might have to try many oss projects before you find a good one is that places like sourceforge and other big oss places never seem to drop any abandoned projects so they sit around popping up in search results. My theory is that all software starts off bad and gets better over time. Bad closed source is harder to find because they don't release until they think they can sell i
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That's because even abandoned OSS projects can be valuable and useful
My theory is that all software starts off bad and gets better over time.
It's perfectly possible for software to get worst over time. e.g. through the addition of "features" and a more complex UI.
Bad closed sour
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Part of the nice "features" of commercial software (where most non-OSS is admittedly, and most OSS isn't), is that it has a certain amount of market pressure to be of a minimum quality, or it doesn't last long.
One of the disadvantages of commercial/proprietary software is that it often only has the minimum quality required to receive enogh sales. An increase of quality beyond this minimum will seldom happen, especially if it doesn't generate enogh return on investment. In contrast, non-commercial developers couldn't care less of return on investment and other such financial issues, which enable them to increase quality beyond the minimum needed to barely satisfy its users.
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what group did the software development setup aggregate for creation of said software?
If it aggregated a good group, then the software will be good.
Different groups are aggregated to different styles. Some styles seemed to have worked better Open Source, others closed source. Its way to dynamic of a subject to drop onto one categorization though.
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Please tell us, specifically, which closed-source software you run that would have been of lower quality if open sourced.
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Using proprietary software that locks you in to a single vendor is a HUGE BUSINESS RISK. It's highly dangerous to make your business dependant on a single organization or product, you should ALWAYS have a backup plan.
With open file formats, you have multiple sources from which you can obtain software, and with open source you are guaranteed the ability to install additional copies (yes, we've had several situations where we nee
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Re:But (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of those still choose open source software. There's a reason GNU, Linux, BSD and Apache are so widespread, and it has nothing to do with price.
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Did you miss a decade? (Score:2)
For approximately 10 years we've been arguing about why a lot of those products are so widely-used despite their (in some cases) inferiority or (in other cases) exorbitant pricing.
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Well, ya got me (Score:2)
Why do so many people buy SUVs when cheaper, cleaner sedans do the same job? They "feel safer". Scientific tests prove they aren't *actually safer, but there you go. Or it might be an image thing -- but that's not *rational decision-making.
"The philosophy and p
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When you find us a package that does the same that Photoshop (please don't dare proposing me GIMP, don't make me laugh) then we will change be it OS or not.
Actually, the GIMP/Photoshop comparison is one that's worth exploring a bit, because, in reality, the GIMP *is* 95% as good as PS. There are a few things the GIMP is lacking, certainly (>8bpc color, good support for other color spaces (CMYK), some plugins), but most of those are only relevant to very serious users. Probably less than 5% of PS users actually need those features. There are some other nice-to-have features that the GIMP is lacking (e.g adjustment layers, history brush) that affect a wi
Four more of open source's most touted benefits (Score:3, Informative)
-Since the source code is available, you are not locked in to a single vendor
-There are far, far more people who know the internals of the code and can offer you customizaton services.
-Security holes are easier to spot.
Who wants to do the next four?
Fine, I'll do them (Score:3, Informative)
-Any feature you want/need badly enough can be added. You don't have to hope that your desires are common enough to merit MS's attention.
-You do not have to worry about whether sensitive information about your computers is being sent to Microsoft as pa
Fifth and sixth reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
And my second reason: with source code I don't have to worry about the supplier dying. I'm currently trying to find what to do with a software my company has; we do have the source c
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If so.. I applaud your mastery of a second language! (Seriously- it's a little mangled but not bad for someone for whom english is not their first language).
If not... well then your spelling and grammar was painful enough that I had to comment even tho I normally do not.
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No, that's not the theory. Open source would be a better deal even if you paid the same for the software initially as you did for an equivalent commercial package. Why? Because open source reduces your long-term risks and costs.
We are not looking the philosofical part of the questin (this is OS, this is not). We literally don't care for that.
Nobody does. The reason people s
Dudes! Lay off of philosophy (Score:2)
Philosophy is about logic, the means of acquiring knowledge, and the limitations of knowledge. If someone says "I choose Linux instead of Mac b/c Apple is evil" that's not a "philosophic" decision, it's a moral one. What gives?
btw, by far the *more annoying misuse of "philosophy" is this one:
"At Comp
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Training cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
I spend about 1 hour a day telling other members of staff how things work in Excel. That's Excel 97 by the way, which we have had deployed for over 6 years.
Retraining costs only apply if your staff are trained in the first place. In the world where *everyone* puts "Office expert" on their CV almost no one is trained - at least not to a high enough standard to do anything beyond typing a letter.
With the interface also changing in the next version of Word this cost is even more fictional than ever - but it was never legitimate in the first place.
But did your personnel pass those tests? (Score:2)
I always wanted to train some sort of domestic animal to pass those tests.
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Heh, I don't. I can get by with office applications but I can only barely use a spreadsheet - I'm a mathematician so computers I work on tend to come equipped with rather more interesting power toys for any calculation/plotting needs and I simply never learned how to use spreadsheets. Likewise, due to my profession, I tended to use LaTeX for documen
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You, sir, sound scaringly like me. Must be a mathematician thing. I am far more at home with octave than openoffice, and I'd have a much easier time writing an xml table and style it with xstl+css than do the same in kspread or any other spreadsheet :)
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Almost the same here. Word Processors never appealed to me once I got past the "this key combination turns the word bold in-front of your eyes" which was novel at the time. I do all my correspondence in Emacs/LaTeX including invoices.
Spreadsheets were more of a fascination because I used a printing calculator many years ago and remember wishing it would be good to be able to go back and fix up an entered number and redo the calculation. There are a number of ways that could have been implemented in a calc
Re:Training cost? (Score:4, Informative)
For a scientist or professional engineer I would strongly suggest a Linux solution (FC6, OpenSUSE, Scientific Linux
If anyone writes to me stating "Oh you had problems with a Linux install on your laptop then there is a problem with Linux". My simple answer is I will give you FC6 or OpenSUSE and Microsoft XP (legitimate copy) and then ask you to install the OS and configure it on a reasonably new laptop (I am being fair here) and I am quite sure you are going to have more problems with the Microsoft OS than with a Linux OS. Since I now have a working Laptop with FC6 (what do you think I am using to type this) I can easily create a recovery disk that could be used to configure all laptops of this type. The first install is always the hardest after that you can easily roll out an OS on equivalent machines, this is how most PC vendors install an MS OS.
Now back on topic. If you are a manager and it has been put to you that you need to spend vast amounts of money to retrain your staff to the switch from MS Office to Open Office, then I would suggest firing people and I am not just speaking as a professional engineer I am speaking as a manager. Most MS documents can be imported into Open Office (including many with macros) with little if any changes needed. The only problem you have is when you try to read an OO document back into MS Office. That in itself should tell you how standards compliant Microsoft is.
The biggest problem an organisation is going to have making a switch to Open Standards (note I did not say Open Source) are the managers who will most likely say "Oh it is not like MS Windows" or who have made bad business decisions although to be fair to them they may have made the right business decision at the time, that have locked the company into proprietary solutions.
Sometimes you have to force change (the engineer in me speaking) otherwise things will never change since most organisations are very conservative and won't change unless a decision comes down from the top but sometimes the top managers are even more conservative or love to organise committee's, which usually means nothing changes.
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So my guess: Almost everyone lies.
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When I was a very young - okay, not that young, but young - sysadmin, we had a secretary who was constantly asking me over to help her out with something in MS Word or Powerpoint. I believe that the only reason I wasn't also getting requests for help with Excel was that management knew better than to ask her to work on a spreadsheet, but that's another s
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Hmm, did she smile when you helped her? Flick her hair back? Give out hints about movies she'd like to go to, but doesn't have anyone to go with? Mention nice places to get coffee at?
If so, then perhaps constantly calling you over to 'help with Word' may be what normal people ca
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I think that the pretty girl (or hot guy, for those inclined) who calls over the tech support dude to see if he could just help with one more little thing is the unifying fantasy of all geeks, if you ignore the ones about Natalie Portman, etc. But trust me, that's not what what was going on here. And I'm just as glad.
Another quick story. The secretary had a terribl
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Simpler still is the fact that the complexity of MS office applications is what generally causes the questions for many people. They feel that there should be a way to do something, but don't know how. Even if 'clippy' was mean
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approximately 1.3M
Google hits for: +"Microsoft Office" training
approximately 6.4M
(You can try other forms such as "Open Office" or "MSOffice" or what not, but that will just add to the gulf between the numbers.)
So, if I'm looking to train my staff (the largest chunk of cost in implementing an Office Suite), it appears to be much more available to train on the MS product than the open source solution. If I live in PodunkTowne
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high end inhouse enterprise software .. (Score:2)
What is it you do at your company, design nuclear subs, space planes? I worked in-house for a fortune 500 consultancy and all they ever used their 'integrated innovation' for was customised PowerPoint docu
Charge rate (Score:1)
You mean, *gasp*, it is almost $190/hour?!
(ok it's Friday, I'm not being sarcastic, my head is just... not right)
I've Been Saying This For Some Time (Score:5, Insightful)
The only issue is whether you can afford the upfront costs - and that has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. And you solve that issue by doing your migration over time according to a PLAN.
Planning? A novel idea for most IT management who are usually locked in to a crisis management mode...
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sooner or later OSS HAS to cost you less
And once you run into the limits of one tool, you have documentation and interfaces so you can extend it, or work around limitations. Yeah I know, this may entail going back to the source. Or you can just go to a different tool because you have compatible or documented file formats.
But with closed tools you're more or less stuck. I've seen way too many cases where Excel refused to jump through hoops, at least without some serious coding. Unfortunately, around here Excel is all people know. Have tou ever he
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If that was me, it's Minesweeper.
Bad argument (Score:2)
The "intangibles" as you call it, avoiding lock in, is the reason that free software usually is the better investment in the long run. The freedom granted by the use of free software is important when you have to navigate your organization in an ever changing and unpredictable world.
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I'm perfectly well aware that the incremental savings has to be larger than the interest on a bank account.
However, companies generally don't leave money lying in the bank earning interest alone. (And I used to do support for a Bank of America cash management package, so I know companies DO leave hundreds of millions in the bank and manage the accounts for their interest revenue, so don't bother making an argument about that.) They usually leave it there either as their emergency funds or until the funds ca
Expect a response saying the exact opposite (Score:2, Insightful)
It
Re:Expect a response saying the exact opposite (Score:4, Funny)
Don't you know Vista is Free with purchase of a PC?
[/SARCASM]
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I used to scratch build.
For the last two years, the parts to build the machine cost more than buying a prebuilt machine with an OS installed.
OEM vendors have to be paying next to nothing per copy for their OS.
The price of the OS seems to depend on the hardware. High end hardware can be bought and scratch-built cheaper than medium to low end hardware.
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Training costs (Score:3, Interesting)
Where is the control group? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be of any real value, you have to compare the Linux migration costs to some control group.
Here are some possible control groups:
1. Group transitioning from Windows95/98 to Window XP to Windows Vista
2. Group transitioning from Windows95/98/XP to Mac
3. Group transitioning from Mac to Windows Vista
4. Group transitioning from Windows95/98/XP to LTSP
5. Group transitioning from Linux to... Linux?
6. Group transitioning from Windows NT to Windows 2003 to Windows Vista
It seems that the control group in most of these studies is only imaginary: Windows XP with no transition.
That control group doesn't exist. It is never actually included in the studies. It is only conjectured.
What is the value of a study that uses an imaginary control group?
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I guess they never got the memo (Score:3, Informative)
At this point, I would somewhat dissagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Department Of Duh (Score:1)
Lies (Score:2, Funny)
Of course the EU would say that, Europeans are socialists and Linux is communism. [theregister.co.uk]
Want the truth? Get the facts [microsoft.com] where they are totally straight and objective, from honest American corporations.
(Insert tongue in cheek)
That loud clapping noise you hear.. (Score:4, Funny)
Price doesn't matter (Score:4, Informative)
Lots of companies and most governments are going to be mandated to use whole-disk encryption for laptops and desktops in the next year or so. The easiest way to do this is to get your hands on Vista Ultimate or Vista Enterprise.
This is a problem.
Vista Ultimate is a consumer product and you cannot get it via a volume license agreement, so that's out.
Vista Enterprise is available via volume & enterprise agreements but you must have software assurance agreement in place.
To get software assurance, you pay Microsoft a "seat fee" equal to the number of computers that you have that aren't:
- Servers
- Applicances (VPN devices, Google Search boxes, etc)
- Kiosks (ATM's, POS terminals, etc)
- Embedded devices (Treos, Blackberries, etc)
That means that you'll pay Microsoft for Macs, Linux machines, FreeDOS machines... anything that is a workstation. So switching to Linux won't save a time, because you'll pay Microsoft anyway!
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I've been involved with evaluations and deployments of disk encryption software... there are plenty of great packages out there, but most places will choose the convenient solution over the best one.
The point is, Microsoft is doing the same thing to enterprises that they did to OEM's.
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You're right, disk encryption is nothing new. But nobody was forced to use it until now. It's almost a certainty that every Federal laptop & desktop computer will be required to be encrypted in 2008. Once the government encrypts, financial services & insurance companies will likely require
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There is also the issue that proprietary cryptographic products tend to be poor. Even if they use well understood algorithms. Proper review and evaluation of proprietary software is difficult (even if no
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IBM's laptops have hardware encryption of the disk on board... and got it for something like 10 years.
No, they don't. What they do have is almost as good, but it's not hard disk encryption. What IBM laptops (actually, the drives that ship with IBM laptops) have is a hard disk password. This password protection is implemented by the drive's onboard electronics, so it can be bypassed by replacing the HDD circuit board with one that doesn't have the password set, or by removing the platters and reading the data from them directly. So, although the data on the platters isn't encrypted, you do have to perf
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All we need, is to produce distros that install in this way by default (otherwise encrypting the whole drive can be a pain to set up)
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You mentioned disk encryption as your single reason and then based your whole assumption on the idea that Vista is the only OS which offers it. Then you claimed that the cost will not matter because the only Microsoft Windows Vista version which will be relevant to fulfill that purpose is the "Ultimate" edition, which costs about 450$ per seat, then noting that the only way to purchase it is to buy a license for eac
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Most enterprises are choosing Software Assurance -- because the upfront cost of migrating to Linux is higher. I've been involved in a linux desktop project for awhile now, and migration is not an easy or cheap prospect.
In other news (Score:1)
Traning costs, what about Vista, Off2007 & rib (Score:1)
There is OTHER software than Office (Score:1, Interesting)
Case in point... the main software that I need is point-of-sale. There is NO OSS point-of-sale software that is anywhere near as good as any of the closed source products.
Hell, there isn't even a good equivalent for Quickbooks/Peachtree that's OSS. It's absolutely mind-boggling that any small businesses could ever go
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http://www.linuxcanada.com/ [linuxcanada.com]
Their base package (GL, Recievable, Payable, etc) is free and compares featurewise with QuickBooks Enterprise. Their point of sale is also excellent but costs, albeit very reasonable at $1k + $250/terminal. Server runs on Linux only and needs Postgres or Sybase or Firebird; clients are graphical and run on Linux or Windows.
Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, there isn't even a good equivalent for Quickbooks/Peachtree that's OSS. It's absolutely mind-boggling that any small businesses could ever go completely open source WITH NO FINANCIAL SOFTWARE (Yes, I know about GNUCash: it's a joke).
Simply amazing that those crazy Europeans manage to get by without Quickbooks. A miracle I manage in my own business(es) without ever once missing Quickbooks. I run OSS almost exclusively and actually spend less time dorking with my computers, which tend to stay worki
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Glad Quickbook works for you. Most people would need a custom app (severly based on FOSS if they want to afford it) on those conditions.
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Hell, we don't even use any office software at my business (text documents are done with Textpad). So, while Open Office and Linux is nice and all, it only meets a fraction of common, every day business needs.
So you're aware that products such as open office are available for free and yet you use textpad for word processing. You're either a nutter or a liar mate!!Plenty of POS solutions available... (Score:2)
Try Novell's POS as we have deployed that for a very large business in Spain.
Financial software is very much country specific. Here there are a couple of very compelling open source solutions, and some proprietary ones.
Anyway, I'll quit wasting my time with what is obviously a troll post in intent, nature, and tone.
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A. I was talking about OS. Not necessarily Linux.
B. I've investigated what's available, and none of them are even remotely acceptable (compared with the proprietary products out there).
C. Novell doesn't make a POS product that I can find. They're partnered with Oracle for a product called "360Commerce". I have no idea if it's for small businesses or not.
amortized over ~20 .. (Score:2)
Where does the study say you would have to write it yourself, in 'Textpad'. It may take ~20 years if you were going to write it yourself. But given the collaborative nature of OSS you get the benefit of the input from developers all over the world.
There is OTHE
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Get 10 competitors to split the cost with you, then it would only take two years.
OSS might save money... (Score:4, Funny)
Er, what about training? (Score:1)
Retraining employees isn't cheap, especially with regards to the time cost.
Unfortunately, OO.org is not anywhere near on par with M$ Word, especially under Linux. It's bloated as hell. When a word processor is so slow that it's annoying, something has gone horribly wrong. Hopefully later versions of OO (or some other office suite) will improve on this... but until then, I can't see Linux/OSS making significant progress into the office/business market without a good word processor.
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"Unfortunately, OO.org is not anywhere near on par with M$ Word, especially under Linux"It's bloated as hell. When a word processor is so slow that it's annoying, something has gone horribly wrong"
Nonsence, on this dual boot computer OO opens and runs just as fast as msOffice. Just increase 'memory per objects' and set 'Remove from memory' to 23 hours. Under Linux there is a pre-load utility that does exactly what it says.
Contrarian view point (Score:2)
I think this sums up this "study" quite well (Score:1)