According to an article by the BBC, the UK government will very soon be making a push for open-source software, mainly in the public services. The government is considering open-source software as an alternative to commercial software, although the government said that only "when it delivers best value for money" would it be adopted. Open-source software in itself is usually free, however, developing, maintaining and supporting it wouldn't be, which is what the government is investigating at the momentThe problem with proprietary software that the government is facing is the contracts and licenses. Once the license expires, the government has to once again pay out. With open-source software, this could be prevented. Along with the financial savings, which could be as much as £600 million a year according to the article, the government would also gain the benefit of security that open-source software often provides.
The government has made no specific plans as of yet as to where changes will first be made, and it's not clear how long it will take, nor how the plans will be implemented.
Although the plans have been praised by companies such as Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, on the other hand, did not approve. Bill Gates said "The so-called (Free Software Foundation)...says that these other countries other than the U.S. should devote R&D dollars in the so-called open approach, that means you can never commercialize that software," according to an article on CNET News.
Ummm it says 'looking into it' surely you know what that means.
I think good idea might save a lot money.
Im the IT Guy at a school un northern england, and while we have no linux instalation, we use quite a bit of open source software, and you guys realise schools get all the licences at a discounted rate? office pro is about £30per licence and windows vista £32, and server 2008 enterprise is £150. it isnt really that much at all, considering the costs of retraining all the staff in using open office and whatnot
At work: We use a variety including non OSS ..
OS types include: Mac OSX, Windows, Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, SuSe, Centos) - more recently various Linux flavours for the EeePC's
Software wise we use Open office mainly on Linux platforms and also on Windows and Mac sides, we use MS office as well - again using VM installs in places... it's good to give alternatives.
Some of the capital freed up by savings elsewhere have enabled us to build things such as dedicated and fully integrated media suites with an HD cinema and professional photography facilities... granted these tend to be Mac based, but boot camped stations allow a flexible user experience.
Last edited by SoupDragon on 26 Feb 2009 - 01:51
Add in the price of re-training all the staff = never gonna happen.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-945947.html
Difficult to prove and unlikely to be true. Many servers are not web servers so how do you tally sales and even for web servers the figures are dubious because organisations hide what OS there web server's are using.
My point was directed at Gally's "Most" servers running open source OS's as there aren't any reliable figures for server OS market share.
the "there's no reason to use windows" comment was also naive to say the least...
Oh please. Does the UK research anything before letting their mouths fly open? The lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for Windows compared to Linux has been proven time and time again. Do they have to overhaul everything before they realize this or could they maybe do a tiny bit of research?
Yeah, you have to continue to buy licenses. Fortunately, "you get what you pay for" stands true.
Oh please. Does the UK research anything before letting their mouths fly open? The lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for Windows compared to Linux has been proven time and time again. Do they have to overhaul everything before they realize this or could they maybe do a tiny bit of research?
Yeah, you have to continue to buy licenses. Fortunately, "you get what you pay for" stands true.
Where was Linux mentioned? I think might be more apps then going all the way.
Oh please. Does the UK research anything before letting their mouths fly open? The lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for Windows compared to Linux has been proven time and time again.
...
Almost always in Microsoft-funded studies, or by analysts who do a lot of business with Microsoft. Other studies show savings with Open Source (and, Linux, specifically, since you brought it up). Typically it depends on specific user needs and configurations - which is a lot more accurate than your implied assertion that the Microsoft TCO studies are gospel truth.
The TCO argument is a weak one anyway as there's so much complexity to it that both sides skew the figures in there favour. MS particularly as they have a fairly large marketing budget...
It's healthy for organisations to consider open source even if it does not prove to be viable for them. Competition is a good thing and brings out the best in both.
The major problem here would be re-training of staff and/or additional support costs, not to mention that some of the more prominant corporate applications (I'm talking about things like Content/Document/Records management) are currently unavailable on an open source license and ofter require a per-seat license, not to mention that the back-end systems of such applications are heavily geared towards a microsoft operating platform.
We also have to remember that in large organisations many proceedures and protocols will be dependant on the operating platform, considerations such as migrating 20000+ users from active directory to an open source LDAP platform would scare the bejesus out of me.
The only direction I can see this taking is for government offices to be further encouraged to consider Open Source alternatives when aquiring/replaceing systems. A blanket "make everything OS" would never realistically happen and even if it did this would take years and cost many, many 100s of thousands of pounds to implement.
The bottom line has to be use the appropriate platform and technology, but ensure interoperability between your systems (eGIF is a uk government standard to encourage the interoperability of back end systems which is being touted as the answer to "joined up working" ).
"It's already happening to significant extent in the UK. Lots of homes are using Firefox and OpenOffice.org."
For HomeUser OO exceeds what they need most of the time but for Buisiness it's far from the best solution. Where I used to work had to write instructions for users and the OO version was more complicated, took longer and looked less profetional in result than in MS Office.
Why do I get the feeling MP's just seen the FREE price tag and said to themselvs "Ah we can cut costs".
I would be very interested in what that was.
For me, OO.o makes more sense. If I want to change page formatting (margins, etc.), it is under Format > Page. In Word, it is under File?!? :unsure: I don't want to do any file settings. It's the page format, after all.
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