Key Advantage of Open Source is Not Cost Savings 580
cmcsonar writes "Computer Economics recently conducted a survey of visitors to its website regarding the perceived advantages in the use of open source software. Although not a scientific sample, the results are nevertheless startling."
But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, a programmer's time is only worth so much money. Let's say that time goes into a mediocre piece of proprietary software. The world turns and either the code is maintained to its late death or it is forgotten. Either way, the value of that programmer's time, expressed in the code, is very much limited by their ability, the platform, etc. This applies not only to the actual code expressions, but the design, algorithms, and general ideas in the that project. The programmer's time is locked into the IP owner's evaluation of the project's value. Essentially, this one buyer assumes the value of the programmer's time and fixes it.
Take the same scenario, but have the programmer work on an OSS project. With the OSS codebase, the programmer's time is now placed into a repository that can - *potentially* - be shared. The code can be incrementally modified by those who have need/desire to extend or fix it. The maintenance cost can (*potentially*) be lower, as the work can be distributed. The design and algorithms can be reused and spread. Ideas are portable, and OSS ports ideas across intellectual property formats. Now the programmer's time is not fixed by the intial buyer. It is left to the market - everywhere that code is accessed.
The programmer who works exclusively on proprietary code is limited by artifical restrictions. The value of their time - the capacity of their work to generate money - is limited by the company, the licensing, etc. With OSS, the possibility exists for their work to generate money beyond these limits. Firms, individual users, and other programmers can potentially find value in that programmer's work. The value of a programmer's time can be valued according to the full merit of the work (not just licensing binaries, for example) at a more realistic market price (i.e. a price met with better knowledge of the product and lower transaction costs).
It's kind of a "well duh" result (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, in the end all business decisions are about either making more money or spending less money. Since customers by in large don't care whether you use F/OSS or proprietary software, it's pretty much all about reducing costs.
Acquisition costs (license fees) may be a dominating factor for an individual whose time is effectively free. For that reason, you're not going to buy websphere when you can download eclipse, becuase the bells and whistles that help the developer get to some modicum of success a tad earlier are hardly worth shelling out the dough.
But businesses think differently, because we're paying for the engineer to get things working. It's a real, hard, quantifiable expense. Two weeks of engineer time is way more expensive than almost software I can imagine buying for him. Let's face it, there are tons of great F/OSS that are wonderful, but generally poorly documented and tricky to get running. Although keeping them running is generally a snap, which does help TCO. Projects like the Apache HTTP server, which is very well documented and (relatively) easy to set up and run are rare.
But -- experienced decision makers, ones who've been around for fifteen or twenty years or more, have all had the experience of choosing a proprietary horse to ride, and then have the owners of that horse decide to shoot it, or turn it into a camel to reposition it for the desert caravan market. You could be looking at years of effort down the toilet, and in general once a vendor decides your market segment isn't making money for them, they are usually extremely callous with respect to the impact on the customers who supported and believed in them.
Risk is a cost, and has to be factored into TCO.
So, I'll gladly pay an engineer to figure out how to use some open source web framework, even though it actually costs me thousands of dollars more than licensing a well documented proprietary framework. Once they're up to speed, there won't be a great deal of difference in productivity once they're up to speed -- let's be realistic. But once I've sunk a couple of hundred thousand dollars into a project, I don't want the rug unceremoniously pulled out from under me.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
The 44% of visitors who viewed lower dependence on vendors as the most important may also believe that FOSS is free, or they may. We don't know. We just know that for them, reduced dependence on vendors is more important than lower cost. The same can go for any other choice.
In fact, 100% of visitors may believe that FOSS costs less. But only 22% of them see it as their first priority. I don't see how they can assume that visitors who don't see cost as the key advantage must believe that FOSS isn't really free, unless they're rabid Adam Smith fans.
Basic economic clue (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, there used to be a saying about Linux at one point: Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing. This isn't a bash against Linux or OSS: _nothing_ is really free, not even a pirated copy of Windows.
Can a "free" (as in beer) solution be actually more expensive than a proprietary expensive one? Yes, quite easily in fact: if it costs enough extra hours to use/admin/whatever, it _is_ actually more expensive.
Extreme example: consider (A) using an expensive CAD package like AutoCAD for some 5,000 Euro or so, versus (B) using a pencil and ruler for some $5 (assuming more than one pencil used). Which is cheaper? Well, once you factor in the cost of labour, actually the AutoCAD way may actually be cheaper.
Less extreme example: MS Office vs Open Office. If you're in a position where you must accept MS Office documents (e.g., your main customer is a big corporation and your choices are accept the Excel documents it sends you or go bankrupt), Open Office might actually not be cheaper. The effort to convert those documents and deal with conversion problems, can actually cost you more in wages than you saved by not buying MS Office.
Basically anyone who can claim with a straight face that _any_ solution, OSS or otherwise, is free as in 0$ doesn't have a fucking clue what he/she/it is talking about. It's not about being a "rabid Adam Smith fan", it's just about having the most bare minimum clue of economics.
Vendor independence given most weight (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern Linux distros (and other similar) operating systems are easier to install, configure and maintain that the MS variants I've observed.
However, the point of the survey was not that they don't value a good deal, they do. The point was that people give independence from vendors more weight. That leads to a similar topic which is not open source but open protocols and data formats.
Re:Vendor independence given most weight (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe for you and me, but for an IT department built around Windows with experienced windows administrators that is definitely not the case. I've seen Nix geeks struggle with basic problems in Windows and Windows geeks struggle with basic problems in Nix. Its all relative and your data point is not true for everyone.
Re:Basic economic clue (Score:4, Insightful)
Certainly. This does not surprise anyone. You are kicking in open doors.
*but* In general the costs associated with OSS software scales much better than those with Proprietary software.
For example, If you need 100 Licenses, rather than 1, this will with proprietary software generally cost you something like a factor of 25 more. (you get a volume-discount offcourse)
But if you need a special adaption in OSS (say a program translated to your language) this will cost exactly the same whether you use that program on one computer or on 1000.
Practical result: For "small shops" adaption is expensive, in most cases prohibitively expensive. A home-user could never finance say the translation of KDE into a new language in order to be able to use it.
For "Big shops" on the other hand, it looks different. Norway is a small country, less than 5 million people, a few hundred thousand thereof are attending primary school.
If there was some program which they wanted to use, but which needed translation (say it was only available in english) the costs would be literally *cents* for each schoolkid. Even if the software was only used for say 3rd - 6th grade *AND* only say 10% of the schools used this software at all, it'd still be cheap to translate it, likely much cheaper than buying any proprietary solution.
Re:Basic economic clue (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a new saying now. WindowsXP is only $50 if your time is free because your going to be installing/patching/de-spyware-ing/virus scanning/rebooting/BSODing for the rest of your life.
good points (Score:3, Interesting)
So, basically we can say that when determining the relative "costs" of products we should consider the following:
- necessary for conducting business
- actual price of the product
- cost of labor for the user (productivity)
- labor costs of supporting the product (updates/security fixes)
Some things can supercede all others. If your business requires that you deal with a particular type of document, then its a bad business decision to not use the correct
Re:Basic economic clue (Score:3, Insightful)
Err, no. If I give you a free car, and you have to pay for gas, insurance, maintenance: The car was still free. The cost of running a car will always be non-zero, but the car was free.
And BTW, the term TCO is misleading; if yo
Re:Basic economic clue (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you just do the usual mistake of acting as if "price" was everything, and ignoring the TCO. Wh
Although not a scientific sample. (Score:3, Insightful)
From my own anecdotes I think thier survey shows that 44% of the respondents are sophisticated enough to pick out what I would consider the main advantage FOSS offers to a serious IT buyer. This is particularly true if the buyer outsources support and maintenance, ie: with FOSS you can replace the vendor with fewer hassles. From an IT buyers perspect
Re:But... (Score:4, Interesting)
What's odd is that the headline of that article captured the results perfectly, but the article failed to explain it properly.
Re:But... FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? All the survey proves is that they think less dependance on a vendor is more important than the fact the software itself may be free. It doesn't mean that it isn't free. Where did they get that conclusion from?
Some businesses may insist on having their software supported to the hilt and paying for it whereas others will get by without paying for support, the way businesses may sometimes get by using pirate software without support. They may not care as long as it works for them most of the time. If something breaks they just re-install it. Where I work we still use Win95 for some things. Is that supported? It's just never connected to the internet.
Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)
> that needs basic desktop machines, the overhead
> in say, going with an OS OS will far exceed any
> price savings.
And what sort of "overhead" might that be? A modern Linux distro practically installs and configures itself, comes with boatloads of software, and does not require an advanced degree to sit down and start using for everyday (non-development) purposes.
My last Linux installation took about 1/3 the time of my last Windows installation (on the exact same, very recent hardware) and the Linux installation included setting up hardware, networking, and installing many common personal/small biz apps such as office suite, browser, email, IM, etc. The Windows install did not include any of these "extras", all of which must be done *in addition to* the OS install for a Windows box.
The last time I installed Windows, it took me roughly a day and a half to have everything ready to roll so I could get some work done. The Linux installation took maybe a couple of hours to achieve the same goal. In spite of the fact that I have about 8-10 times more experience using Windows than I do using Linux.
Sure some of the apps are a little different, but most of them have a little "Help" clicky-widget in the program menu just like any Windows app does.
My experience is that the myth that Windows has a lower TCO than Linux is just that, a myth. *Particularly* in the SOHO space.
Re:But... (Score:4, Interesting)
I do agree that most competent distros are usable for standard desktop applications (internet, office, etc). However, I don't think it's fair to whine about Windows not coming with any applications. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. First you complain that Microsoft has an unfair advantage with bundling their apps. You want them to be forced to unbundle their apps. Then after they unbundle their apps you complain that Windows doesn't come bundled with any apps. I think Microsoft did have an unfair advantage in bundling their apps, but I'll be damned if my government is going to force them to bundle competitor's apps.
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris all do just that, thanks.
> First you complain that Microsoft has an unfair
> advantage with bundling their apps. You want them
> to be forced to unbundle their apps. Then after
> they unbundle their apps you complain that
> Windows doesn't come bundled with any apps.
Who is "you" here? I didn't say that. But now that you bring it up... (see below)
> I think Microsoft did have an unfair advantage in
> bundling their apps, but I'll be damned if my
> government is going to force them to bundle
> competitor's apps.
More stuff I didn't say. But now that you bring it up...
1. No government forces any of the the OSes I use (not even Windows) to bundle certain apps, so this is a straw man.
2. I never asked the government to do so, either. (See #1.)
3. The difference between what you get in a typical Free OS install and Windows is that the Free OS offers you *choices*. Would you prefer OpenOffice.org, KOffice? (AbiWord? Gnumeric?) Kopete or Gaim? Kchat, Konversation, KSirc, or XChat? KDE or Gnome? (or FWM, WindowMaker, CDE, Java Desktop, IceWM, etc.?) Mozilla, Konqueror, or Opera? Mozilla Mail, KMail, Pine, Thunderbird, or Evolution? And so on. Each of these will do the job, each has its own bells & whistles (or lack thereof).
Re:But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole conversations is on installations. a standard linux distro takes an ~hour to install and you can work, and install updates when you leave for the day.
A standard windows install takes an ~hour for the OS, an ~hour for MS office, an ~ hour or two for for the latest critical updates or your machine could get hosed long before you start to get any work done.
Now which sounds easier? What happens when Windows XP refuses to install or ha
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is I strongly believe it's wrong for a Linux distro to have so much (if any!) bundled applications.
Think of the implications
1) Adobe will have much less chance of making money on the Linux market, because the Gimp is preinstalled on so many machines. This breaks the 3rd party market on Linux machines. This also has the implication that 3rd party developers (e.g. Adobe/MacroMedia, discreet, etc) have less reasons to support free
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hoorah for that. We've got enough binary only crap already. Thats probably why there's no Acrobat reader for Linux. How could they compete with kpdf, gpdf, xpdf already installed.
Oh wait a minute.
Here's the difference: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:4, Insightful)
That, of course, doesn't mean you are right, and your arguments don't stand up to closer scrutiny.
1) Adobe will have much less chance of making money on the Linux market, because the Gimp is preinstalled on so many machines.
Assuming that The Gimp is on par with Photoshop, which, if you ask a serious graphics manipulation expert, is not (yet) true. One could in fact argue that both applications are currently targeting two different market segments: professional and printing (Photoshop) and OSS enthusiast/web graphics (The Gimp).
This breaks the 3rd party market on Linux machines.
How so? If a proprietary application (what you call 3rd party) had the exact same value proposition as an OSS tool than yes, it would break it. But what's your point? This is true in every market. If you can't compete, get out.
Having said that, there still seems to be a market for 3rd party (ie. non-OSS) software if you consider enterprise level applications like DB2, Oracle, SAP and the like. They are doing just fine although distros come with competing OSS applications like PostgreSQL and MySQL for example. Albeit, these OSS applications don't offer the same value to many enterprises, hence the market still exists.
This also has the implication that 3rd party developers (e.g. Adobe/MacroMedia, discreet, etc) have less reasons to support free OSs and more and more reasons to support MS only and eventually Apple.
That is at the 3rd party developers' discretion. As long as they don't perceive the OSS distros as a viable market for their applications they won't develop them to run in these environments. It can be argued that this has more to do with historical developments rather than what kind of software is bundled with the distros. Graphic artists and designers historically have a tendency towards Apple and are reluctant to switch to OSS, hence Adobe/Macromedia apps are primarily targeted at that platform. If OSS distros and bundled apps were to pose a threat to this market, we would see this (inaptly named) 3rd party software for Linux.
2) MS will never be able to compete with that just because (rightly) it cannot bundle applications in the OS.
Wrong. Microsoft could bundle the same abundance of OSS applications with their distros. The lock-in argument wouldn't count as these are not Microsoft products and leave the customer with choice. That's not necessarily in Microsoft's interest. They do want to create lock-in, which is why they are not allowed to bundle only their products.
Your third point is completely useless so we can ignore it.
If you doubt bundling is a problem, answer this question..
How many people buy Opera on Linux when they have Firefox, Konqueror, Galeon, Mozilla and another 5 o 6 browsers all preinstalled ? At least, on Windows, IE is so fu**ed up that someone will buy it anyway..
Bundling is not the problem. Nothing whatsoever prevents any distro user (whether it's OSS or Windows doesn't really matter) from buying and installing Opera on any distro. The reason why so few in fact do it, is because Opera's value propositions (and business model) sucks. The bundled applications allow you to do essentially the same as Opera. Why pay for something that you can have for free? And, just because IE on Windows is so fucked up, doesn't mean that a Windows user will prefer Opera over Firefox. Both are a download away.
So, bundling is only a problem in case you are left without a choice, which is not the case with OSS distros, but is a problem for Microsoft as long as they only bundle their applications with their distro, especially when making it difficult to unbundle it (ie. IE).
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Grandparent: "The last time I installed Windows, it took me roughly a day and a half to have everything ready to roll so I could get some work done" If it takes you 3-4+ hours to install Windows, MS Office, and the critical updates, then you are doing something wrong! I just installed windows 98 (longer instal than XP) on a 166mhz system, with Office 2000, and "44 c
Re:But... (Score:3, Informative)
--Depending in hardware, I guess. 1.5 seems a touch long though...
Driver updates and install 1 - 2 hours
--There are programs (I use nLite), that let you add drivers to the windows install CD
Driver updates and install 1 - 2 hours
--Ever heard of Slipstreaming? You can make an install CD with the updates already on it.
Office Install 30 minutes
--I call bollocks. 30 minutes on a slow machine off a CD, maybe. If you're smart though, you'll be running off a network shar
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
The operative word is 'their'.
Open Source distros often come with not just one of a particular thing - they often come with multiple implementations of the same functionality from different people (and many of these are commercially funded).
Microsoft bundling 'their' software is simply wrong - if they bundled other vendors software (freely), they'd have a better distro and one which couldn't be accused of abusing their
The issue was bundling *agreements* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Err what windows install was this exactly? A basic XP installation will set up
Re:But... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But... (Score:4, Interesting)
I suppose what you might have meant to say is that Linux gives you choices of these extras, and were installed through various packages off the cd, which there were probably several of due to the added bulk of all the software you could ever need.
What sort of work do you do that requires IM btw? It seems to me that it might take 2 hours tops to install xp, an office suite, browser, e-mail, etc. , unless you count the updates, which you didn't mention (if you did I would understand more where you're coming from, updating sucks!).
Umn... that really depends on the distro. Having friends who are gentoo advocates, I can promise you that some distro's aren't the kind of thing you can just download and install and run. On the other hand, mandrake^H^H^Hiva is about as basic as they come.Overall, yes, some linux installs are easier than windows installs, assuming you like the bundled software. But then again, I happen to have Windows XP Install ISO that has been updated to SP2, which would GREATLY cut back on the install time.
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
After 4 solid days of doing nothing but prepping the software for installation we can now install from an in-house DVD in a start-it and forget it setup.
granted, I was able to do the same with S
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
More often than not the programs are NOT of equal quality, thats why many people and businesses use open source.
Re:But... (Score:3, Informative)
How much would google have spent (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know their pricing, but I guess cost does matter as you scale up.
Re:How much would google have spent (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, Microsoft may be find for small systems and hobby use, but when you scale up proprietary software becomes a worse and worse choice. I had an interesting experience in a startup company when Yahoo was considering to buy our company. They sent a bunch of people over to review our technology; and when we mentioned our databases ran Oracle, one of the guys looked to our CFO and told him "you shouldn't have let them do that". "Why not", our CFO asked - since he was one of the guys orginally insisting that to be taken seriously we'd neet to have top-tier components everywhere. The Yahoo guy's response: "Well, Oracle may scale well technologically, but it doesn't scale financially".
Re:How much would google have spent (Score:5, Interesting)
I work at Friendster, and we have... ah... a really big database cluster. It runs MySQL. Not that Oracle didn't try. They sent out sales people to convince us to convert over. After we looked at the dollar signs, we laughed them out of the office.
I was interviewing a candidate for one of our sysadmin positions. He said something along the lines of: "Well, now you're running MySQL. Once you start making money, do you think you'll start using Oracle or something else that scales better?"
I laughed and said exactly what parent AC said: "Oracle scales in theory. But in practice, 99% of businesses can't afford to scale with Oracle. I can build another couple terabytes of DB storage in a redundant replicated cluster tomorrow for $10k with MySQL. With Oracle it'd be 10x that much, if I were so lucky." That's not to mention the overhead of calling their sales guys, licensing hassle, and other crap. With MySQL, you install and go.
There are other huge advantages MySQL has over Oracle and their ilk. Take this for example... Right now MySQL AB tech support is stellar. Front line support knows when to escalate to the proper engineer (InnoDB problems? Two hours later, Heikki Tuuri is emailing you!). I remember talking to a PHB a year or two ago, and he said: "Well, MySQL support may be good now, but that'll change. It'll get bad."
My response? So what? Then I'll find a MySQL support shop that has good support and use them. They can support MySQL just as well as MySQL AB can.
Try that with Oracle. "No, Oracle, I hate your tech support. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to have Sybase support our Oracle installation." Oracle will laugh at you, then double your support costs for your insolence.
Re:How much would google have spent (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, sorry I posted as an AC; but we ended up going bankrupt largely due to stupid spending encouraged by one of the execs and the VCs. Congrats on Friendster's success and smarter leadership than we had.
"Try that with Oracle. "No, Oracle, I hate your tech support. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to have Sybase support our Oracle installation." Oracle will laugh at you, then double your support costs for your insolence."
On the other hand, I have heard of IBM global services supporting Oracle on Solaris with Intel based Windows clients, despite having competitive products to each of those. Of course if Oracle started crashing they'd certainly be unable to fix the problem (no source code access would do that) and probably just refer you to the DB2 sales team. :-)
Oracle support? (Score:4, Interesting)
Like how they san't seem to maintain compatibility between minor realeases. How they fix bugs, then reintroduce the same bugs in the next release. Support that reeks when you call them. IBM actually supports Oracle better than Oracle. I know, I've used them both.
I think the only thing Oracle really has going for them is a great sales team. And getting customers locked in because they write all their stuff in plsql.
And what do we get for using this, I think the last report said its 5% faster than PostgreSQL or DB2. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for 5%? WTF?
For the cost of an Oracle 9i/10g license, you can install DB2 or PostgreSQL, buy a box, and hire a new dba.
Its because of trust (Score:5, Insightful)
For me personally what it comes down to is trust.. I trust that my data won't get corrupted in Oracle.. in 8 years i've never seen an Oracle bug which caused data corruption.
I have no faith in mysql.... I would not trust it as far as I could throw the printed source code. There are too many gotchas (I think everyone has seen that link by now..) I personally believe anyone who uses mysql for mission critical databases is not thinking straight. Sure, if your a startup and you can't afford anything else I might forgive you.
I have faith in postgresql... I don't have enough experience with it to trust it like I do Oracle but from everything I have read it seems like a very solid database in which 90% of the applications out there could easily run on.
Unfortunately we have to use oracle for our mission critical databases because we support financial systems and the software is only available for Oracle. As new projects crop up tho, I do encourage adoption of postgresql.
Re:How much would google have spent (Score:3, Insightful)
I see that every day, both with MSFT products and other proprietary software products. And another metric no one ever seems to consider is how fast resources can be alloted in each environment.
Just had an experience with a customer this week that their proprietary mapping software running on Win2K won't run on 2003 server. So when they pay for upgrading that serve
Re:How much would google have spent (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true. As you scale a system like Google, administrative costs are one of the fastest things to scale.
Cringly may have described this scaling of administrative costs best when he wrote: [pbs.org]
"Yes, because we all know that anyone who buys in bulk pays retail."
With a $25000/CPU list price on SQLServer Enterprise, even if they gave a 90% volume discount it'd still exceed the hardware costs. I guess >90% discounts are possible from Microsoft for some of the government contracts they're afraid to lose, but I'd guess they're pretty rare in the US at least.
Not freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Copy it, distribute it, change it
Re:Not freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever programmed in Delphi? How many of the bugs you encounter are just trivial, and you would easily fix them on the spot? Delphi is just ridden by those.
Re:Not freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)
If your NT 3.5 server which has been running in a corner for years dies you may be screwed, but if your old redhat 5.1 box has a bug you have a much better chance of being able to fix it.
Speeking of Freedom, today is Independence day here in Israel so I'm off to a neighbor to have a cookout and spend time with my neighbors.
Come on! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Come on! (Score:3, Funny)
"open source iz 133t."
Less dependence on vendors (Score:4, Interesting)
Since it wasn't mentioned in the summary, I'll post it here. The key advantage they found was less dependence on vendors. <flamebait> Something Linus recently found out :) </flamebait>
Myself, I use KDE on Linux because it gives me the best environment to code in. I used to use Windows, and have a Mac OS X laptop, and find them both awkward compared with KDE. I really don't get why they are considered miles better for the desktop than Linux. Linux was okay for me on the desktop eight or nine years ago, and it's come on leaps and bounds since then. I'd happily pay for Linux, but I wouldn't pay for Windows.
Re:Less dependence on vendors (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, something which Linus's elaborate multi-year plan succeeded in bringing to the attention of media organisations and companies everywhere.* A masterstroke of sheer genius - take up a closed source solution despite all the warnings it would be yanked away at a later date, then gasp in public horror when it's yanked away at a later date. What a wonderful case study for companies evaluating closed vs open source.
* Well, they do say winners get to write the history books...
Re:Less dependence on vendors (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Less dependence on vendors (Score:4, Funny)
Since Qt is licensed under the GPL since version 2.2 (5 fucking years ago! Hello-oo McFly?!?!?), and is therefore 100% open-source and free, I think we can safely draw the followjng conclusions from your comment:
a) you are a fucking moron who has no idea what he's talking about
and/or
b) You live in a barrel in middle of Siberia, and your access to more or less recent news is somewhat limited.
As a punishment for your moronic drivel, may I suggest that you go sit on an anthill for a while, while you contemplate the reality of the situation?
Yes, my text was harsh, but I'm getting SICK AND TIRED of listening to morons whine how Qt is "closed source" and/or "commercial", when the fact is that it was licensed under the GPL about 5 years ago! So it's not like it happened yesterday and not everyone have had a chance to find out about the license-change. But it was FIVE FUCKING YEARS AGO! Get on with the times or get the fuck out!
Exit Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Customers hate making technology decisions with little to no technology background. Make them feel safe by telling them they can make a bad decision and not get screwed.
Usually better designed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Main saving is Ease (Score:5, Interesting)
Can I move an install to another PC and not break the license?
Can more then one user use the software on a PC without problems?
Will license structure XYZ or ZYX suit a particular company better in the long run?
do i get the lite version or premium version?
will it's copy protection/activation become a problem?
All this is totally gone with GPL licensing, the answer is basically I can do whatever bar sell it (In my case I dont modify and code, so that doesnt come into play).
I also find the quality of open source products much higher then that of commercial software, irfanview I reccomend to anyone wanting to make minor changes to digital pics, and in batches, works well and is free.
Re:Main saving is Ease (Score:5, Informative)
Why "bar sell it" ? There is nothing in the GPL whatsoever that prevents you from selling a piece of GPL software for whatever price you can get.
ROI (Score:3, Interesting)
Then cover things like the amount of power saved with the older machines using less watts. For some companies, this could be $100,000+. EnergyStar has statics on this information.
I would also mention the recent losing of the source code for Windows along with the ability to break free of recurring charges with virus software.
In the grand scheme of security, it would probably be beneficial to note that spyware and corporate theft is less likely in a system that is unfriendly to script based theft schemes.
Mention that you don't have to worry about paying for MCSE for employees. You have no fears of employees stealing licenses.
No more formatting when a new employee inherits a machine.
The ability to disable Cd Drives remotely at will.
I guess that covers the basic things. I would give them all copies of Linux LiveCDs that they can take home and use on their home machines. LindowsLive is a good one to use. Let them see for themselves that it is not going to be a foreign OS, but just a slightly different OS.
Mod article up (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the biggest drains on any IT department has to be keeping track of licenses - how many people are using what (the whole "license pool" idea is a waste of otherwise useful time and resources), having to ask Bill every time you need to add a new server to a cluster, having a piece of software in a state of suspended animation because the vendor hasn't returned any of your calls... The financial cost does enter into this, but the real issue is just that you can't do what you want when you want to.
Just in case the article is slashdotted (Score:4, Informative)
As nearly everyone knows, open source software is a low cost alternative to proprietary software. For example, the open source Linux operating system is commonly seen as a low cost alternative to Microsoft's Server 2003 operating system, or Sun's version of Unix. The popularity of open source is seen in the fact that today the largest market share for web servers is held by the open source Apache system.
One might think, therefore, that the key advantage of open source software is its low cost of ownership. But visitors to our website didn't think so.
Open Source Does Have Advantages
Our survey offered respondents a choice of five advantages for open source.
Before we discuss at the topmost advantage of open source, let's look at what respondents are not saying.
Even though advocates of open source products such as Linux tout its security, only 3% of repondants ranked "higher level of security" as the key advantage of open source in general. In addition, although open source software is by definition open to user modification, only 17% of respondents ranked "easier to customize" as the key advantage.
Furthermore, only 14% of respondents thought that open source had no significant advantages over proprietary software.
Free is not free
So, what is the top advantage of open source? The leading vote-getter was "reduced dependence on software vendors" at 44%, followed by "lower total cost of ownership" at 22%. Although these were the top two vote-getters, it is enlightening that respondents valued reduced dependence on software vendors by a two-to-one margin over lower cost.
The second place ranking for "lower cost" indicates that IT decision makers recognize that open source software is not really free. With most types of software, administration and support costs overshadow initial software license cost and annual maintenance feesthe costs that are minimized by open source. Therefore, software buyers do not see the low or zero initial cost of open source as its most important advantage.
Whether open source software is less costly to administer than proprietary software depends largely on a ready pool of resources trained on the system, the availability of administration tools that allow system administrators to manage a greater number of systems, and the number of version upgrades and patches that are issued by the developer. In this regard, open source software may have little if any advantage over proprietary software, although the situation varies from application to application. Therefore, low cost, although important, is not the key advantage of open source.
Valuing independence
The survey indicates that IT decision makers value "reduced dependence on software vendors" as the most important advantage of open source. This indicates that software buyers must feel some level of dependence on proprietary software vendors, from which they desire freedom. Such dependence includes reliance on the vendor for maintenance and support and the necessity for the buyer to accept version upgrades that the buyer may not need or want.
For example, when Microsoft announces a new version of its Windows Server operating system, it invariably phases out support for older versions of the system. Users that are satisfied with older versions of Windows will be eventually forced to upgrade if they want to continue receiving vendor support. In contrast, there is no forced upgrade cycle with open source. Older versions of open source products continue to be supported through the open source community and third party support providers as long as there is demand in the marketplace for such support.
Our survey indicates that vendors of proprietary software are missing the mark when they argue that open source software has a higher total cost of ownership, is less secure, or higher risk in terms of ongoing support. These factors, although important, are not the key concern of software buyer
Evident to anyone in large corporation... (Score:5, Interesting)
Who's footing the bill? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, having to deal with vendor $*#@ all day long was a real hassle. One thing that bugs the hell out of me with proprietary software is the lack of user input - some of the tools we used were klunky and broken, but they were the only tools that would work with a particular vendor. New features were useless, while good features were left out. Upgrades were often painful.
If I were considering a purchase for a large business or government, I'd be more worried about the vendor lock in than cost too.
Re:Who's footing the bill? (Score:4, Interesting)
What bugs me is paying permium fees and getting all that. It's one thing to be handed the package and knowing I'm on my own. It's another thing to be paying good money for "support" only to still find out I'm on my own.
Re:Who's footing the bill? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Build software the way you want it.
2) Customers have complaints and suggestions.
3) You fix software in the way you think is best for the customer.
4) Customers complain that it still isn't what they wanted.
5) You tell the customer that they dont' really want what they think they want.
6) Customers threaten to find another vendor and terminate their purchases and support contracts.
7) Developers grumble about how stupid the customers are.
8) Some money man (account manager, sales person, upper management guy) puts some friction on the developers.
9) Developers begrudgingly cave-in and modify the software to the way the customer wanted all along.
10) Produce a completely new major version of your software, without really listening to your cutomers or learning from their complaints about the previous software.
11) Customers complain about how your new software is lacking what they were complaining about wanting in the original version that you originally fixed and that you didn't consider putting into the new version.
12) Process starts all over again.
Almost tricked me... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, but you'll have to use a better adjective than "startling" to get past my click-filter...
less dependence on vendors = lower cost (Score:5, Insightful)
With most proprietary software, there is a high cost of switching to a different vendor, and software vendors use that "pain threshold" to charge more than they would in a competitive market.
Another cost resulting from vendor dependencies are the costs and risks associated with forced upgrades by the vendor, or, worse, the vendor going out of business altogether.
So, the survey is right: less vendor dependence is a big advantage of FOSS, in addition to lower TCO. One just shouldn't forget that less vendor dependence isn't just a convenience, it, too, translates into dollars and cents.
Not a scientific survey? (Score:5, Funny)
that's nice in theory (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest mistake that
Let's face it: lock in is just smart business. Ignore it at your peril. If you're not always fighting to keep the customers that you have, then you're going to have a lot more time & money to spend on the ones you don't. If you found a company based on some idealistic notion that lock-in is bad, then you are going to fail just like any other two-bit company with no business sense.
-a
All Good Software is Lock-In (Score:3, Informative)
I watched a reverse sales-pitch from the CIO of Massachus
Re:All Good Software is Lock-In (Score:3, Insightful)
What's wrong with you? Reality has NOTHING to do with it. OSS means freedom, don't you get it? Of course if your business (or your life) isn't based on IT it can be a huge hassle. It's nice to hear someone with actual experience talking about the difficulty of making solutions work in the real world. I'd like to see the reaction at at a temp provider when your HR department called and...
"Let's see, we need 30 people ready to work qualified to use Linux based Open Office word processing..."
"Did you say Wo
Re:All Good Software is Lock-In (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me tell you what it's like in the real world, using two real world situations I've had to cope with a number of times in my career:
Here's the deal. You've got a ticketing/dispatch system that isn't cutting the mustard, and what's worse, the fine print of the license says that to be in compliance, you need to cut even more functionality, or pay an extra three mill a year. Not even the database schema is available for examination, so you can't jump ship to another vendor, or more reasonably in this day and age, hire a couple of Java geeks and roll your own web app.
Here's the deal II. You've got a mission critical messaging application that can't keep up with demand, pounding the little windows box it's on so hard it keeps falling over. You'd like to put it on one of the big mama-jama Sun Enterprise clusters you've got sitting around with spare capacity. Too bad, the tiny company who licensed it to you had to auction off the sofas in the break room on ebay to meet payroll, and can't really afford to develop a Sun version. Or the megaconglomerate you licensed it from couldn't be bothered to recompile and test on Sun for a single customer.
If it's open source, it's likely someone's already compiled, tested and put it out as a tarball for Solaris10. It's even more likely it's written in a portable language like Java, PHP or Python, using your choice of OSS RDBMS and web server software, making the platform it's deployed upon irrelevant.
Massive changes to infrastructure happen, happen often, and happen for sound business reasons. Closed source applications get in the way of an agile and profit-making IT environment.
SoupIsGood Food
The real advantage (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure beats the shit out of sitting on hold with Microsoft for 2 hours, only to get grilled and having to convince them that you are not trying to steal product, only to get charged for support that ultimately ends up with fdisk/format.
Granted that not all of those problems are Microsoft's fault, but in my experience, they could have done some freakin troubleshooting before telling me to backup, reinstall, and restore. At least the F/OSS community will have an extensive reference to
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the advantage is that F/OSS tends to me more modularized, and thus you are more likely to rescue an installation by fixing one component... Thoughts anyone?
Re:The real advantage (Score:3, Interesting)
How is this different from (Score:3, Insightful)
the more people that use a software, the more and the bigger the online support c
Re:The real advantage (Score:4, Insightful)
My bad for not being even more clear (though I don't know how much clearer I could be). I am referencing the Indian guy at Microsoft's 1-800 number who we paid damned good money for with our support contract. A guy who is supposed to be able to solve my problems, not argue with me about whether my corporate license key for Windows XP Pro is valid (it is, by the way) and then insult me by telling me that I will need to pay additional monies to solve my problem because it is not covered by the contract.
On top of that, he wants to tell me to reinstall? Shit, I could have done that in 25% of the time it took to even get through to this joker.
You clearly have never had to deal with people from a vendor's support department, a department that you you paid damned good money to have available to solve your problems only to consistently tell you that you need to nuke the box and start over, but only *after* you have agreed to pay even *more* money.
Maybe you should get some real-world context before posting some crap like that. mmmmmmmmmmmmmkay? Thanks. Oh, by the way, why the hell should I read the Microsoft Developer Network documentation when I am trying to figure out why a fucking machine won't boot after applying XP SP2? Like I said, please get a clue.
Stallman was right. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't from the Eric Raymond "Open Source is a better development model" school of software, this is "My freedom matters", even if that freedom is as much a strong economic advantage as much as anything else.
We've found better support as well (Score:3, Interesting)
With Moodle, the free support has been very much better than the support that comes with a paid Blackboard or WebCT license.
And another nice thing is if you need it you can get paid support from a variety of partners [moodle.com], so if you don't like the paid support from one partner, you can choose another without having to switch LMSs--with the closed source systems there is only one source of support--the license provider. If they cut support to boost quarterly profits, you're SOL.
Since switching LMSs is a huge deal for a school, being able to choose from a range of support services is a pretty nice feature.
But you have to choose the right product--look for one with a vibrant, open, active community where the core developers participate often. With some open source products, the support is no better than Microsoft--they tend to be the ones where the developers don't participate in open discussion, where the community is asking alot more questions than are getting answered, etc.
Other great features are scaling clusters without added license costs, being able to test new versions extensively before putting into production, being able to run multiple versions without having to pay multiple fees, and of course bugs are fixed much more rapidly and generally just by changing the code directly without having to apply a 'patch' or shut down the system.
My clients like OSS because it's OPEN (Score:4, Insightful)
They use it because they don't want vendor lock in and they like being able to hire people to customize it when they need to.
Their happy, I'm happy, we're all happy. OSS all around!
Although I must say some of my more financialy concerned clients avoid OSS like the black death for some reason. I still haven't figured that one out.
Freedom and Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Freedom from vendor lock-in = Freedom to negotiate
benajamin
a more scientific survey (Score:5, Informative)
One thing I found curious: "industries that treated software as a commodity were less likely to have open-source deployments." Again, a bit backwards from what one might expect. There were also, reportedly, a surprising number of respondents who said that the ability to customize the software was important. This may be related.
Indisputable information (Score:4, Interesting)
Rather than thinking about how wrong these idiot people are and spouting off about how super wonderful your Linux experience has been, let's consider why these answers were presented.
As a Linux User, I would have selected a different list of priorities in the survey:
- Security
- Customization
- Cost of Ownership
- Vendor independence
NOTE: Vendor independence goes on the bottom because you are still hooked into some variation of vendor dependency based on RPM/DEB packaging and configuration approaches. Minor at best.What I find really shocking about this is the idea of Security. Apparently an undertanding of Security is rather lacking with the survey group. It's so contradictory to my experiences that I'm not even sure how they could have gotten there. But it needs a little more noise from the Open Source advocates.
Speech is better than beer (Score:3, Interesting)
Independence from vendors means you can make your own fork of whatever project you are working on and maintain it without someone else making the decisions for you, that's the closest thing to free speech you can get in software development.
Keep in mind that OSS is not necessarily cheaper: A closed source company can choose to squash bugs and integrate new features into an application without asking for more money (other than the licensing, of course), or charge you to fix/develop a specific feature if you happen to be the only customer with such a special request. With OSS, if there's no interest in the community to fix/implement that feature for free, then you have to pay someone to do it as well.
In both cases you end up paying for the custom code, and the only real difference is the cost of the license. But hey! With licenses like the GPL, not only you pay less, you can actually own the pieces you pay for! Maybe even repackage and sell the whole thing! Again, independence is far more important than anything else.
I'm not saying cost savings are not important, but let's face it, OSS doesn't necessarily guarantee free/cheaper support, maintenance or development. Hell, you don't have to charge less money per hour when working on projects related to OSS, you know? =)
What OSS guarantees, however, is a BETTER development model, which usually brings greater cost savings along with it.
Free as in Knowledge... (Score:4, Interesting)
That way, I don't have to spend all my money on books (they're really expensive here at Brasil) and trainning. I can sit down, and read the free online documentation... I've learnd almost everything I know about linux this way, and how to program Java and Python.
If I wanted to learn anything from M$, I would have to buy their OS, their certified books, their certified trainng, and subscribe to their devellopment network... too much money for me!! The average middleclass can't afford all of this around here, I can't.
I own my knowledge to the FOSS... All this free software would be useless to me if the documentation, foruns, newsgroups and chat rooms doesn't exist, or if they cost money! To me, this is the single best feature to the IT professional, it plays a even bigger role here on Brasil, because Linux, and Unix culture, is almost unknow on the academic circle! Microsoft domminated the academic circle far too long, and most of the professors fear and don't understant Linux and FOSS.
The community, that's the "real good thing" about Open Source.
Missing "Poll" option (Score:3, Interesting)
With proprietary software, most home users will not be able to do much more than call a paid support phone number and hope their problem goes away in the next version. Those helpdeskers are usually helpdeskers for a reason- if they could develop, they would.
Compare this with the level of support you often get with open source software. To open source developers, their project is often their baby. Not only do the developers not mind you reporting bugs, they actually seem grateful for it. I've seen "help it crashes!" being responded to by "ok let's fire up the debugger", resulting in a solution the same day. Now that's a kind of support I have yet to see in closed-source.
Results are startling?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ordered results where:
I don't know about you, but I don't find these startling at all. Vendor lock-in generally sucks and can be a huge headache. It also supports the idea that Free (as in speech) is more important than free (as in beer).
Time to end this phrase... (Score:3, Insightful)
open source software is a low cost alternative to proprietary software
How about from now on, proprietary software is a higher cost, less customizable alternative to open source software.
My experiences (Score:3, Interesting)
- Reduced dependence on software vendors. Somewhat true. I'm still locked in to the product- switching will be an enormous pain, with lots of conversion costs no matter if we're proprietary or Open Source. Switching would actually be easier with a commercial product- conduits exist for Blackboard to WebCT and back. Nothing of the sort exists for Dokeos and Sakai, the project we'd most likely move to. Plus, I've also had to deal with a fork where the lead developer took his ball and went home. That was a little tense.
- Lower total cost of ownership. Almost certainly untrue. Yes, Blackboard would rape us on fees. But you can hire Blackboard training and support people cheap. Dokeos realistically requires a programmer to support. Luckily I like to program, but my job description when I was hired never mentioned that. (I'm rewriting it this week)
- Easier to customize Very dependent on product. The user interface of Dokeos is vastly less configurable than Blackboard. On the flip side, since I can tweak code I have it firmly embedded into half a dozen systems here.
- Higher level of security Very, very doubtful, again with a few exceptions. Back in the days I installed Claroline (Dokeos' parent) it required register_globals=on. There have been other places where the developers have found SQL and code injection points.
I'm a big advocate for Open Source, but those people checking "reduced dependence on software vendors" probably haven't had a serious fork in a project a year after rolling it out to 1000 users.Re:My experiences (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, there are better conversion utilities for BB and WebCT. We don't care- we didn't move from either and have no plans to go there. Sakai migration might be a problem if we do move there, but I'm sure I can whip something up. Retraining will suck though.
I'm a sunk cost-it was part of my unofficial job description to get *something* up and running. I like to program, so I was able to do it. I'm more expensive than a Blackboard support tech anyway for a variety of reasons.
Dokeos has fewer user configuration options. On the other hand, I've integrated it with our uPortal, SCT Powercampus student information system, library e-reserve system and others. Most of these would have been high-cost options for Blackboard, some wouldn't have even been possible. (I get rid of BB and WebCT salespeople by asking about Powercampus integration details. They go away and never come back.)
Security in BB is very questionable, and they sue people who report security flaws to prevent them talking about them [nyfairuse.org]. The Dokeos folks are quite open when they find problems.
The basic reasons we went with Dokeos? We needed something, we had a budget crunch and BB and WebCT had just announced huge price increases. Faculty were ambivalent at best and hostile at worst to a CMS. Most of the high end features of BB and WebCT were just not needed, but integration into an unusual campus configuration was.
Dokeos did enough and did it for close to $0 up front cost. I sold this as a 3-year project. We just finished year two. I got the poll results from the faculty yesterday- 82% of faculty rate the system as excellent or good, just 4% as poor.
For us, this was an optimal solution-it's an Open Source success story. If I'd been at Penn State, I would have been (rightfully) fired, but I'm not and my job is quite secure.
Vendor dependence (Score:3, Interesting)
If you look at technology as an industry, it is very volatile. IBM is the only one around for a substantial amount of time (100+ years).
Sperry/Burroghs - gone
GE computers - gone
CP/M - gone.
Apollo computer - gone.
AT&T computers - gone.
Sun is shaky.
HP is shaky.
SGI is shaky and becoming a Wintel box shifter.
DEC absorbed by HP absorbed by HP, the Alpha is being sunset.
Apple almost died.
A host of competitors bought out or killed by MS.
Not to mention the constant upgrade treadmill you can find yourself on, which can be expensive.
The best way to insure that you are not left with an orphaned technology or forced into an expensive upgrade cycle is to go OSS with an open license (GPL, Berkley, Artistic etc.)
That's not a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
For those that don't know, and what rock have you been hiding under?, Pat Volkerding is the only developper for Slackware. A few months ago, he had a sudden health problem, a lung infection that threatened his life. Since he was the only developper for the distro, there was much fear that the project would die, or would splinter unrecoverably should the unthinkable happen. We're all grateful that Pat's health is improving, not only because he's a really nice guy, but because of how much we owe him. With Pat still around, there was/is a unifying vision (tm) behind the project that has allowed it to remain viable as, IIRC, the oldest Linux distro around.
Most of us already know this. And at least in the Slackware community, Pat's illness brought to the forefront the dangers of vendor dependance. I don't like vendor dependance, but Slack is the only distro I've seen that actually lives up to Microsoft's new mantra: It just works. On every oddball configuration I've thrown at it (7 computers, 3 of them laptop), it has "just worked" right out of the box. Or off the ISO as the case is. And it has "just worked" for me for quite a while. I could still install from source (and in fact, I do for some things), but we need more binary distros that "just work" to really compete with commercial systems: joe user isn't going to want to have to compile his own software.
I'm not trying to evangelise. The great thing about Linux is that there's so many flavours out there, and there's so much choice. You may prefer Debian or Yoper or RH or Vector or Tomsrtbt for all I care. The point I'm trying to get across is that even in OSS, vendor dependance is bad, mmkay?
Oh, and as for all of the other reasons, they're there too. It is free if you choose (though I, like many others, feel that at least some of it is worth paying for), and the support from the community is phenomenal. If you're having trouble getting support from OSS, you're on the wrong forum. The one that I frequent (as much to answer questions as to ask them) is a great example of the community pulling together and making the switch really easy. But the real fear, and the only one that matters with any solution, is the danger of becoming dependant.
RMS (Score:3, Insightful)
Computer Economics is an independent research organization that specializes in providing economic and strategic analysis and data to IT and business executives.
The intended audience here isn't folks installing Debian or ricing out Gentoo, it's people who buy hardware with support contracts and often expect their software to have the same. It's interesting to see that these people are starting to realize the power that vendor lock-in has, and the value in avoiding it.
Stallman has been saying this for years -- with Free software, nobody has control over what you're doing with the software, and everyone has equal access to making improvements and modifications. Anyone can become an expert, and anyone can support it given enough time investment to become familiar with the product. You can shop around for support, and it'll only get better.
In fact, the "Valuing independence" reads quite a bit like an RMS essay, except that it insists on the label "open source" while talking about freedom. Stallman insists on the distinction because while the definitions of "open source software" and "Free software" include many of the same ideas, the term Free software is intended to emphasize the freedom that the user has from operate their machines without being artificially dependent upon others. "Open source" generally has a larger focus on the technical benefits of access to the source code as described in the writings of ESR and Bruce Perens -- "open source" refers to technically better software, while Free refers to software which does not enslave or limit the user.
A few choice quotes from the article:
With most types of software, administration and support costs overshadow initial software license cost and annual maintenance fees--the costs that are minimized by open source.... Therefore, low cost, although important, is not the key advantage of open source....
[S]oftware buyers must feel some level of dependence on proprietary software vendors, from which they desire freedom.
Older versions of open source products continue to be supported through [...] third party support providers as long as there is demand in the marketplace for such support. The key appeal of open source software is that it avoids vendor lock-in and gives buyers the freedom to choose what to do and when to do it.
Don't lock-in buyers and buyers won't be as likely to leave.... For software buyers, the best strategy is to consider mature and established open source products as well as proprietary software products that adhere to open standards. In this way, buyers can choose the best software product... without locking the organization in to a single vendor solution.
Emphasis mine. I think I like the approach of this article overall -- they recommend that IT decision makers consider long-term freedom in their purchasing decisions in a forum whose recommendationd they're more likely to respect.
For Me: P.I.T.A. Licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always thought that having a commercial where someone is installing Word on a few machines, having to contact MS license servers, and have them go through all their frustration, compared to jsut installing OpenOffice, no license hassles. Maybe is a good Linspire ad.
This is just some blogger (Score:3, Informative)
He does this regularly. His poll question this week is "Is your organization outsourcing any IT functions to offshore providers?" You can answer it here. [computereconomics.com]
This is probably less meaningful than Slashdot polls. No CowboyNeil option, either.
Vendor-dependence... (Score:3, Insightful)
I work at a software company and vendor-dependencies are a major problem, which is why we are running more an more OS-software now. Sticking with open standards is really important too. For instace at the moment we are very dependent on Lotus Notes, which is not good. Luckily, Notes supports standards as IMAP, LDAP, SMTP and has a java-interface, which means that we can start moving our services slowly to those standards while still running Lotus and soon we will not be dependend on Lotus but only on open standards. This gives a great advantage in the future, since you can choose and pick whatever server that supports those standards. Actually we get benefits right away - our office in Finland would rather use OpenLDAP and cyrus instead of Lotus and if we design our services based on LDAP and IMAP we can run them both here and in Finland without changing anything.
Buying proprietary software is not really a problem. The problem is when that software doesn't conform to open standards and you get locked in. Switching later will mean spending toooons of money. Unfortunately, many get seduced by bells and whistles of proprietary formats and later find themselves paying up a considerable amount to the vendor, without any possibility to switch.
So frickin' awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Say my company is considering some sort of solution to let all of the employees in various offices instant message each other. There's two solutions available which will meet the company's needs. There's Closed Source Messenger (CSM) and Open Source Messenger (OSM). CSM is priced based on the number of users and as such will cost my company a few thousand dollars up front. OSM is a project attracting some attention of Codeforge.net but is licensed under the GPL so we can pick it up for the cost of a download.
The benefit of CSM is that it runs on our current workgroup server and is managed through the same interface as all of the other services. Our small IT staff can easily deploy it and manage the whole setup without too much extra effort. They also get a phone number to add to the tech support reference sheet if they do run into trouble. CSM however costs a bit up front and is not quite as configurable as we might really like.
OSM is nice because there's no licensing issues no matter how many users we add to the system and have a lot of flexibility in its configuration. We can also get it up and running on whatever server system we might have available which gives us some choices down the road. On the downside the configuration is a handful of text files with confusing commennts and the documentation is a semi-useful Wiki.
Which system is cheaper? Well the OSM doesn't really have an obvious price tag so most will claim it is cheaper by default. However one of its drawbacks is the lack of consistant help and a configuration that is less than simple. This leads to the possibility that it might be misconfigured or simply that our IT folks have to waste a bunch of time (money) figuring out how to properly set up and manage the whole thing. The CSM costs us for every user we have using the system which puts a hamper on deploying it throughout other offices. We also have less direct contact with the developer if we're not a huge customer so if there's an obscure feature we'd like to see its less likely to ever be added.
In this hypothetical situation there's not necessarily a financial advantage going open source. We're looking for the best tool for the job, not to follow some particular ideology. One thing we gain from the open source solution is flexibility and mobility. If the CSM only runs on Windows we're going to be stuck with Windows for a very long time. If the OSM works on Windows, Linux, and OSX we have a lot of options down the road. It is also more likely for the open source solution to attempt to act in a more open fashion. Instead of using some proprietary communication system it might simply be an extension of Jabber or IRC or some such. In such a case we might have more choices in our end-user client so employees wouldn't be forced to use a particular platform on their desks.
Re:Not suprising at all... (Score:5, Informative)
I have one customer who paid $30k for a point of sale system (5 terminals), was paying probably $5000/year in reseller support costs, etc. And it isn't that great of a system! Furthermore the vendor will only support the reseller who originally sold the unit, so he is married to them for support.
Not so with FOSS.
Re:Not suprising at all... (Score:3, Interesting)
I will be releasing a rich POS package for SQL-Ledger in the near future. We are just working out a few bugs at the moment.
In general, you are right that most of the OS POS applications are inadequate, but we chose SQL-Ledger because the general application framework was
Re:Not suprising at all... (Score:4, Informative)
Why would it need to? SQL-Ledger is more than capable of doing the accounting. Take a look at it: here [sql-ledger.org]
2. Handles integrated credit card processing... through with merchant services?
Forthcoming. Have a customer who just agreed to pay me to develop this feature.
3. Handles all standard POS hardware, such as card swipes, receipt printers, pin pads, cash drawers, pole displays, and touchscreens?
Touchscreen (keyboardless) support forthcoming (assuming my current lead pans out for sponsorship of this feature). Card readers, barcode readers, pole displays, receipt printers, cash drawers, etc. are currently supported.
Honestly, most of this is *really easy.* Barcode readers are currently only supported as decoded signals via keyboard wedge interfaces. Same with mag card readers. We support the Logic Controls PD3000 pole display, but others could be added with minimal work.
Printer redirection is also supported btw. So if you want all your restaurant orders to print to a printer in the kitchen, this is relatively easy to impliment.
For example, one of my customers is using a computer with insufficient RAM as a terminal to the main server. The printer and pole display redirection allows them to redirect it to the terminal even though the application is run via firefox on the main server!
4. Can be easily taught in less than 5 minutes?
Yep
Well, the online cash till countout report might take another 5 minutes... But that is currently being worked on.
We are currently working on resolving the last three critical bugs before release.
Honestly, the currently supported features so far cost approx $2000 in development time. This is nowhere even near the high 5 digits you speak of because SQL-Ledger, while its architecture (CGI) may seem at odds with the environment is really solid, and can be easily extended to provide for all this.
Forthcoming features (ones that people have agreed to pay for at the moment) include:
1) Portable data terminal support for receiving and inventory adjustment
2) Cashier-based roaming till.
3) Integrated credit card processing
4) Movie rental application
5) Coffee card discount app (as in every 10th espresso is free of charge)
6) Credit card processing with a DBI/DBD-like model (allowing for easy expansion for additional gateways).
Likely features within the next year:
1) Keyboardless operation
2) Restaurant module
3) Bookstore module (online ordering, books in print, etc)
4) Online shopping card module.
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, cost savings isn't really an advantage from the IT department's viewpoint.
OTOH, reduced dependence on a vendore, more inhouse work, etc. These are in the intrests of the IT departments, and these are major advantages. Furthermore, I suspect that you get a *much* better ROI with FOSS simply because so much more of the expense is aimed at making the software fit your business processes rather than the other way arount.
Re:It's a POLL! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, wait...
Re:It's a POLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
A poll on a website is completely scientific, and it has a well-defined meaning; it simply happens to be a meaning that differs from what you might naively expect; it is not an unbiased sample of a population. But it doesn't have to be an unbiased sample of a population in order to be useful, since we aren't interested in (say) predicting the outcome of an election or sales figures for a new product.
At
This is stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)