debate about Free software for the ACT Government
Doug Palmer
doug at charvolant.org
Tue Apr 23 21:43:04 EST 2002
On 2002.04.23 20:44 Richard Cottrill wrote:
> It sounds like it could be a great idea. If the government were to take
> some
> of the cash it spends on proprietary, closed, for-cost software, and
> spend
> it on development/support for free software it uses then Canberra wins in
> many ways - like working towards a critical mass of
> development/developers
> that is necessary for the IT enterprises it keeps bleating about.
Just to put my skeptics hat on for a moment. Has anybody tried to do a
proper calculation of total cost of ownership to show that there actually
would be savings from moving across to free software? (Yes, yes, I know
that Microsoft makes this claim. But as far as I can see this is just PR
flack work. About as convincing as the claims from free software advocates
that no license fee == savings.)
Just to sketch out the factors that might have to be considered, and I'm
sure others can add to this:
License fees.
Cost of training.
Help desk support, plus the cost of hiring semi-competent people.
Benefit of being able to make proficiency in something part of the job
criteria.
Benefit of providing staff with something they percieve as improving their
employment marketability.
Cost of Outlook viruses. :-)
Cost of installation.
Cost of hardware.
Cost of outages.
Administration cost. This would include such anything from the ability to
remotely administer a network to the cost/benefit of being able to isolate
and fix a problem as opposed to just re-installing
Programmer's wage rates for vertical application software.
Reliability of application software (The Linux kernel may be solid as a
rock, but most application software on both platforms crashes
distressingly often.)
And so on ...
What would be interesting would be if there was a way of actually
calculating some of this out for various scenarios. With a bit of luck, a
reasonably disinterested party has already done this.
--
Doug Palmer http://www.charvolant.org/~doug doug at charvolant.org
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