[clug] MakeTheMove Website Demo

[Edward Lang]

Hi,

On 9/7/06, Kelly Daly <kelly at au1.ibm.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking a table or some such structure comparing what you use now
> with the FOSS equivalent. A cost comparison might also be cool (just to
> drum it into ppl who are looking at the dollar signs rather than their
> right to software freedom as a whole)...
>
> ie:
> product                         RRP $
>
> MS Windows                      $190 (or whatever it is)
> Linux                           FREE
>
> MS Word                         $billions
> OpenOffice Writer               FREE

One thing I've noticed in a corporate environment is that the TCO of a
GNU/Linux system is of greater value than the price of individual
components. Suitability / compatibility, design, testing, development,
deployment, support and all that jazz. I know the large companies with
a F/OSS bent are doing their hard sell on each of those topics but if
the target audience for this website includes suits, then it may be
worthwhile including responses to each of those items I listed (and
more / fewer, as the case may be).

As a home consumer, I was shocked to find myself purchasing a licenced
copy of Windows so I could use a particular piece of software. (WoW
under Wine on AMD64 using Ubuntu's 64-bit environment is no fun, as I
discovered). To me it seems as though for those for whom money is an
issue, the cost of migration is too great; and for those where money
is not an issue, the cost of migration is irrelevant. So, the trick is
to get the first group using GNU/Linux before they've even had the
opportunity to consider something else. Advocate using it in
education!

Don't underestimate the use of "shiny" and cool, efficient workflows
in marketing a piece of software. Kororaa's 3D stuff didn't seem
immediately useful but it sure made me interested in the project.

> formatted a whole lot nicer, of course, with links from each of the open
> source products to an information page about what it actually does,
> screen dumps, etc so ppl can see that it is able to do what they
> currently do now.  To be fair, you would have to mention about how evil
> MS office has all these god-awful macros that openoffice can't emulate
> (at least not in my experience), and then mention the ability to dual
> boot or run any necessary win apps in wine or vmware or the likes.

I'd be tempted not to mention Microsoft products at all because there
will always be differences, and more often than not OOo will be the
worse of the two. Never mind that OOo might kick serious arse in other
areas -- those negatives will stand out more than the positives.

> Hope this is of some use to you...  I think the page is an awesome idea
> - thanks for the efforts in getting it to what it is already!  =)

Same.

Regards,

Edward.