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On Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 09:21:17AM +0000, Tom Potts wrote:
> On Thursday 05 March 2009 07:55, Henry Bremridge wrote:
> > Going on from Tom's comment, and just thinking out loud, would it be
> > worthwhile to create a database of Freedom of Information requests on Open
> > Source software, and the replies.
> >
> > Then anyone interested in Open source can write to the CEOs of their
> > respective councils, cc to their councillors asking "why are you wasting
> > money" using concrete facts.
> You're not going to get them:
> How much are you spending per workstation?
> Sorry cant tell you - commercial confidentiality.
> End of story, end of democracy.
True. But:
- There is some public information on how much other Governments have saved
by switching to Open source. This varies from eg Bristol where their
business case was based on avoiding upgrading all their licenses to eg the
German Foreign Ministry where they state as a result of switching to Open
source their cost of support per machine was reduced from Eur 3000 to Eur
1000.
Now on the same basis if Devon Council Council had similar costs to the
German Foreign Ministry then they could cut their IT costs by about Eur 13m
(call it £15m). Yearly.
Similarly the French Parliament on switching to Open Source realised
savings: on their basis DCC could save £2.3m. (I would love a tabloid
headline: "French MPs more intelligent than ours?")
Yes there is a lot of variability and no source documents to determine how
the cost savings were determined. For that the Councils need to do their
own business case. (I would laugh / cry if MS actually ended up paying
councils to use their software).
- If Councils are lead by non IT literate but intelligent people, then
presenting facts to them showing the amounts of money that can be saved in
the long term would be persuasive
If Councils are lead by fools then appropriate facts would allow their
self-interest to push for an independent business case to review the
matter, as fools would prefer money to be released on short term public
opinion wins
Either way Open Source wins
For this the Council Leaders need to be aware of the savings that can be
made. For this the more people who ask pointed questions the better.
To ask appropriate questions, data is required
--
Henry
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