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On 20/06/2016 13:17, Rod Sheaff wrote: > Do any of you work at Plymouth Uni, or have recently? > > After years of agitating along the 'Why don't you use open source?' line > I have been invited to discuss this with one of the IT honchos so would > like to brief myself as well as I can first. > > One thing would be to gauge the extent of PU's past involvement with > open source (not much as far as I can see but ought to check) - it seems > pretty much an MS shop. I know a little about desktop but not so much > about server-scale admin - any obvious 'gotchas' or points to make about > that? > > BW > > Rod > warning: Problem for commercial company board directors and thus equivalent in Universities, is problem of "Personal Risk [unlimited]" as director(s), if they advocate something and it fails or has problems. This is why if they use MS Software AND have in place an accredited support agency (i.e. properly professional insured firm of outsourced maintainers for software] they are seen to have discharged their directorial liability in a 'reasonable manner'. This may be case you have to answer. Support for open source software is available exactly as it is for MS software both free ( forums etc) and PAID for outside support (consultants etc -that is how RED HAT makes its money) Main problem is academics have little knowledge of the support facilities and may say 'we have an 'obligation' to have support to ensure our liabilities as are properly discharged, and there is no support for FLOSS. Not so. Lots of paid support for companies or others using FLOSS, same problem as MS Software, only usually different companies. Commercial route is to use in my case "SUSE SLED " for company I consult to (for paid support) and OpenSUSE for my own company and personal use. Similar set up with Red Hat/ Fedora Best example is that French Customs and Excise went to FLOSS (Gnu/Linux) to be very sure of security and support. -- regards Eion MacDonald -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq