[NTLUG:Discuss] Any open source success stories?

[Bug Hunter]

  This is a hard world.  Linux is on the upswing.  However, we all have to
make a living.

  By all means, sign agreements with Microsoft, as most future employers
will desire/want/need microsoft understanding.

  Add a healthy dose of free software (Linux, Sun Star Office), and
contract with a company such as mine to generate CD's containing the free
software on it for a nominal fee.  (ie: $1.00 per cd in volume)

  Classes/user groups can be started to introduce people to free software.


  As regards support, if you standardize on a distribution, you can get
support from the progenitor of the distribution for a small fee, or you
can get support from user based mailing lists.  I've had _much_ faster
response from the Linux community than from Microsoft.

  Note that _all_ software has bugs, unless it is past the end of its life
cycle.  Closed source software offers no learning opportunities, as you
can't look under the hood.  All you can do is turn the ignition off and
back on if something breaks.  This is fine for an end user.  For an
academic user, whose task is to learn new things, this is not fine.

bug


  

On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Lance Simmons wrote:

> Fellow NTLUG'ers,
> 
> I'm on a committee at my university that's deliberating now
> about what to do about software for the university's
> undergraduate school. Most people on the committee want us to
> renew a deal with microsoft in which faculty and staff get lots
> of microsoft software and all of our students get to buy lots of
> microsoft software for ridicuously low prices (compared to what
> those students' eventual employers will have to pay for the same
> software, which will be the only software they'll know how to
> use).
> 
> I'd like to persuade people on the committee to look into other
> possible sources of software, but I'm not as clear as I'd like
> to be about what exactly is possible now with free software.
> Does anyone have any success stories about institutions that
> have moved away from microsoft products in one area or another
> and lived to tell the tale? Microsoft seems to be primarily
> interested in selling educational institutions total packages
> that cover the entire line of microsoft software from top to
> bottom, and this creates a lot of pressure on us to go microsoft
> all the way.
> 
> One of the concerns people have expressed about free software is
> that "you can't get support for it". Is that still true?
> 
> Our school has about 1,200 undergraduates, and maybe 250
> employees. (I don't really know the number of employees, but
> that's a guess.) We also have an MBA school with about 2,500
> students, but they make their technology decisions apart from
> the undergraduate school.
> 
> Does anyone have any encouraging words, or should I just go
> along with the proposal to sign up for the microsoft package
> deal once again, so our students will be able to buy microsoft
> office suites for $15 or whatever?
> 
> Lance Simmons
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