[NTLUG:Discuss] Open Source
Dennis Rice
dennis at dearroz.com
Fri Feb 1 11:29:32 CST 2008
Education is the fundamental focus of promoting the use of Open Source,
be it an application or an operating system. But who are we attempting
to educate? Is it the president of the company, the users, or the IT
staff that maintains the network? Is it other geeks or the medical
doctor who does not care what goes on under the hood of his car or the
inside of a PC?
To sell open source, one has to have a product that produces results at
the minimum cost. Cost in this case includes both the real product $$
and the time to install and maintain the software over its lifespan.
These costs must be accounted for over a long period of time. The
software has a up front one time cost (it may be free), but the
maintenance requires a trained individual.
Ignoring security issues (I know that is a major issue), M$ user
software is a low cost item after the initial purchase. It is generally
easily installed and has very few configuration issues to make it
operational. One can usually had a CD to an individual with a PHD in
business administration, one that has absolutely no knowledge of the
computer or OS's operation, and that individual can install and run the
software.
To make open source really fly, we need to do the same. To link back to
my earlier topic, the installation of open source must be made
consistent across ALL distributions. Otherwise we are generating a set
of specialized geeks to work on one each different distribution in order
to make a full system operate. Do we want specialists or do we want to
promote standardization? I favor standardization.
Dennis
------------------------------
"Greg Edwards" wrote:
...
I'll go back to my root belief that education is the key to the whole
thing. There is a widely held perception that if it's cheap then you
get what you pay for.
...
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