[NTLUG:Discuss] Open Source

[Dennis Rice]

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

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"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. 

...