[ILUG] Interesting article

[PJ Wall]

Niall O Broin wrote:

> On 28 Apr 2005, at 15:21, PJ Wall wrote:
>
>> Yep, I have no problems agreeing with you Niall, but I'm currently 
>> researching a thesis in this area at the moment, and that is exactly 
>> what a number of organisations are telling me.
>> We all have to remember that some decision makers in organisations 
>> may not be aware of Open Source.  I agree with you that this is NOT 
>> an insurmountable obstacle as you say, but I also firmly believe that 
>> it IS a pretty big one.
>>
>> The incentives to go OSS are greatly diminished if a "critical" app 
>> is not Windows compatible.  Getting a similar app written can be 
>> expensive and time consuming, and there are no guarantees that the 
>> same functionality will be delivered.  We all know about the 
>> "software crisis" right?
>>
>> All I'm saying I suppose is that I think organisations with limited 
>> IT budgets (not to mention ROI considerations) are willing to put up 
>> with all the expense, poor reliability, and hassle that proprietary 
>> software brings, if the alternative is a switch to OSS that involves 
>> uncertanty and writing new software from scratch.
>
>
> IMO what's happening here, in a lot of cases, is that Linux is gaining 
> a lot of visibility, and senior people in organisations are musing 
> "Hmm - maybe we could use that". They ask the question of their IT 
> people who in many cases are diehard MS users and they seek something 
> to reinforce their position so they say "We can't move to Linux 
> because the XYZZY application is not Linux compatible" and as far as 
> they're concerned, the monkey is off their back.
>
> Any organisation deploying IT solutions should be evaluating those 
> solutions on a cost/benefit analysis basis, taking all factors into 
> account. If they were to consider a switch to Linux, one of those 
> factors would be say staff training costs, which for admin. staff 
> might be quite high. However, it's an awful lot easier to simply say 
> mention the XYZZY factor as above, and stay where you are, than to do 
> a reasoned cost benefit analysis.
>
> Never underestimate the power of inertia as a determinant of human 
> activity.
>
>
>
> Niall
>
Niall

Well said... I could not agree more.

This is a very accurate representation of what I am finding as I 
continue researching this.