[TriLUG] Fwd: Sign this Petition - Explain why taxpayers pay out billions to Microsoft and get nothing in return, while Linux is free!

[Brandon Van Every]

On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Jeremy Davis
<jeremydavis at jeremydavis.biz>wrote:

> Or is it more of a complicated "it depends" kind of thing.
>

"It depends."  You shouldn't prefer a carte blanche open source
contractor's bill a priori, or make policies that encourage that kind of
waste.  There are people who see open source as ideological movement.  I am
mostly not one of them.  There are people who evaluate which business
solution is more likely to reach a goal.  I'm mostly one of those.  I do,
however, think the ethics and non-monetary goals of a business activity
should be considered, which is somewhat against the ways our laws are
currently structured.

http://www.benefitcorp.net/for-attorneys/legal-faqs


>
> For example, lets say instead of using M$ desktop, the government
> decides to use a Linux desktop environment such as Mint, with Libre
> Office, Firefox or Chrome browser, GIMP, Thunderbird, and whatever
> else for the purpose of doing basic clerical administrative work. How
> much more could it possibly cost?


For the generic office stuff, probably not much.  In fact, I'd say my
current Lubuntu desktop is a lot closer to what desktops classically have
been, than this monstrosity M$ is trying to foist on everybody with Windows
8 in the name of consumerizing everyone.  I had no idea it was as bad as it
is, until the box I configured for my Mom showed up and I set about
migrating her old stuff to it.  What a disaster.

The main thing that would worry me is hardware support.  For instance, I've
had tweaky weird power management issues on my old Dell Inspiron 1760
laptop, which are kernel related and resulted in my system being unbootable
for awhile.  I got past it, and eventually figured out that I should never
never ever hibernate my machine, but that kind of showstopper glitch is not
acceptable in a business setting.  Hardware support is an area where one
would have to negotiate hazards, and this could matter a great deal if
trying to apply Linux to previously installed base.


> How long before most of the bugs are worked out.


Bugs don't get worked out unless you're paying contractors $100/hr.  New
bugs are created because a lot of the open source world doesn't believe in
stability or end user experience.  They believe in combined community
effort towards "the latest greatest."  Ubuntu is more cautious than most
distros and that's part of why I'm using it.  Fedora would be totally
inappropriate for most businesses, as they have a policy of pursuing the
bleeding edge.  I have no experience with Red Hat Enterprise stuff, someone
else can comment.  Too boring for this indie game developer.  But long term
stability is important for a lot of businesses and not something one can
take for granted.  My impression is that the M$ world has taken backwards
compatibility a lot more seriously than the Linux world, especially in the
ABI dept.


> The best benefit of all may be better support for
> development of standards. Instead of using Sharepoint, I think Drupal,
> Wordpress, wikis and mailing lists would get the job done better right
> off the shelf.
>

De facto standards rule industry.  Sometimes a standards body works out
something good and usable in the real world.  Sometimes that happens after
enough years have passed.  In the here and now, proprietary development
often leaves the plodding committee oriented stuff in the dust.  That's why
I'm not thrilled about pushing open source "on principle."  I'm interested
in pushing open source when the business case for its equality or
superiority is actually there.


Cheers,
Brandon