Hi there,
I work with a voluntary sector organisation in the UK, who are currently doing a review of their IT strategy and systems, and I asked recently if they were considering Free / Open Source solutions, as their previous systems are all based on Microsoft software (desktops, web servers, email, everything). After a short chat about what Free Software meant and how it's different from proprietary software, they had lots of questions, including "can this really save us money?", "will it give us more control?", "is it reliable?", "how secure is it?" etc.
As a result, I've been asked to send them some information on Free / Open Source Software which will help to inform them in making decisions about their new strategy and procurement. So, can anyone recommend a good briefing note or two which would be suitable? Ideally it would be aimed at voluntary / public sector organisations in the UK and accessible by general management (not IT specialists), though other good materials would also be useful.
Thanks in advance,
Pete.
Hi Pete,
On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 10:35:09AM +0000, Peter Lewis wrote:
Hi there,
I work with a voluntary sector organisation in the UK, who are currently doing a review of their IT strategy and systems, and I asked recently if they were considering Free / Open Source solutions, as their previous systems are all based on Microsoft software (desktops, web servers, email, everything). After a short chat about what Free Software meant and how it's different from proprietary software, they had lots of questions, including "can this really save us money?", "will it give us more control?", "is it reliable?", "how secure is it?" etc.
As a result, I've been asked to send them some information on Free / Open Source Software which will help to inform them in making decisions about their new strategy and procurement. So, can anyone recommend a good briefing note or two which would be suitable? Ideally it would be aimed at voluntary / public sector organisations in the UK and accessible by general management (not IT specialists), though other good materials would also be useful.
Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any such note that I could point you to, though one must certainly be out there somewhere.
One important point to go for is strategic independence. With Free Software, the organisation is independent from upgrade cycles, and can upgrade its software whenever it feels like doing so, rather than when the vendor phases out support.
From the migrations I've studied, costs often tend to be comparable to a proprietary solution in the first year, but drop sharply afterwards.
There would be a great many more things to say. I hope you or someone else still finds a briefing note like the one you're looking for. But the point of strategic independence is often not sufficiently considered, so I'm adding it here.
Best regards and good luck, Karsten
2009/12/4 Karsten Gerloff gerloff@fsfeurope.org:
One important point to go for is strategic independence. With Free Software, the organisation is independent from upgrade cycles, and can upgrade its software whenever it feels like doing so, rather than when the vendor phases out support.
+1
I'm a Unix sysadmin in a commercial organisation, and every time we have to talk to our proprietary vendor we desperately wish we'd gone with something open source and/or in-house bespoke. And they're a *pretty nice* vendor, responsive and helpful and the product is good. But they remain the only place we can get help for on this opaque black box they've sold us.
My new saying: Software freedom is like backups, redundancy and service contracts ... you don't realise how much you need them until you don't have them.
- d.
Peter Lewis asked: [...]
As a result, I've been asked to send them some information on Free / Open Source Software which will help to inform them in making decisions about their new strategy and procurement. So, can anyone recommend a good briefing note or two which would be suitable? Ideally it would be aimed at voluntary / public sector organisations in the UK and accessible by general management (not IT specialists), though other good materials would also be useful.
Great! My fellow cooperators at Bristol Wireless co-ran a Social Source conference a while ago which might have some useful info http://www.bristolwireless.net/wiki/index.php/SocialSourceSouthWest but I can't find any of the materials online. I've just asked and will feed back any reply. Paul Webster has offered me his slides on "implementation in the VCS" - can I forward them off-list if needed?
IMO, the big problem with promoting FOSS to the third sector is that lots of UK government funding is wasted propping up a few hostile organisations that claim to be agnostic and independent but have entrenched legacy publishers as much as they can and excluded new entrants from forums. I lamented about that sort of thing at http://www.news.software.coop/why-is-public-and-charity-money-paying-for-the... back in April. So well done for getting a vol org interested!
Most of the relevant funded FOSS-related publications like FOSS.CIAC and FOSSVCS seem to have gone out-of-date and then offline, as is usual for funded work which gets released various Non-Commercial and No Derivative licences which make them hazardous or unusable to IT support businesses.
http://www.iosn.net/publications/foss-primers seem OK for the public sector, but maybe not great for the third sector.
If there's nothing out there and anyone has a bushel of funding, I'm sure software.coop, BristolWireless, FossBox, maybe M6-IT (not sure of its state) could start something sustainable.
Hope that helps,