Let's kick off this forum: open source in the workplace

Well, quite honestly, I'm not a developer in the sense that I've contributed anything worthy of anyone but myself. I can really only speculate as to the reasons why they would develop applications for free. I can say that many of the developers for highly desired programs are compensated some how, be it working for an open-source division of a commercial company or being hired on contract to write a program for a company that then releases it as open-source.

One thing I can tell you is that while there are programmers out there that may not be up-to-par with what you would expect, there are a lot of excellent programming teams out there that are working on open-source. I've read of real programmers that took an extended leave from their day jobs to work on open-source. Granted the particular programmer I'm refering to was a BSD programmer, but I'm sure there are other examples also.

It's a movement, or some would classify it as a revolution, sort of like like the sixties and people that can participate are doing whatever they can to say they were a part of it. Sure it sounds a little glorified, but for the most part, its true.

JC, the point is that at this time there is the costs of retraining and lost productivity, for both users and staff, currently outweight the savings gained from "free" software. The point is that until a company can get open source replacements for almost all the software they run under Windows (including those applications that occur in the corporate world but not the home, like CAD packages, document management systems, inventory management, etc.), they won't switch OS.

the point is that at this time there is the costs of retraining and lost productivity, for both users and staff, currently outweight the savings gained from "free" software

No shit, but it will always be this way. Anytime you ever switch operating environments there will be a learning curve. I've been saying this the entire time. However, how much time are we really talking about? In most desktop environments we're talking a couple days before people get the hang of it. In a large environment this means some $$$, but it has been done by others.

For instance, when I was at Verizon the last thing anyone worried about the the operating system. That's chump change compared to rolling out other applications that the company used for account activation and switch access. And we're talking 18-19 y/o non-techie sales people were using this stuff.

For instance, who cares what email client you use to check your email? Here....you click on this icon (Evolution) and this is how you access your email. It looks the exact same as Outlook (like some are used to).

The software is intuitive. It's all a windowing GUI paradigm. But, before you weigh in on this matter you might want to actually use the stuff first.

If we agree that the transition costs outweigh the savings, and that apps are more important than the OS, then what reason is there for a company to switch from a Windows-based environment to a Linux-based one?

Sadly, young people are far more adaptable to change and far more accepting of technology than some of their older workplace peer. I had a user who still ran a DOS-based version of 1-2-3 until 1997 because he was "too old to learn Excel with only few years until retirement." Fortunately, he didn't have to share any files with other users.

Using the stuff is my goal. Right now I haven't figured out how to get the box to talk to my NT domain. I'd like to access my existing files off the network when I play with the apps. I'm searching for -detailed- instructions, but everything I find relates to setting up Samba as a server. I want to configure it as a desktop client of the NT network; I'm not interested in sharing the files on this box with other users.

I'm also trying to figure out how to pass my local username and password to NT so I won't have to keep logging in every time I want to use a domain resource. (Yes, I have the same credentials on both.) Hopefully that will include some way for NT to update the Linux account if I change my domain p/w, and for new users to log on the box without my needing to create accounts for them in both realms. If I can figure that out, I might be ready to tackle accessing our Exchange server. I'm assuming the RH9 distribution came with an Exchange-compatible client; I'm no where near ready to attempt installing apps yet.

If we agree that the transition costs outweigh the savings, and that apps are more important than the OS, then what reason is there for a company to switch from a Windows-based environment to a Linux-based one?

We don't. Just ask Ford, Oracle, City of Munich, Gibson to name a few.

What part don't we agree on? You agreed with my previous post that the costs outweigh the saving ("No shit, but it will always be this way") and I agreed with you that apps are more important than the OS.

I don't have access to Ford, etc. Can you provide a link to a page showing how they justified the costs?

Originally posted by jcookeman So, according to you guys there is absolutely no way anything other than Windows will be in the corporate world, although there are very intuitive gui desktops from RH, SuSE, Mandrake and Sun, until they are exactly like Windows? What's the point? Again, we all know that people don't like change that much, but it is something they will groan about for a few days and everything will be back to normal. We're talking about a desktop os!

I didn't say they had to be exactly like Windows. I said that's the reality right now because I haven't seen a Linux GUI be so compelling that it was obviously much more intuitive. Don't forget, it's not only the desktop layout, you have to consider all the apps, too. That's where I see things breaking down right now because many Open Source designers don't care about intuitive interfaces and they just slap some GTK around a command-drive backend.

By the way, I think the guitar company you're thinking of is Ernie Ball, not Gibson.

One day I have got to learn how to include the nice bolded quotes in my replies...

It was said once before and the basic premise is companies think change is bad even if it could be for the better. $$ be damned! Unless their was a huge upfront monetary payoff (besides the predictions of operations cost savings) it's going to be a while before this could ever happen. Its going to be easier for MS to keep Linux down than it is for Linux to gain a larger market share.

CS,...hit the "quote" button on the comment you want to reply too.

You agreed with my previous post that the costs outweigh the saving

No, I don't agree that costs outweigh the savings. Most companies have long range projections. And, as such, they may take a loss at a conversion up front, but, after a year -3 years(depending on the size of the company) it will pay for itself. There is absolutely no way you could go from something already deployed to something else and it not cost money no matter what it is. But, if you spend the money and deploy and go through the "pain" over the long run it will pay off in the millions. And I'm talking just over a 3-5 year projection.

I think the guitar company you're thinking of is Ernie Ball, not Gibson.

I think your right chort, I didn't look that up????

Okay, I don't understand where the cost savings are going to come from. Please remember I am grass green regarding the business model for Linux, companies that provide distributions, and the open source software model in general. Despite previous posts in this thread, I still don't get it. In the word of Robert A. Heinlein, "TANSTAAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!"

I confess I don't know what the support contracts from an enterprise-level supplier are going to cost, but I have assumed they must be similar to those of Microsoft's support. Most of the costs I've seen for support staff training are comparable to the costs of training to support a new version of Windows Server, so that's a wash. I'll even grant you a GUI and apps that are similar enough to Windows that end user retraining is not a concern.

We don't upgrade an OS just because MS releases something new. Of the 170 computers at this site, all but 25 are running 95 or NT; all are running Office 97. We only upgrade an OS when the user has a new app that requires it. Hell, we're still running an NT domain in the company, although most of our servers are now running 2K. I realize some companies may feel a need to keep ahead of MS's support life cycle. Is there enough savings on the licenses alone to compensate for the lost productivity? If not, where else is it coming from?

Most of the savings over a 3 year period would be reduced software licensing cost, and a reduction in worm/virus related cleanups/lost productivity. When talking about TCO you have to take into consideration cost of dealing with common problems of said OS, as well as the visible costs from licensing, support, training, etc.

Of course, over the next 3 years there will be an increse of Linux-specific worms and viruses so it would be short-sighted to expect the current rate of infection on Windows platforms vs. the current rate of infection on Linux platforms and simply project that over 3 years. Also, the lack of worms and viruses should be balanced with the extreme prevelance of "root kits" for Linux, so while on the surface it appears that Linux doesn't suffer at all for security, the fact is that there are numerous Linux vulnerabilities (mostly software flaws that lead to local privileges, that lead to local exploits) that are being actively exploited, just not on the mass-worm scale.

Oh, I should point out that there is apparently a massive price difference between Microsoft Office and other productivity suite offerings. SJD for instance is supposedly around 1/6th the cost of a Windows + Office offering.