defending FOSS was Re: [Linux-aus] [Fwd: Re: [xxxxxxx] FW: Re: S.A. Parliament - Ubuntu Matter of Interest]

[David Lloyd]

Brenda,

> folks you're missing the point of my email, i must do better in future 
> to be clear in what I am asking for/communicating.

Sorry, you're e-mail was ill formatted and confusing. Garbage in and 
Garbage Out.

> I said "Would anyone on these lists care to argue the case in the 
> interest of educating professional ICT practitioners who are not across 
> the issue? "
> 
> I was asking for the learned people on this list to comment on the 
> misguided assertions of my colleagues.  the fact that it arose out of 
> one politicians speech making in the house, is irrelevant.  (I dont 
> disagree with the ideas espoused about getting out there and talking 
> with pollies but that's not the meat of this matter).

So, reading between the lines, it's your colleagues who made those 
rather amusing assertions? I've heard various bits and pieces about the 
ACS in the past and they've surpised me.

I'm becoming less surpised.

> So how about it?  Do you want to join maddog and james in taking up the 
> challenge of provided evidence to the contrary.

I thought that I had.

> If I can extract the essence of the points made by my ill-informed 
> colleagues:
> 
> * Open source software is not really free ... The cost of free open 
> source software is migration, maintenance and reliability issues.
> 
> [I know this has been addressed by con zymaris amongst others already]

Indeed.

> * Where more reliable services are required, it is more of Unix flavours 
> which are more often used than Linux
> 
> [what is meant by this do you think?]

Sorry, I'm not prepared to parse your colleague's inability to write 
good English. In my answer, I pointed out that there are different 
choices...

> * Costs  [of implementing FOSS} include change of hardware, retraining 
> staff, additional expert maintenance staff, buying online support 24/7, 
> design and implementation of addtional redundancy to have 100% backup in 
> case of breakdown
> 
> [are there total cost of ownership current docs around on this?]

I think Cybersource (Con Zymaris et al) did one of these a while back. 
Pia Waugh probably has examples too.

> any contributionsyou can make would be appreciated so that I can come 
> back to my colleagues and start the process of education.

I wish you luck; as I said before I've heard bits and pieces about the 
ACS in the past and they've surpised me. I'm becoming less surprised.

In a previous post, I pointed out that the poster seemed to imply that 
the open source community (or zealots?) would make a migration to open 
source software without following well established guidelines in 
engineering (such as planning for the migration, training those who need 
to take care of the new services, ensuring adequate support is 
available, making sure the systems are as fail safe as the business 
requires).

The poster highlights the costs of running a business grade IT system 
and then PRETENDS that only open source systems have these costs. That's 
bullshit and you know it.

DSL