Believe it or not this kind of setup used to be all over academia. My group regularly got called in to clean up after such cockups, because more often than not the comp sci students didnt do that good a job and the departments were left with a mess that was left by successive waves of student help. ANd we wount even get into the fun that we had figuring out the “documentation” for such systems.

But yessiree the dougman is recommending them, do they must be good!

Such as?

You see, I know a few companies whose executives eat bread regularly. The result? They had to let some people go or are teetering on closing their doors.

Evil baked goods.

There are a few companies that have relied on proprietary software and are struggling financially, had to let some people go or are teetering on closing their doors. They spent capital on IT foolishly with reviewing alternatives.

Other companies that did review alternatives and decided to develop in-house or used opensource software are flourishing, have learned to adapt to markets sooner and even published some Android apps.

I know of one company that has spent $2M plus, for proprietary software written in Java, the terminal servers where the software resides cannot upgrade to the newest Java version, as it breaks the software. So now the servers are subject malware, which they have already falling victim on more then one occasion.

By using opensource, they could have easily built something for $250K using PostgreSQL , intern some college comp-sci majors and have it developed for web-based access. In doing so, they would be able to scale, instead of either being told they cannot or they have to spend another $50K.

With the scale involved and the margins of software companies, closed source is also much more costly. Some governments actually spend $billions annually on IT with a large part of that licences. They could hire developers more cheaply and get a better and more reliable product. Why should governments or anyone else pay more for software than it would cost to make it themselves? Suppose I can mow my yard for $5 worth of fuel and $10 worth of wear and tear and an hour of my time. Should I really pay someone $50 to do that for me? It’s a valid question that could rationally be answered either way but when you realize I actually enjoy the activity and it’s good for me, the grass and it makes the Little Woman happy, the answer is clear. I do it myself. Governments have their own reasons for making decisions. All I ask is that they actually make a decision giving FLOSS a shot. Many did not do that and now are locked in to more expensive migration. Those who have already migrated are laughing all the way to the treasury.

Licensing closed source commercial software is also valid Pog, whether you like it or not.

Governments being taxpayer-funded tend to be more open about things like expenditures than businesses which just have to show the bottom line. So, it’s not surprising a government like Munich will discuss expenditures and results while IBM will just quietly go about using GNU/Linux internally for fun and profit.

I have not read of any “failures” of GNU/Linux migrations. It’s an OS. It works. Occasionally there have been reports that a migration was reverted but that’s usually by top-down decisions or weak management. Businesses would likely fire an employee who refused to use that other OS. Why shouldn’t they fire an employee who refused to use GNU/Linux? There certainly is no shortage of successful migrations and government is big business, usually/often the biggest business in any country. In Canada, for instance, the government of Canada has ~200K employees. That dwarfs global corporations like M$ and Google but not IBM. It’s a huge business by any measure. Imagine a country like USA, Russia, India, China with much larger populations. The only difference between governments and business is that most businesses care mostly about the bottom line and most governments care mostly about other issues like keeping it all together or dealing with common problems or crises. Governments are corporations more or less and they do run on money, people and technology.

The large sizes of governments does give them more inertia than most other businesses so it is remarkable when large countries take a position on FLOSS and decide to change for the good of their citizens. That takes effort but it has rewards like increasing local employment, improving “balance of payments” and reducing overall costs while improving productivity. Many governments, certainly at the national level are quite capable of making and sharing FLOSS rather than paying licensing fees to foreign corporations. It’s a valid option.

And Nothing says that you would be that stupid either. You will come to terms, or you will make zero money, especially if you use some of my patents.

Care to play chicken idiot.

Perhaps if you are kludging together FOSS onto some white box crap in small quantities that might be true. But the minute a vendor who uses infringing technology in a product that becomes successful they get sued.

No, they were first and foremost running end-user applications.

“Guess how a lot of the first PC’s were used to Unix mainframes”

No, they were used instead of mainframes or Unix systems, thus reeing their users from the shackles of MIS departments.

“We are seeing governments and others do 80% plus Linux Desktop deployments.”

Funny how most of those “success stories” involve governments, not businesses. And don’t look too close at those “successes”, that’s better for your believes

–“CuBox Developer Platform is a highly energy efficient and miniature open source development platform for different applications, like multimedia, set-top-box, NAS, automation and other applications.”–

The first Personal Computers were development platforms as well. CuBox and others are appearing as thin client options. Guess how a lot of the first PC’s were used to Unix mainframes

ch
“Not Bloody Likely that any non-MS OS will take over the mainstream PC market before that happens”
Problem is we are not talking Not Bloody Likely. We are seeing governments and others do 80% plus Linux Desktop deployments.

Clarence Moon Motorola under Google is playing for Keeps. So that 10 dollar per Android device is a short time thing. Yes current apple vs Motorola case if Motorola wins and has every apple product banned from sale MS will have to think twice about the path they are on with Android.

Yes Microsoft using patents to get money might be the very thing that sees them killed.

Apple thought they were save from Google the dominate Desktop in Google is Apple. So that Google is using Motorola to hit Apple this hard what are they going to do to Microsoft that none of Google core operations depend on.

oldman
““When it fails, Microsoft will have no technology to take its place.”

Are you sure, or is that just wishful thinking… or an article of faith?”

To be correct unless MS changes path and makes true peace they will end up neutralised by patents and unable to sell anything.

Nothing in law says I have to grant you a right to use my patents Oldman. This is the big problem with Patent law. MAD solution equals dead companies. FOSS can live after a Patent MAD battle. Google model is also very resistant to patent attack.