Posted on 02/17/2009 9:50:31 AM PST by Brookhaven
Pundits and business executives alike are predicting gloomy economic times for 2009. But when the talk turns to free and open source software (FOSS), suddenly the mood brightens. Whether their concern is the business opportunities in open source or the promotion of free software idealism, experts see FOSS as starting from a strong base and actually benefiting from the hard times expected next year...
The idea that software available at no cost will become popular in a recession is a no-brainer...
Zemlin sees Linux and the FOSS ecosystem surrounding it as having insurmountable advantages in any market over its main competitor Windows -- advantages that an economic downturn only intensifies. At a time when a search for the lowest possible price point is happening in such areas as notebooks, FOSS is available at no cost. It is easy to rebrand and customize in a way that Windows Isn't, and is also technically more efficient...
As for advances on the desktop, Zemlin, like many, laughs at the long-predicted "Year of the Linux Desktop." However, he quickly adds that the year may have already passed in 2008 with the use of Linux in netbook computers...
Brown sees an opportunity to promote free software ideals in education...Why is it that we can send $100 laptops to the poor children of the world with an understanding that there's a new paradigm for learning, yet here in the United States, no conversation has been had about how we educate our children?"
Palamida recently conducted a survey among its client base of companies earning $50 million per year and higher in a variety of industries, particularly financial services. Of the IT managers who replied, 45 percent said they would consider open source as a cost-saving measure -- but nearly 55 percent said they would not.
(Excerpt) Read more at internetnews.com ...
Not such a no-brainer for some. Although savings may come in the long run with OSS, it costs money for most businesses to migrate platforms no matter what they're coming from or going to. With a recession, they might be more worried about spending the money they have right now rather than long-term savings.
Other than the original licensing for the ESX 3.5, ZERO software cost.
Contrast that to the Novell/Groupwise running on 3 of the other Blades and the up coming roll-over to MS 2008 and AD.
Let’s hope Linux makes headway.
The consumer is always better off with more competition.
How long you been using Eunuchs? And how much to train non-Eunuchs to be Eunuchs?
Think reasonable management might have an issue with all the retraining costs?
How much of the Intarwebs run on Apache? How different is MySql or PostgreSQL from MS SQL?
From what I’ve seen, the front end is different... The backend? Not so much.
Still a lot of work to port a complex system from one db to another.
From one version to another. Especially in Microsoft World. The headaches I’m dealing with now between older versions of Word/Excel and the extensible version in 2007? meh...
So there are no versioning issues in Linux? Sign me up!
Of course there are. They just aren’t any worse than MS and actually less than Novell.
Depending on how extensively you use them, pretty different. It's not just the data storage, it's the syntax for views, stored procedures, triggers, user defined functions (if supported). Lots of work required for the migration. Then there is the driver issue, not all are fully implemented. Been there, done that.
Don't forget Firebird SQL. It's my personal favorite.
The driver selection is very good. (ODBC, JDBC, .Net, Delphi/C++ Builder, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc.) Plus, it's multi-platform. There are 32-bit Windows, 64-bit Windows, Linux 32 and 64-bit, Mac OSX and Solaris binaries available.
Many years ago, you might have had an argument. Not today. If I could take my 70 year old Dad, and replace the Windows 2000 on his computer and install openSuSE in its place, and teach him how to use it, then the more tech savvy (compared to him) worker bees of today can be switched with less pain than you might think.
Changing-over to Linux is only ‘free’ if you don’t include IT staff time, and lost productivity. People tend to look for security blankets in troubled times. Doesn’t bode well for Linux. We’ll see if MS’s agreement to quit harrassing them over Windows emulation changes that any.
Microsoft has been imposing significant migration expenses because of unnecessary changes between software versions.
It’s probably easier and cheaper to migrate from Office 2003 to OpenOffice.org than it is to migrate to Office 2007.
But what about all the other apps (non MS) that have to ported/ supported?
Any app running in a modern GUI be it MAC, Windows or Linux, that is going to have a "similar" look and feel. Will tools and functions be located under the same menu tree as Office? No, but then again, MS likes to switch things around between versions anyway. So it's not so different.
Yes a transition will require thought and planning, just as any change to your data environment does. (Back when I worked at a multi-national, they wouldn't even allow new machines to have the latest version of windows, until and unless, it had been tested and vetted.) But migrating to Linux is not, IMHO, the insurmountable, or overly costly obstacle many make it out to be.
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