Re: [Fsfe-uk] BECTA discriminate against FLOSS?

[ian]

On Sun, 2003-12-21 at 11:01, Tom Coady wrote:

> This is an interesting point - as was Ian answer that money is a 
> priority while security is secondary in an educational environment. 

To be pedantic, that's a bit misleading. Security is important in a
school, but the purse string holders don't understand the arguments. For
them everyone uses Windows so it must be OK. In fact, most schools
believe they can make Windows secure if they pay for anti-virus, keep
patches up to date etc. If you chuck enough resources at things you can
usually solve a problem, its just that its less expensive to do so if
you can use things that are inherently more secure and that have no
license fees for the tools to make them secure. 

> But 
> you would expect banks, for example, to apply this metric to their 
> consideration. Not so for Barclays, where "It's all about the service 
> wrap. You get the software free but it's a service wrapper and gaining 
> clarity of your perspective on what you're prepared to accept and not 
> accept in terms of service." Is this deliberate obfuscation of meaning 
> or can this be translated into http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/ ?
> 
> I guess you need to bear in mind this TCO has just spent an incredible 
> amount on MS solutions, and has an interesting perspective on the SCO 
> litigation. For predictable rants etc, see here:

Vested interests will always try and twist things round to fit their
argument and commercial vested interests will spend a lot of money on
it. Here are 10 key steps to make a case for implementing a strategy for
change, hopefully based on rationality rather than emotion.

1. Software is part of a set of tools that handle data and information
2. Software is maturing so the rate of development of new applications
and improvement to existing applications is slowing down with most of
the development costs already recouped several times over.
3. There are two basic models for software development: Commercial
licensing and FLOSS.
4. Most generic software tools exist under both models demonstrating
that both models are viable
5. The FLOSS model has taken longer to gain acceptance on personal
computers (probably because in the early days the sheer numbers with the
skills to write software were not there so a few exploited their rare
skills through commercial licensing)
6. The rate of development of FLOSS applications has increased and
continues to increase while there are very few new "must haves" in the
commercial licensed world which is dominated by a handful of entrenched
players.
7. If starting from scratch and there was a choice of an open operating
system or a closed proprietary one its almost certain that the industry
would go for the open one. It went for open hardware in similar
circumstances around 1980 to avoid what has happened with software
since.
8. The main reason Windows dominates the desktop is simply the number of
applications that need Windows to run, its not about quality,
cost-benefit or anything else related to Windows itself. If it had been
in the past the World would have adopted the MAC. If Linux could run all
Windows apps out of the box it would be a no-brainer to move to it
simply on grounds of costs and open standards.
9. If its desirable to get away from proprietary lock in, instead of
wasting time and effort on TCO and similar red herrings it would be more
sensible to adopt a strategy for change.
10. The key decision hinges on whether the short term investment cost in
change outweighs the long term benefit of freedom.


As with anything new, re-ordering the social systems takes longer than
the technical ones so its not surprising that governments are slow to
provide clear leadership in change strategies. Role cultures are
notorious for being unresponsive to change. As Arthur C Clarke put it.
New ideas go through 3 phases:

1. That's crazy, it can't possibly work
2. Well it might work but it will be too expensive
3. I knew this was the best thing to do all along.

We are clearly at stage 2 with FLOSS at the desktop. I think we were at
Stage 1 through the late 90s early 2000. Difficult to know when stage 3
will happen, but I guess its a year or two off yet and we have to keep
battling away in the meantime.

Regards,
-- 
ian <address@hidden>