What is Digg?113 Comments
- abbathdoom, on 08/29/2008, -3/+42"and, at the very least, [considering open source] could have given the government of Quebec more negotiating leverage to get better pricing from Microsoft"
Thats the real kicker. By not even shopping around they are potentially just throwing away your taxes. I'd be pissed if I was you, regardless what you think of open source software. - sirhomer, on 08/30/2008, -0/+22Governments tend to have to look into multiple vendors before making non-trivial purchasing decisions, and often must favor the local economy versus foreign companies. The open source group in question believes Quebec did not follow this requirement when they purchased these software systems.
- astrobela, on 08/30/2008, -0/+21[This comment is not available in your country.]
- inactive, on 08/30/2008, -3/+17with opensource there is no license cost. the only cost is the support deal and that beats the ***** out of any support deal MS can give.
- nicktx, on 08/29/2008, -5/+18If you were the government and were spending millions of taxpayer's dollars, then yes. In fact it happens quite often.
- monsieurpwn, on 08/30/2008, -3/+16vive le quebec libre!
- sooperspook, on 08/30/2008, -2/+15For personal computers, that's debatable.
For servers and database systems which Gov puters are most likely to be, Linux is more than ready. And already used by a number of Govs around the world. - mathcreative, on 08/30/2008, -1/+11You can spend whatever you want cause it's your money! The money Quebec spent on microsoft licensing is not their own.
- VeroAvitar, on 08/29/2008, -2/+11Governments in Canada are also free to pursue a sole source solution from any vendor if they can demonstrate internally that the vendor is the best option. Upon being sole sourced the vendor is eligible to gain any sort of contract for which they have been sole sourced.
For example sole sourcing Oracle for DB's..any time a client wishes to acquire a DB there only option is Oracle. As mentioned by another comment the reasoning is support costs. - jjones20, on 08/30/2008, -0/+9laugh out loud
- santaliqueur, on 08/30/2008, -9/+16Funny how Linux powers most of the websites you've ever used. Not ready though?
- albator, on 08/30/2008, -0/+6I am a Quebec Citizen and a employee of the federal governement, I hope we will change thing.
At my Job We have to pay each years for Microsoft Office, Lotus Suite, and Wordperfect ! - Bhatch514, on 08/29/2008, -2/+8I wonder when this goes to court, and of course gets legislation to change for contract software bids, how this will effect the rest of of Governments.
- Spuy767, on 08/30/2008, -0/+6Oh for *****'s sake, it wasn't even bid on. It's in poor taste, and often illegal to take the first bone that someone throws you.
- MattBlackCat, on 08/29/2008, -17/+23Seriously, Just who is the vendor to negociate with for open source? Who are you going to escalate an OS SEV1 to?
Also if you have ever worked in government, with the miriad central and local dbs, of every flavour, not to mention legacy apps with hardware you would understand why chosing MS is a no brainer in terms of support costs. - KaiserArny, on 08/30/2008, -1/+7As mentioned in the article, any contracts over $25,000 must have an open biding process as per Quebec law.
There was a situation were the city of Montreal decided on the unilaterally to negotiate only with Bombardier over the subway contracts and lost in court because the process should have been open to other suppliers. In the rest of Canada, they don't have the requirements. You can't associate the governments of Canada with Quebec. - inactive, on 08/30/2008, -4/+9aren't you whining right now too?
- inactive, on 08/30/2008, -0/+5Anyway, personally I think the Government's no-bid contracts is plain wrong possibly illegal. They should have given the Linux guys to explain how their solutions will cost more. Just entertain their bids, however high it may be.
- EtherGnat, on 08/30/2008, -2/+7I purchase software for a University organization using government money. I always consider open source software and that's what we use if it best meets our needs. If I decide Microsoft is the best solution we buy that. I've never once requested a bid for open source software, though.
Of course they are purchasing software on a much larger scale, so a more formal process might be appropriate. I still don't think it's fair to assume they didn't even consider open source. - KaiserArny, on 08/30/2008, -0/+4First if you would have the article, this is not about the Canadian goverments. It's about the Quebec govenement.
Coming from Quebec ( It's almost autonomous), They would never comment on being sued. This is almost the norm here in Quebec. You will never here in the media about thir side of the argument until it reaches the court.
And there's a good chance that they may amend their policies even before the proceedings start. - YodaJones, on 08/30/2008, -0/+4Sue those bastards. It's the only language they understand.
- acmethunder, on 08/30/2008, -0/+4This won't go anywhere, and will 1) die quietly in a back room, or 2) be ignored completely like other rules about awarding contracts..
Bienvenue au Quebec! - inactive, on 08/30/2008, -1/+5I agree
- JohnFlux, on 08/30/2008, -0/+4> and a slight differentiation could cause them brain aneurysms
So you'd be in favour of chosing Open Office over MS Office 2007, since MS Office 2007 has such a diferent interface to the previous version? - inactive, on 08/30/2008, -9/+13Micro$ux is like the nerd mafia.
- gcnaddict, on 08/30/2008, -4/+8Yes, but transferring everything takes more tax money than you could possibly imagine. If you've ever worked in any government institution, you'd know just how much data is generally being managed at any one time.
Testing to make sure everything would work on FOSS (or just OSS) without any hitches while migrating from Microsoft to FOSS is also another factor in those costs. In the end, any savings might be offset so heavily that a good 2-5 years of time might be lost migrating everything from one platform to the other (as well as money going into testing and the migration process)
I'm surprised you're being dugg up, because you clearly didn't think about any of this when you posted.
Knowing the FOSS crowd here, I wouldn't be surprised if I get blindly buried because I happened to be out of FOSS lock-step. Seriously, though, this is how I know most of you haven't worked in IT at all. Support/maintenance costs are huge; one of the largest goals of any organization when dealing with IT is to keep all support and maintenance costs as low as possible while maintaining service integrity. Transferring everything to a free platform would be ridiculous if Microsoft support, maintenance and licensing costs are lower than the cost of moving everything over to a free platform and maintaining it. - harzack86, on 08/30/2008, -0/+4I guess French would understand it easily if you would spell it correctly ;-)
Oh and "French" and "Quebecois" are not living in the same place.
"Facile" - inactive, on 08/31/2008, -0/+3This will go no where, it might have legislation that the IT deparment has to send an email saying "nothing we do runs on linux" but that's about it.
- inactive, on 08/30/2008, -0/+3At least he tried lol
- 4321234, on 08/30/2008, -1/+4/facepalm
- init100, on 08/31/2008, -0/+2"Seriously, Just who is the vendor to negociate with for open source?"
There are multiple vendors. Ever heard of Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, Sun Microsystems or IBM?
"Who are you going to escalate an OS SEV1 to?"
What's an OS SEV1? - init100, on 08/31/2008, -0/+2@sc0rpi0n
"How many ordinary users know how to use OpenOffice? 98 of out 100 don't. So they need training."
I seriously doubt that, as I have found my Microsoft Office knowledge highly transferable to OpenOffice.org. Unless the users do advanced stuff with VBA and the like, I seriously doubt that they would have any significant issue with a switch to OpenOffice.org. After all, OpenOffice.org is pretty similar to Microsoft Office 2003 and older versions. - 1hrSleep, on 08/30/2008, -2/+4That's not the ONLY cost. You have to factor in the loss in productivity while your employees relearn how to do everything again. You might have to pay for retraining, so on and so forth...
There's more to the bottom line than sticker prices. - inactive, on 10/06/2008, -0/+1i love linux but like dude above said it will cost so much to train people
http://fatbikez.com - Testiculese, on 01/29/2009, -0/+1No thanks, spam bitch.
- jdelator, on 08/30/2008, -3/+4the open source advocates are out in full force today on a friday night
- 4321234, on 08/30/2008, -0/+1Just google "get the facts" if you don't believe me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- alexforcefive, on 08/30/2008, -2/+3the point is not whether FOSS would work out cheaper or better than proprietary systems, the point is that the government didn't even CONSIDER other options - which is ***** any way you look at it.
- JohnFlux, on 08/30/2008, -1/+2You should have a look at this new linux distro - you might not have heard of it - it's called Ubuntu. It has lots of capital and a very charasmatic leader!
- smacksaw, on 08/30/2008, -0/+1Didn't anyone read that article?
- 4321234, on 08/30/2008, -0/+1I knew there had to be an ulterior motive. Hit digg front page. So obvious now.
- smotpoker, on 08/30/2008, -3/+4"By taking the Linux's 2% market share into account, 98 in 100 employees will need extensive training, first on the operating system basics and then the unfamiliar software packages."
Really? How many employees require "extensive training" to use Windows or bother to learn any operating system basics? Typically only the admins. Everyone else learns most of what they need to know in the first hour of trial/error.
The relevant question is: How many admins usually maintain a given network and of those how many have 0 experience with any form of Unix?
In general, the immediate/perceivable difference switching between Desktop Linux and Windows is like driving a different automatic car than you've driven before. Everything is the same except the amount of pressure needed for the gas/brake, the location/orientation of the radio dials and vents, finding the lever under the seat etc. You can easily find everything and know what it is without much help. Switching is trivial
From an admin perspective, the transition is a bit more difficult at first and would require some sort of training but it doesn't take much/long and most can be picked up by watching and consulting the migration people you hired with the license money.
"If it's a subcontract to an open source company, the last time I check, Linux support service costs more."
That's because they are so rarely needed. Linux is more stable and open so admins usually don't bother calling tech support... they can usually find info they need and/or fix what they need themselves for free. - johnndavis9, on 12/04/2008, -0/+0UK Gambling Directory
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http://www.dirics.org/ - DarkShroud, on 08/31/2008, -1/+1MS Office 2007 is supposed to be easier than Open Office. And a lot of people agree that MS Office 2007 is easier to use once they get used to it.
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