originally uploaded by Adriano Gasparri
A recent SunThisweek Letter to the Editor speaks in favor of Matt Little as Lakeville’s next mayor. However, another Lakeville resident takes issue with Little’s suggestion that the City move to free software to cut costs. While they make some great points about free software, they appear to miss many of its more important features.
From the comment:
Love the Water says:
October 8, 2012 at 10:12 am
Little wanted to swap out all of the current software the city uses and switch to “free software” in an effort to save money. Hmmm…let’s get rid of something we already paid for and get free software that nobody knows how to use which creates inefficiencies, error potentials, frustration and difficulty working with other organizations that do not operate on the same software. Ignorance is bliss
As a Linux user for over 15 years, I am all for use of free software when it benefits the taxpayer in both the short and long term. However, like this SunThisweek commenter, I may have issues with swapping out ‘paid’ software with free software due to many of the issues they present.
But! Just because software is ‘paid for’ does not necessarily mean there isn’t a good reason to swap it out for those programs which are freely available. Much software comes with limited licenses which must be renewed to continue operation and free variants should be given equal consideration in the bid process.
- Take for example a fictional document imaging software. There may be a free alternative which does 90% of the work a pay-for version does but costs 100% less. The pay-for software likely comes with a yearly contract renewal from whatever third party is pushing it to maintain the software, provide employee training, and re-up the site user license. If this software was free and the costs associated with training and maintenance remain the same (or slightly elevated) there seems to be a great opportunity to save some real dollars while providing only a minor inconvenience in staff time.
This pay-for software may cost $15,000 a year for the lowest level license allowing only 300,000 pages to be scanned a year. The employee(s) hired to do the scanning may be able to complete this task in only a few days a month and are left to their own devices for the remainder of the month which would equate to a huge loss in staff dollars as well as software.
Obviously, there are a lot of caveats to this approach but it could work in both the short and especially the long term and should not be dismissed because it appears naive on the face to those who are neither familiar nor comfortable with IT software purchase and licensing. The number of private sector companies taking advantage of the relative lack of knowledge, time available, and dollars available in the public sector can be surprising. A public sector agency opting to take this route could really become a leader in the sector in opting for free software as a replacement for pay-for software while saving their taxpayers real money.
Remember, staff time is something which is generally a fixed cost whereas IT is something which could be mitigated. What if a piece of software is delayed for 5+ years in a budget simply because the organization cannot find appropriate funding for the high costs associated with the software’s deployment? Should the staff wait and continue antiquated processes just because the organization is unable to move to free software because its ‘pay-for’ counterpart is better understood? Could this equate to costs much higher than those associated with the software itself; it’s quite likely.
As someone who worked in the public sector and leveraged any number of freely available tools at my disposal to do data analysis, I find the idea both intelligent and worthy of consideration. While ‘pay-for’ software should never be ignored, neither should free software and anyone writing off a candidate solely for this reason alone should be discounted themselves.
Do you think a candidate for public office should be discounted for suggesting pay-for software should be replaced with free software? Do you think more free software should be examined with equal time and effort as pay-for as a cost savings measure deeper than simply face value? Would you support your own city considering free software alongside pay-for versions, why or why not? Whatever you have to say about this one, go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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October 9th, 2012 at 7:17 am
Ah, sunk cost fallacy from the letter writer. Gotta love it. :)
It really depends on the software and what the free equivalent is like. It can certainly make a lot of sense and, like you said, it’s worth at least examining.
October 9th, 2012 at 7:17 am
Sorry, commenter, not letter writer.
October 9th, 2012 at 8:20 am
I would say it’s not a bad idea if placed at the right time. Say your organization needs to upgrade due to reason X. This would be the time to explore your options for replacing your software.
At times, it may not be wise to do this at a desktop level, however at the server level, if you don’t happen to need anything more than file storage and basic security, a Linux variant is your choice at no cost, unless you go with RHEL or similar.
Personally, for my business I don’t run the MS products at a production level due to their cost, security flaws and excess overhead to run a GUI for a file-server.
In the end, both pay and open-source applications have their place in the world, some are better suited in some business operations than others.
October 9th, 2012 at 10:25 am
I don’t see a role for low market penetration software on the desktops of government employees in general. I can see it in very specialized verticals on the desktop. I.e. if the only application ever used is a browser with no need for ActiveX controls then why on earth do you pay for a Windows license?
Where a great role for this could come into play would be in the back room servers doing grunt work with no particular need for generalized user interaction. Here IT Professionals should already exist, and should be able to work with at least Linux and MySQL.
October 9th, 2012 at 11:44 am
Can you explain why though? If the software does nearly the same thing for far less money and can still be backed by effective user training, why wouldn’t it be the best option for the taxpayer?
October 9th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
“Love the Water” makes assertions that are *possible,* but certainly not guaranteed. Open Source SW can save a lot of money, and all operational/support/acquisition/inter-operational factors need to be considered.
Too often, people who swapped ram in their mom’s laptop think they now understand medium/large-scale IT strategy.
October 9th, 2012 at 3:10 pm
I should have limited that sentence to a time frame, i.e. today I feel that way. In the future I would hope that changes.
#1 issue is training. every stinking person you hire would need to be trained, over and over again. While I’m in the technology field, and see many people that could easily switch from Mac to PC, to Linux, to BeOS, to Android without nary a stutter, I see so many more that can’t. Historically this has been in what is today 40-80 year old, but I still see this in 16 to 40 year old people. Look at the money corporation have to spend in training just to go from Windows xp to Windows 7. It’ll get better as technology continues to pervade our society. But I don’t think we’re ready yet, nor will we be for another 10-20 years.
#2 issue, interoperability. Sure, most of the linux desktop software is “fairly” compatible. But it isn’t fully compatible. How many people started getting new office format documents well before there was a decent converter for the older versions? Eventually open standards will pervade the various document formats and this one will go away but I don’t think it is gone yet.
October 9th, 2012 at 8:24 pm
For a politician to bring it changing operating systems while trying to get elected to city office doesn’t really make sense to me because it seems like a minor internal savings. Even if a change was made the savings usually would be eaten up by salary increases.
As for paid vs free operating systems really depends on their setup. If they are buying pre-built computers with windows already installed there isn’t really a benefit to adding a foreign software the city workers aren’t familar with, especially if you need to “retrain” employees. Some additional software for doing certain tasks does have some massive cost benefits especially when it comes to office and photo editing software. As for the IT department and operating servers they would probably want to stick with something that has service agreement even if the base operating system is free simply for stability.
Overall, it doesn’t makes sense to bring up while getting elected especially if you don’t know the current setup within a city and if he does? Most people don’t care.
October 9th, 2012 at 8:32 pm
TB, I’m talking about way more than the OS. The licensing fees are expensive there but not nearly as much as individual pieces of software they’re using.