The government of Iceland recently launched a one-year migration project for all its public institutions in what appears to be an acceleration of its movement toward free and open source software and away from proprietary systems, according to the European Commission blog Joinup. The project will apparently lay the foundation for the migration with a common infrastructure. All the country’s government ministries, its capital city of Reykjavik and Iceland’s National Hospital are among the organizations involved in the move.
For this simple reason: If you wish to switch to FOSS for the freedom to modify the code, the freedom to distribute then it WILL work but if the ONLY reason you are switching is cost? Then it will fail because FOSS is NOT "free as in beer" when it comes to migration costs, the costs associated with coming up with new most likely custom written software to replace the tons of proprietary apps, the cost of converting all the data from those apps, and then there is the training and administration costs.
In every case where we've seen them convert for the right reasons it works, but if all they are concerned about is the bottom line? it ALWAYS costs more to change than it does to stay with what you have. And I'm sure any admin worth their salt would agree with me. I predict they'll flounder for a few months then someone will make an overture to Microsoft who will cut them a little break on the pricing and then they'll abandon this idea.
Not that FOSS can't take the place of Windows, because it can, but you have to go in with the right mindset and be doing it for the right reasons. if all they are doing is counting beans then they will find Linux more expensive in the short and medium term and bean counters seldom look more than a few quarters away at best.
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Iceland Has the Hots for FOSS
Posted by: Richard Adhikari March 26, 2012 05:00 AMThe government of Iceland recently launched a one-year migration project for all its public institutions in what appears to be an acceleration of its movement toward free and open source software and away from proprietary systems, according to the European Commission blog Joinup. The project will apparently lay the foundation for the migration with a common infrastructure. All the country’s government ministries, its capital city of Reykjavik and Iceland’s National Hospital are among the organizations involved in the move.
In every case where we've seen them convert for the right reasons it works, but if all they are concerned about is the bottom line? it ALWAYS costs more to change than it does to stay with what you have. And I'm sure any admin worth their salt would agree with me. I predict they'll flounder for a few months then someone will make an overture to Microsoft who will cut them a little break on the pricing and then they'll abandon this idea.
Not that FOSS can't take the place of Windows, because it can, but you have to go in with the right mindset and be doing it for the right reasons. if all they are doing is counting beans then they will find Linux more expensive in the short and medium term and bean counters seldom look more than a few quarters away at best.