One of the many things I appreciate so much about openSUSE and Linux is that it puts the personal back into PC. Other operating systems and especially the latest offering feels more like a corporate experience, something akin to a trip to the HR office, rigid and formal.
Somewhere along the line licensing,marketing, commercial bullying and lets not forget the sale of certifications all of which seemingly have become more important than the product and what it’s users want and need.
I wonder how much longer small businesses can afford the ever increasing cost of license upon license to be compliant with software necessary to run their operations only to revisit this same scenario year after year?
I do know for certain that many small businesses are at their breaking point with the licensing revolving door of endless revolutions. Many I work with are balking at this and are looking for alternatives.
In the past two months I have recommended, and rolled-out Linux desktops to businesses that were looking to get the licensing monkey off their back, and in terms of 501C3s (non-profits) doing so makes perfect sense and has proven to lower their IT costs with both software and hardware. As time goes on I’m sure it will lower administrative costs too. I must admit it wasn’t an easy sell, and was done incrementally, but once in place it took little time to achieve buy-in and has proven to be a total success.
Keep up the good work but bear in that the biggest cost of moving to different software is the learning/training cost, not the cost of the licenses. Some FOSS is easier to learn that others. The real savings come in the long term when you are able to take advantage of all the flexibility inherent in FOSS.
Thanks John, I do bear in mind the training issues and I’m carful to pick my opportunities concerning Linux and OpenOffice. Even though it’s long in the past I could never forget the woes transitioning from Wordperfect 5.1 to Word, the DOS to windows or Unix/VMS/-AS/400 to windows days, that was brutal in terms of training. Your point is well taken, higher end apps for engineering, tech writing, legal services and the like make would training a huge deal. I’m finding that some of the small businesses I’m dealing with are not major users of office products and would be just fine to stay on office 2003 forever, so the move to OpenOffice which is probably one of the FOSS apps easer to learn, is rolled out with little issue.
The disappointing reality is that due to existing investments in ERP/MRP type software that will never be ported to Linux many businesses can not make the transition.
