Linux Solutions

Today’s computer users are starting to realise that if you want to save money on software, and not pay those pesky license fees, that open source is the future. Freely available on the internet, open source is answer to those who want feature rich applications, but don’t want to/can’t afford to pay the excessive price tag.

Many people believe that government organisations could save an astronomical amount of money if they changed from their (generally) Microsoft powered systems/applications to open source technology, which is more than adequate.

West Virginia state government currently spends millions of dollars per year in license fees to software developers including Microsoft. However, state chief security officer, Kyle Shafer claims that switching to open source would not be beneficial to the government.

“We haven’t done a lot with open source,” he said.

But is he right? There are many cynics around, that denounce open source as either inaccessible, incompatible, or just too much hassle, but anyone reading this should know that that is not the case. Let’s look at OpenOffice, for example. OpenOffice is a free home office software package that is pretty much an exact replica of Microsoft Office; however, the real difference is in the price tag. OpenOffice: Free, Microsoft Office: around £200. The openOffice format can even open most Microsoft documents.

Open source even applies to browsers. Firefox is the second most popular browser on the internet, to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Its constant updates are made by the open source community, and Mozilla actively try to get everyone involved in the development. Companies like Google are in on the open source act as well, offering various programs you can download an tweak/improve/totally cock-up.

There have been attempts in various state of America to mandate that state agencies use open source software. California and Oregon have both dipped their toes in the open source pool, but so far no one has jumped in.

Perhaps the reason for this slow acceptance of open source applications is because of the ‘you get what you pay for’ attitude. Wisconsin made a point of examining the benefits of open source software, but came to the conclusion that the costs of training new staff, coupled with the software’s unreliable nature made it more beneficial to stick with Microsoft products.

The software has other issues like security, and a lack of a technical support team to fix any software problems – you just have to wait for the community to develop a patch, Schafer whined.

This is generally the point that open source falls down. It’s hard to convince anyone to take a risk when you know that you don’t have a technical team on 24hr standby, and you need to rely on a relatively faceless community. The problem for most is that a failure to understand how open source software really works will hold open source down.