On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 18:10, Greg Woodhouse wrote: > That's one perspective, but to others it might be a business decision. > In the case of VistA, a hypothetical health care provider may opt for > an open source solution because it believes that they money saved in > licensing fees will not be offset, say, by increased support costs.
To be fair Greg, frankly, the people making these decisions aren't even qualified to make such choices. It cost $200K/year from Siemans for a barely usable system in which it take them 6 months to simply change a label on a form. Just to change the F*^4g label so that a user knows what the heck s/he's looking at. So what kind of support are we talking about here? We all make our money on the support. The only difference is, with a Free Software system your not locked into a single vendor. So who is making these decisions? > Now, it may well be that the open source I think you mean Free Software ... > product is also the best > product available (Apache comes to mind here), and it may well be that > the overall cost of ownership is less for an open source product in > these cases. But the point is that, whether you agree or disagree, a > reasonable person may opt for an open source solution because it seems > to be the best option available based on purely financial > considerations. It is also possible that a developer or (less likely, > but still possible) an organization may opt for an open source solution > based primarily on ethical considerations or matters of public policy. > These are all issues worth discussing, but they are also out of scope > for this list, so I'll leave it at that. > :) Ever read the book Town Hall.... Ruben > --- Ruben Safir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 14:26 -0700, Greg Woodhouse wrote: > > > Open source may be a > > > good thing (and I think it is), but is it being touted because it's > > > the > > > "right" way to do things or because it's the cheapest? > > > > I don't know what Open Source is exactly, but in the case of Free > > Software, its the "right" way to do things. Its also usually the > > least > > expensive way as well, but that is just a side affect of it being a > > Free > > Software program. The freer things are, in most things, the more > > money > > you make and the less you pay for a unit. > > > > Ruben > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > > SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO > > September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle > > Practices > > Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing > > & QA > > Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * > > http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf > > _______________________________________________ > > Hardhats-members mailing list > > Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members > > > > > > === > Gregory Woodhouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > "Design quality doesn't ensure success, but design failure can ensure > failure." > > --Kent Beck > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO > September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices > Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA > Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf > _______________________________________________ > Hardhats-members mailing list > Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
