How did the decision to migrate to FOSS came about? Who made the decision?
Upper management wanted to do away with payment of licenses so they asked me to introduce FOSS. Cost savings were around 20,000 pesos per machine. We had around 10 or so machines so that translated to about 200,000. Since these machines were supposed to be running win98, which isn't available anymore from MS, we did not need to upgrade any hardware except for RAM. That's more savings. Management was pretty happy.
Was training part of the migration or was it an implement and "hope
they use it" approach? We trainned the people who needed to use it. Both for OO and Linux.
What distro did you use?
We started with RH9, then jumped to FC5.
How long before did it take for them to ask you to reverse the migration?
A little over two weeks.
If you are to do the project all over again what would you change in
the process? I would use more "change-management" techniques than simply "evangelizing" the virtues of Linux and OO. Getting people PREPARED for change allows them to see the learning period as a minor annoyance, rather than as an earth-shattering experience. Additional tip to migration-wannabees: Easing people into Linux, by using OpenOffice for windows is a great idea. But be forwarned, uninformed users will think that they are already using "linux" simply because they're using OO. They usually equate MS Office=Windows. If it's not MS Office then this must be the "Linux" they're talking about. Some of my colleages even think that OO is only available for Linux. Piracy is so rampant that they don't know MS Office has to be purchased separately from the OS. When I explain this to people and tell them how much a license for windows costs they simply shrug their shoulders, then whe I explain how much more MS Office costs, it floors them and they usually say "Di ba kasama na yun?!" Besides by using the undeclared tactic of "allowing" piracy by not apprehending small time violators, MS actually furthers the sale of their products because employees of big firms will refuse to use anything but MS products. And if these big firms don't buy a license, the NBI swoops down on them. So be wary also of some firms' willingness to do piracy instead of going legit. Most migration will work on big firms, seldom in smaller (less suceptible to raids) firms. -- Regards, Danny Ching _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
