He has a point.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| salparadise Nov 08, 2006 10:59 PM EDT |
Charities do tend to find OSS hard to deal with. Why? Because they are so hardened in bad habits with Windows that to change is very difficult. Support contracts are extremely expensive and most charities can't afford them. Most charities can get VERY cheap Microsoft software and very cheap copies of things like Quark and accounting software so Linux offers no real benefit. A lot of Government portals are built so that only IE works on them and a lot of online forms are written so badly that they only work on Word. A lot of printers don't work so well, scanners less so. For an organisation that struggles to keep the printer in ink the idea of paying hundreds of pounds to get one person introduced to Linux is absurd. The moral and political arguments for Linux are, on the whole, irrefutable. Sadly however, we live in a world where for most people morals and politics are just annoying or something that is put on like a hat when the situation would most benefit from having that view. This is utter bulls**t but is the payback from years of situational morality being both displayed and taught as correct. If it's immoral now, it will immoral in 10 minutes, tomorrow and the rest of time. Organisations will buy fair trade coffee, boycott Israeli goods and McDonalds etc but will happily use Microsoft and will get MOST defensive when you try to point out the contradictions therein. A lot of charities are based on good intentions but seem to exist mainly as a sop to the middle class conscience. Mostly they really really want to be corporations and so like to pretend with corporate buzzwords and corporate IT systems. Mostly, people are like water and take the path of least resistance all the way. I hear a lot of excuses. The one that gets to me the most is "I don't understand software and therefore cannot learn Linux". To which I want to scream "how did you learn to use Windows then?" |
| dinotrac Nov 09, 2006 2:16 AM EDT |
sal - I don't know how much you've actually worked with charities, but you're overlooking one very important factor for many charitable operations: a great deal of the work is done by volunteers. Not only to people tend to do what they know (and most people know Windows), lots of those people coming in the door know Windows. Especially in the case of relatively short-tenured volunteers, training is perfunctory at best. A charitable organization can put together linux-based systems to make that irrelevant, but that requires IT organizations that know enough and have time enough to do it. That's not an expense all charitable organizations can afford to take on. You're more likely to see FOSS in smaller organizations, like the Rev's church, where a single volunteer can make a huge impact, or where staff & a volunteer core are fairly stable. |
| salparadise Nov 09, 2006 3:44 AM EDT |
Dino, I sort of work in the sector. Sort of. It's a long story and I won't bore you with it. You are correct in your assessment of this particular sector. From 18 months of (often) heartbreaking experience it comes down to each organisation being too overworked and underfunded to take the time to incorporate Linux into the their thinking and way of working. I could have done with knowing that at the other end of those 18 months. |
| incinerator Nov 09, 2006 4:49 AM EDT |
Aye, the author has one point: If you are a computer-illiterate running a charity and you don't want to learn anything about them machines and them internet tubes, then you have an easy way out: buy non-free software. They won't fleece you, but they'll shackle you. Some counterpoints: 1. With ms crapola, you'll need a big corporate infrastructure to give you adequate support. With Linux, this can be done by much smaller teams because for the enlightened GNU/Linux is actually much easier to maintain. I fail to see how's that supposed to be more expensive. A friend of mine runs a one-man IT support business for small and medium-sized enterprises. He usually replaces windows server with drop-in SMEServer installations. The customers like it, very much so. 2. The author implies that for certain variants of GNU/Linux support contracts cannot be avoided. Has he never heard about things like CentOS or Ubuntu's selective support offers. 3. I'm sure GNU/Linux support businesses are willing to give out discounts for support to charities, just like ms does. 4. Did the guy actually bother to reach out to LUGs or other Free Software advocacy organisations? I'm sure he would have gotten some help one way or another. I guess he never bothered to do proper research. 5. The crap about "I don't want to use Free Software because I'll open up my system to anyone who can read code" is pure F.U.D. Free Software is less secure because the source code is freely available to everyone? Perhaps, on the moon when the Tooth Faerie marries Santa Claus. 6. Mr. Buckley says it himself: IT is vital for running a cost-effective charity organisation. However, he seems to be very willing to waste money on support contracts instead of recruiting volunteers for maintainig the charity's IT environment. D'uh? Why not just recruit volunteers for that, as well? Obviously BBC didn't bother to do much research and just printed all the FUD Mr. Buckley has fed them with. That's a shame, BBC is better than that usually. Even the last to paragraphs citing an expert to rebuke it all won't compensate for that. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 09, 2006 5:43 AM EDT |
I bet that FOSS advocates doing charity systems/network implementation and maintenance for a couple of charities could really speed up Linux in this sector. Maybe FOSS geeks just don't do enough charity work. Propably too busy coding in their free time :-) |
| dinotrac Nov 09, 2006 6:32 AM EDT |
sander - I absolutely believe that FOSS geeks could make a difference in smaller, more locally-oriented charity organizations. Their very nature makes it hard to turn down help. The key is to have just a little bit of patience. Lots of volunteers comd and go. Just by hanging around a while, you gain a level of trust most volunteers can't reach. Then, of course, you must strike when the opportunity arises and follow through -- doing it with the notion that, when you finally do need to move on, they may have a hard time finding someboy who knows FOSS the way you do. |
| hchaudh1 Nov 09, 2006 7:30 AM EDT |
tag:tinfoilHat Could it be something to do with the recent MS deal with BBC to "cooperate" on content. I am not doubting the truthiness (thanks Colbert) of the story, but the fact that it was run. |
| purplewizard Nov 09, 2006 10:16 AM EDT |
Where he is quoted as saying that they are NOT "organisations with woolley-jumpered amateurs" it just made me think actually yes you are if those are the reasons you use proprietary rather than Free Software. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 09, 2006 12:18 PM EDT |
Quoting:the notion that, when you finally do need to move on, they may have a hard time finding someboy who knows FOSS the way you do. Juding from Helios' latest post, finding Linux people is a lot easier than is generally believed. |
| dinotrac Nov 09, 2006 12:55 PM EDT |
sander - I was thinking of volunteers. That's a self selected group. I have not doubt that there are plenty of FOSS folk out volunteering, but, if you are a small charitable org, you may not have the luxury of looking. |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 09, 2006 2:16 PM EDT |
SMEServer...man, that's a heckuvan OS. Love it. For $99 a year, Zero Touch Linux is pretty well untouchable for ease of use. Clark Connect rocks as well. For a simple file server for multiple OSes, Red Hat Workstation is great. Yes, the Workstation, not the Server. Workstation includes Samba and can handle something like 4gb of RAM, more than most small-to-medium orgs would know what to do with. http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/client/ $299 a year gets you 4-hour response time and unlimited web and phone support from the greatest support company on the planet. Mention that you're a charity and it's probably cheaper. I guess more of us need to point these things out to organizations, and to volunteer our time. If they don't want to use Linux and our services, we can either continue to volunteer because we like their cause, or we can search for other causes. After all, once these things are in place you don't have to do much administration (not in a small scale organization) and you can spend more time doing the actual volunteer work. And if doing the PC/server work is what you volunteer, you'll look like a genius. Folks need to quit thinking that EVERYone needs to switch to GNU/Linux. We just want a sizeable portion, enough that we can continue to exist with no problems. And they can continue to use Windows on the desktop, if they want (why would they want to, lol) we'll take the server business away from Microsoft. They might not make a lot of money dealing with charities, but they like having the numbers in their corner. |
| tuxchick Nov 09, 2006 2:24 PM EDT |
"Folks need to quit thinking that EVERYone needs to switch to GNU/Linux. " True. Think of the starving botnets. :) |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 09, 2006 2:26 PM EDT |
8D "Every time someone switches to GNU/Linux, God kills a botnet. Please, think of the botnets." |
| dcparris Nov 09, 2006 4:20 PM EDT |
> $299 a year gets you 4-hour response time and unlimited web and phone support from the greatest support company on the planet. Mention that you're a charity and it's probably cheaper. Gee, I didn't know that! Gosh, I sound just like that stupid chiropractor commercial. Anyway, I really didn't. I should look into this a bit more. Still, everyone _does_ need to switch to GNU/Linux. :-p |
| dinotrac Nov 09, 2006 4:48 PM EDT |
>Still, everyone _does_ need to switch to GNU/Linux. :-p No, only those using something else. |
| dcparris Nov 09, 2006 5:18 PM EDT |
:-) |
| incinerator Nov 09, 2006 11:38 PM EDT |
"Still, everyone _does_ need to switch to GNU/Linux. :-p" What? You seriously want me to ditch OpenBSD on my firewall? ;-) |
| mvermeer Nov 10, 2006 12:28 AM EDT |
> > Still, everyone _does_ need to switch to GNU/Linux. :-p > No, only those using something else. > What? You seriously want me to ditch OpenBSD on my firewall? ;-) Also those whose bankruptcy would make the world a better place, need not bother switching ;-) |
| dcparris Nov 10, 2006 8:27 AM EDT |
incinerator: We might let you slide on the firewall. ;-) |
| helios Nov 10, 2006 3:05 PM EDT |
I dunno...since Devnet turned me on to Clark Connect...It's pretty sweet...and a dummy can make it work for one machine or hundreds. Signed, dummy |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 10, 2006 6:35 PM EDT |
I use Clark Connect as my home email server. Great and easy to setup. I think SME Server 7 is a better overall solution, however, and just as easy to setup. Both are Red Hat based, and both are nice. CC is geared more towards a gateway/proxy server, but it makes for a nice file/email server, too. SME is meant to replace SBS, and it makes an excellent PDC for a small to medium business. I guess the overall point is that there are numerous options for most charities...and businesses...and that simply refusing to use it because "it's not good enough" or "it costs too much" is ridiculous. |
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