Anonymous

London, UK

IT Consultant

Quote: "If it lowers it to the point where it makes no sense to deploy open source, then it is a good deal for the organisation."

Does it make "no sense"? Why are people always considering that price is the only advantage of Open Source? What about vendor/service provider independence (even Red Hat is now supported by Red Hat and Oracle for instance, but not only them)? What about the use of Open standards in document formats for example? What about technology lock-in? What about security (for large and well organised Open Source projects)?
Even if you only want to see everything through the "price perspective" all those risks, like technology lock-in, dependence on a single provider, security flaws, have a provisional cost. And believe me this cost is often quite significant. Seeing this requires stopping having short term reasonings and beginning building real strategies. Organisations should perform real assessments on their situations and on the opportunities Open Source can potentially bring to them. It's not only licensing costs savings.

Maybe the Birmingham Council is right. I'm not aware of their specific context. However we'll see how it will manage its mandatory upgrade to Vista due to growing incompatibilities with its new applications and hardware in the next few years.

Did you say a better deal? I wouldn't be so sure about it.