Forum to discuss and answer questions on Enterprise Agreement

[John (EBo) David]

Trent Shipley wrote:
> 
> That wouldn't do it for me.
> 
> How much is *retraining* going to cost.

Sorry I was not clear... I consider that as part of the migration cost. 
and likely the one most difficult to go.

> I've used Linux and Windows and Windows is *much* easier to work with.
> Linux and its tools also tend to have a lot more anoying bugs that the
> comercial stuff.  

some of them, but not all. 

> The saving grace seems to be that the *nix architecture
> tends to keep my OS up and running--provided that the user knows the tricks
> to take advantage of that fact.

what tricks are you refering specifcally?

> Even so, I wind up restarting Xfree pretty often.  The fact that I don't have
> to reboot the machine is pretty irrelevant--restarting the X windowing system
> is the moral equivalent of rebooting the work station.

agreed.  I've crashed my system 7 times in the last month, before that
it was up for about a month or two at a time (including the same X
cession).  I only took it down to play with installing Gentoo....  Two
of these 7 crashes BTW were caused using a new image processing package
that hung X, and the other 5 I was developing a near real-time
deterministic application with a kernal module.  I had to extensively
modify the module to fit it to my app.  Problem was that I when I mis
calclated something and it would have timed out some time in about a
year...  when your doing systems programming some time you have to
expect such...

> =============
> 
> I think that the point isn't whether free, open source, or even Apple or IBM
> solutions are better.   From a business perspective "better" is irrelevant.
> 
> What is relevant:
> 
> 1)  The County is in violation of State and County regulations.
> Specifically, Microsoft is a a convicted monopolist.  The County can't do
> business with monopolists.
> 
> (NOTE WELL: to carry the case you better have lawyers there.  The county will
> have lawyers.  The license fees are chicken-feed compared to total operating
> costs .  The County will have lawyers there to keep it from being forced to
> do something that will cost it a lot more than the relatively irrelevant MS
> license fees.)

some one else pointed out that they could go through a third party and
get around that.  But once you look at the overall cost the licensing
fees over time are probably not so insignificant.  Most significant is
what it will cost them to make sure they are in compliance...  fines if
not...

> 2)  There exist alternatives to MS.
> 
> 3)  The alternatives in #2 don't have to be better than MS.  They just have
> to exist and be minimally viable.
> 
> =============================
> 
> 4)  Get a lawyer.  Be prepared to sue the County into compliance.  You are
> planning to visit a regulation induced disaster on County IT and gigantic
> unecessary expenses on Maricopa County taxpayers.  The whole thing is driven
> by regulations, economic logic is irrelevant.  If the County is indeed in
> violation, the courts can be used to cram the whole thing down the CIO
> director's maw.  If the County is *not* in violation of law then your cause
> is toast.

I disagree.  There are the examples of the schools out on the west
coast...  Even if the are not in violation they still have to face
dealing with Mr. Bill until they migrate off M$.

> On Tuesday 02 July 2002 21:22, you wrote:
> > Curtis Zinzilieta wrote:
> > > A far worse result would be to turn out in numbers, largely unorganized,
> > > and appear before them speaking like religious zealots.
> > >
> > > Numbers are important, yes, but more important will be the ability to
> > > calmly and rationally present our points and viable alternatives.
> > > Alternatives that can actually be implemented in a reasonable timeframe
> > > and can be expected to work.  I believe it's impossible to expect the
> > > county to turn over every desktop and server in a very few days, for
> > > instance, regardless of standing laws or statutes.
> > >
> > > Again, clear and concise points, well presented, with backup, are what
> > > will be needed here.  Speaking off the cuff, without prior thought or
> > > consideration, is not likely to make many points.
> >
> > I'm cramming to get my thesis out and have only been skimming the
> > posts...
> >
> > On thing that I have not seen discussed so far is suggestions on how to
> > ween the Gov. off of M$.
> >
> > Example: can Kword, Kspread, Kpresenter, etc. be compiled using Qt, etc.
> > and run on Win*?  Is there another opensource *word editor which works
> > on multiple platforms?  How bout databases?
> >
> > If I was their IT guy I would want to see the following at least
> > described if not in person:
> >
> >   1) A list of software with capability lists that are common to
> > orginizations like theirs.
> >
> >   2) a compatibility chart for what they currently use to what roughly
> > replaces it.
> >
> >   3) a list of those packages which will not only run on *NIX, but also
> > Win* so that I could lod it up on the uses machines and start getting
> > people to use it, etc.
> >
> >   4) and possibly last, and this would likely be the clincher, chart the
> > costs (seat purchase, maintance, etc.) of the two.  Best of all would be
> > a first pass on estimating the migration costs also.
> >
> > well... back to working on my thesis...  that's my 2 c
> >
> >
> >   EBo --
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