↪ 2015-08-20 Thu 17:06, Filip M. Nowak fsfe@oneiroi.net:
On Thu, 20 Aug 2015 10:46:06 +0200 Hugo Roy hugo@fsfe.org wrote:
(...) I wonder what kind of cost there can be for free software other than deployment costs --- the paragraph that immediately follows seems to suggest that training of staff is included ind deployment costs: (...)
It's relatively normal practice, that organization which deploys F/OSS pays for consulting and eventual software engineering services (to tweak or patch the software in case of need).
Wouldn't consulting be included in “deployment costs”?
But you're right, it's possible that the 7% are about software modifications. But in that event: IIRC OpenOffice.org was modified (thanks to free software licenses!) in order to accomodate with proprietary specificities of MS Office.
So including these costs in the cost of using Free Software is misleading to say the least. The calculation would have been better off by calculating the savings of the free software license allowing modification compared to paying the proprietary software vendors' partner.
I'm just saying that it seems that any single “fact” of that article can be explored to show how misconstructed the argument is.
In case of vendors like Red Hat or MariaDB this can be included in subscription / license fee or it can be an extra cost.
Yes, that's right. Are there such business models on OpenOffice.org providing services in Italy?