You probably saw this article already http://www.zdnet.com/article/huge-savings-prompt-italian-city-to-dump-openof...
First of all I think it makes no sense to talk about ownership when you talk about services. You can say total cost of operations. But that is different than when you own something.
My second question (I hope some Italian speakers can clarify): Do they really compare the costs for running Microsoft Office and Apache OpenOffice in parallel with just running Microsoft Office??
Regards, Matthias
So they are basically saying “Deploying OpenOffice alone cost us 93% of 500€/user/year as opposed to 200€ for MS Office? That is about the biggest admission of “we don’t know how to do installation management for our IT” that I have ever heard.
Cheers,
Mirko.
On 20 Aug 2015, at 07:56, Matthias Kirschner mk@fsfe.org wrote:
You probably saw this article already http://www.zdnet.com/article/huge-savings-prompt-italian-city-to-dump-openof...
First of all I think it makes no sense to talk about ownership when you talk about services. You can say total cost of operations. But that is different than when you own something.
My second question (I hope some Italian speakers can clarify): Do they really compare the costs for running Microsoft Office and Apache OpenOffice in parallel with just running Microsoft Office??
Overall, Netics researchers estimated a yearly cost per user of €530.38 over a five-year period for the open source software, 93 percent of which came from deployment costs.
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:
By contrast, for Office 365, the cost was €197.49 a year. According to the researchers, the lower figure is due to workers' greater familiarity with a Microsoft working environment, and better compatibility with different file formats offered by the proprietary product.
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).
In case of vendors like Red Hat or MariaDB this can be included in subscription / license fee or it can be an extra cost.
As a side-note: it was (and, indeed, quite often still is) common opinion among corporate folk that F/OSS is not acceptable alternative for proprietary software because it lacks support, SLAs etc. (i.e. no guarantee that some bugs will be fixed or features will be implemented in "business sensitive" time).
I don't think it's reasonable - especially for government institution / cell - to plan switching to F/OSS without such kind of support.
Cheers, F.
↪ 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?
On Thursday 20. August 2015 08.03.46 Mirko Boehm wrote:
So they are basically saying “Deploying OpenOffice alone cost us 93% of 500€/user/year as opposed to 200€ for MS Office? That is about the biggest admission of “we don’t know how to do installation management for our IT” that I have ever heard.
Indeed. Some other gems from the ZDNet article:
"According to a recently published report from the Netics Observatory - commissioned by the municipality and Microsoft itself"
So, Microsoft-funded study favours Microsoft product.
""We encountered several hurdles and dysfunctions around the use of specific features," Bruscoli says in the report. "What's more, due to the impossibility of replacing Access and partly Excel (various macros used on tens of files), we decided we had to keep a hybrid solution, using the two systems at the same time. This mix has been devastating," he adds."
This just sounds like amateur hour. I know that people like their spreadsheets and ad-hoc attempts at automation, but one gets the impression that they didn't know what they were dealing with at all.
"In particular, having to repaginate and tweak a number of documents due to a lack of compatibility between the proprietary and the open source systems translated into a considerable waste of time and productivity. The management estimates that every day roughly 300 employees had to spend up to 15 minutes each sorting out such issues."
I think this is what Matthias is intrigued by: what's the repagination and tweaking all about? It sounds as if Office had caused peripheral lock-in and that they use other systems that depend on files being produced in Microsoft's proprietary formats.
"Also, OpenOffice, according to the report, was slow when used to 'call' specific applications the municipality used to manage its various departments. The IT support that had to be provided to employees further added to the migration bill."
So, even if they weren't still using Office, they were using other systems that wanted Office to be around. Maybe they should have considered the interoperability situation here first.
Paul
On 2015-08-20 07:56, Matthias Kirschner wrote:
You probably saw this article already http://www.zdnet.com/article/huge-savings-prompt-italian-city-to-dump-openof...
First of all I think it makes no sense to talk about ownership when you talk about services. You can say total cost of operations. But that is different than when you own something.
To summarize it: The extra costs is mostly due to vendor lock in. So how does Microsoft propose to fix it? Yes, more vendor lock in! It amazing what they can get away with ....
/Marcus
Dear Fellows,
Sidenote: They appearantly also ditch open standards. Is there in Italy no government law or guideline that says use open standards, as a government body, unless there is a real reason (like we have in the Netherlands)?
Best regards,
Il 2015-08-20 17:28 André Ockers ha scritto:
Dear Fellows,
Sidenote: They appearantly also ditch open standards. Is there in Italy no government law or guideline that says use open standards, as a government body, unless there is a real reason (like we have in the Netherlands)?
Yes. there are guidelines. They are part of CAD (Codice Amministrazione Digitale) and PA *should* provide real reasons for adopting proprietary software instead of free software. Maybe it's the case for an association to ask to enforce it.
Davide
Hello,
On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 05:34:41PM +0200, davide@flossconsulting.it wrote:
Il 2015-08-20 17:28 André Ockers ha scritto:
Sidenote: They appearantly also ditch open standards. Is there in Italy no government law or guideline that says use open standards, as a government body, unless there is a real reason (like we have in the Netherlands)?
Yes. there are guidelines. They are part of CAD (Codice Amministrazione Digitale) and PA *should* provide real reasons for adopting proprietary software instead of free software. Maybe it's the case for an association to ask to enforce it.
And compared to the Netherlands, that guideline was even supposed to have "teeth". Out of the FSFE news item [1] back then:
"Importantly, the new rules come with a mechanism to ensure they are followed. Both public bodies and the interested public can ask the Italian Digital Agency to check if a given organisation is following the correct procedure. Administrative courts can annul decisions that contradict these rules. In case of negligence, individual public servants may be held personally liable."
Greetings,
Guido
[1] https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140116-01.en.html
It seems that the ZDnet article is almost "partial". There are various articles in Italian who try to clarify the position of the municipality. This one, for ex.:
http://www.techeconomy.it/2015/07/12/microsoft-comune-pesaro-i-conti-non-tor...
sorry, it is in Italian only! Substantially it says that an attempt of estimation of TCO by the municipality IT manager, have been taken and mystified by Microsoft to create the report. The journalist go deep in the reports of expenses of the municipality and found that the budget estimated for the migration effectively was of about 300K€ but they used no more than 1/10! The project of migration was never completed. The journalist argue an errata corrige by Microsoft ;-)
Andrea
Il 20 agosto 2015 07:56:24 CEST, Matthias Kirschner mk@fsfe.org ha scritto:
You probably saw this article already http://www.zdnet.com/article/huge-savings-prompt-italian-city-to-dump-openof...
First of all I think it makes no sense to talk about ownership when you talk about services. You can say total cost of operations. But that is different than when you own something.
My second question (I hope some Italian speakers can clarify): Do they really compare the costs for running Microsoft Office and Apache OpenOffice in parallel with just running Microsoft Office??
Regards, Matthias
-- Matthias Kirschner - Vice President FSFE
-- Sent with free software from my mobile: freeyourandroid.org . Please, excuse my brevity.
Substantially it says that an attempt of estimation of TCO by the municipality IT manager, have been taken and mystified by Microsoft to create the report. [...] The journalist argue an errata corrige by Microsoft ;-)
Hmm... public administration, injustice.... this is a work for...
The Digital Champion
I'm sure this powerful european-wide network of Champions is there exactly to monitor the PA and help citizens in setting the record right (http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/digital-champions)
Thanks to Roberto Guido, we even have http://dilloalchampion.it/, which for Pesaro points to Alessandro Paolini (@alepaolini83).