[ubuntu-us-ut] what does it take to hook government on open source?

[Clay Moultrie]

You do make a good point on those hurdles, they essentially the same as 
any large business moving to open-source. They are indeed significant 
road blocks when looking short term (a period of just a few years) but 
when you look at it in longer terms it makes sense. Throwing money at 
proprietary software is not a good investment, its not an investment at 
all because you are essentially "renting" the software for short periods 
of time.

You also make a good point about the fact that a large portion of the 
software government uses is very specialized, and that can be a problem 
because the average developer has no use for software used to dispatch 
police, this causes a lack of community. But in this case we need to 
rethink who the users are. The users of this software are 
municipalities, these municipalities comprise the community so imagine 
if each city could employ one developer, now you've got a state wide 
community of users and developers to work on these open source programs. 
Every city of a given size has the same basic needs, why should every 
local government in America be paying for proprietary software when they 
could all work together to develop there own software?

I do think that Utah may be one of the premier states to move to open 
source. Its clear that the LDS church does have an influence on our 
society and government whether your LDS or not. The LDS Church has been 
embracing open source for some time, Open Office has been the program of 
choice by many LDS wards and Stakes throughout Utah. this article 
mentions the churches growing emphasis on open-source software 
development http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9905321-16.html

Thanks for all the input guys!

Clay

Thad Van Ry wrote:
> On 4/13/08, Clay Moultrie <clay.osi at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>>      So I've been thinking, what would it really take to get government, local or state to embrace open source?
>>     
>
> I used to be a member of the Woods Cross City Council. I suggested the
> use of Open Source a couple of times within our city and I'd like to
> tell you about some of the hurdles I ran into. First and foremost,
> Microsoft offers a great price on their software to governments and
> educational institutions. This makes it so the difference in price
> isn't as great as you would think, especially when you factor in some
> things which I'll highlight. Second, governments use a lot of
> proprietary software that is built for a specific purpose. (Think
> about dispatching software for police, streets, and parks departments.
> Also think about co-ordination of software across the country such as
> with the Amber Alert.)
>
> On a local level, tech support was provided by a consultant. Linux
> consultants, on average, were quite a bit more expensive than Windows
> consultants. On a state level, I'm sure it would mean re-training to
> hundreds of desktop technical support reps. This has to factor in to
> the price difference, which as I mentioned, is already low.
>
> The next hurdle and probably the hardest to overcome is the
> familiarity of the Microsoft Office Suite to the employees. On a local
> level, the employees of Woods Cross City had several macros already
> built in both Word and Excel. You now have to figure in the amount to
> pay somebody to come in and convert those macros into an Open Source
> product. If you can't convert those macros, you end up with unhappy
> employees. In a government setting keeping employees happy in any way
> you can was very important, because, you can't usually do it with high
> salaries.
>
> Needless to say, I wasn't successful in our city. I'm not saying it
> isn't possible, or shouldn't be done. I'm just trying to point out the
> very large hurdles that will have to be overcome.
>
> Thad
>
>