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

[Charles Curley]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 02:52:53PM -0600, Clay Moultrie wrote:
> 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.

Now, that's an interesting point. Most proprietary licenses allow you
to use the stuff. You don't own it. The vendor could take it back if
they felt ornery enough. Where with GPLled software, you have every
right to use the stuff as long as you feel like it.


> 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?

There are a number of libraries around the world co-operating on an
open source library management suite, as a case in point.

-- 

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