[Gllug] Open Source lobbying meeting - UKUUG London Thurs 19th

Richard Turner richard at zygous.co.uk
Sun Oct 15 08:50:04 UTC 2006


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Chris Bell wrote:
> On Sun 15 Oct, Christopher Hunter wrote:
>> The only place that there can be a significant take up of FOSS is on personal 
>> and home computers.  As MS price their new "operating system" higher than the 
>> price of a basic set of hardware, people will look elsewhere for their 
>> software.  I've lost count of the installs I've done for friends and family, 
>> and none of them have returned to MS.  
>>
>    I am finding more interest among small companies, especially those run by
> "ethnic minorities" and immigrants. Many have never heard about FOSS but are
> willing to try.

I can't speak for larger companies, but I've found that the last three
SMEs I've worked for have all been very interested in FOSS. Sadly one of
those had a new IT manager arrive a couple of years ago and since then
it's been Microsoft all the way (actually that was a charity so could
get "good deals" on MS software!).

The last two places I've worked have been very pro-FOSS - one using
Debian on all of its servers and a few techie workstations, another
using Debian and Ubuntu on all but a few legacy servers and about a
third of its desktops (plus VMWare for some Windows apps).

FOSS becoming mainstream isn't something that will suddenly happen -
there won't be some Earth-shaking event that catapults FOSS into the
"mainstream"; however, if more and more non-technie folk use Linux,
because it's free and safer than Windows on a PC with broadband,
eventually people will start to want to use the same software at work as
at home. Many IT managers, at least in smaller companies, might well
welcome that!

When a non-techie person notices the IT manager using Ubuntu on his
desktop and asks if he can do so too, because that's what he uses at
home, then FOSS is really "mainstream".

R.


- --
"Racing turtles, the grapefruit is winning..."

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