Re: Open source software can still..
It is hard to understand just what you are trying to say. I wonder if it is meant ot be ironic.
Do you really believe that every organisation has got developers with the right skills and experience hanging around, on low salaries, just to knock up a bit of code for a deficient product? Or that they want to pay 600 euros a day for someone who may or may not have the skills and experience he says to put in place a system, for which there are no permanent staff to maintain it and that is probably inadequately specified, designed, tested and documented?
Have you got any idea how expensive "a bit of coding effort " is when it is not just some hobbyist knocking up a cunning programme or script for his private use, where secuirty, stability and so on are not serious considerations? And when the coder has moved on, where are the squadrons of able people who know all about it?
Tell us, do: when you are booking an aeroplane ticket on line or looking up the train time table or doing a bank transfer, what level of support, design, testing, maintenance, security, user interface etc. do you expect? "A bit of coding effort" suffice, will it?
Remember, their job is not IT. Their job is providing services, running elections, feeding, educating, transporting people, managing land, parks, buildings, police. Computers are just tools that they expect and need to just work, just as pen and paper, messengers and so on used to do.
What is more, when they recruit new staff or transfer internal staff, like it or not, a basic familiarity with MS products, much as I too dislike most of them, can be assumed, reducing training and integration time, effort and cost greatly.
I agree that MS operating systems are not the best (though getting much better, including the malig ed W8) and the applications for Windows vary from brilliant to inadequate. But they are widely known and known factors in a way that desktop Linux and server Linux are not. It is notable that LInux's success is mainly in backend services such as web servers or dedicated systems such as Android or modems, where the normal user has precious little access or need for it. As a front end, it is still far behind MS or OSX (I'm a UNIX specialist and fan, not windows or Linux).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
