Databases Toolkit

Linux taken for a ride in the Old West

Tags:
Lamp,
Public Sector,
Local Government,
Open Source

Ingrid Marson ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 20 Feb 2006 15:55 GMT

...the components from our Web site. We haven't yet developed a site on Sourceforge, but will be doing this in the summer.

We would love to have other organisations using the product. For example, if a small rural community in Australia implemented the system and added an animal registration module, they could contribute that module back to the project and everyone else could use it. That's the beauty of using public money to develop open source software. We're very grateful that our elected officials realise that's true and gave us some money to develop it.

Have you had any interest from other local governments in the US?
I demoed the software at the National Association of Government Webmasters conference in September 2005 and we had some enquiries. There are some smaller city governments that are investigating use of the product.

One of the big reasons people look at it is because they realise it's not perfect, but is a strong starting point that doesn't cost anything.

Why do you think some local governments in the US are reluctant to use open source software?
I think the main reason people don't use open source is due to lack of appropriate skills or familiarity — once the technicians or decision makers become aware of what's possible, they start to become really excited about open source. My boss was really sceptical five years ago when I told her about the direction we were going to take. But now, every month you can read in magazines about open source being used in the public sector.

Do you notice a change in attitude toward open source within the public sector?
I believe the increased visibility and the ever increasing environment of acceptance is helping quite a bit with open source adoption in the commercial and government market. There is still some resistance — mainly from people who I believe are primarily motivated by fear.

There's this perception that if you buy a product and pay for a licence, there's a company that stands behind it and if it breaks and lets you down you can say: "but I bought it in good faith from a big company and thought I was making the right decision". But what we find in practice is that, in terms of the system and its reliability, you are no safer spending money for proprietary products than you are spending the time and money to learn open source.

If you buy from a big company, you can get through to support people and they will answer your questions. But what if the company says it's releasing another version this year and you have migrate to it, because in another year they will abandon the previous version. You are forced to upgrade.

For example, we have a particular [proprietary] product that we have used for a couple of years. It's a fine product, but the manufacturer told us a year ago that there is a required upgrade that will cost us $15,000. I put that in the budget for 2006, but the city council says we can't afford it. The manufacturer does its best to provide support, but I'm literally running an obsolete product because I couldn't afford an upgrade.

Aside from what you've talked about just now, what are the main advantages of running open source?
Within the Linux environment, technicians are so much more confident and satisfied — there is so much flexibility and stability with Linux. That one element — confidence and satisfaction — is huge in this industry, as you can never afford to pay your staff as much as you want to.

Another big advantage with open source is that when you want to change it, you don't have to sign a non-disclosure agreement to get the source code, as it's there already. I wouldn't say the overall cost of operating open source products is any lower — we still spend money on training and occasionally hire consultants to help us out — but once we know how to do it we don't have continuing costs. Maybe that's the biggest financial advantage — it costs what it costs to get started, but the ongoing costs are lower as there are no licensing or new version costs.