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jhannah's use Perl Journalen-ususe Perl; is Copyright 1998-2006, Chris Nandor. Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions posted on use Perl; are Copyright their respective owners.2012-01-25T02:45:31+00:00pudgepudge@perl.orgTechnologyhourly11970-01-01T00:00+00:00jhannah's Journalhttp://use.perl.org/images/topics/useperl.gif
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Constructing a corporate policy: 90% Savings Through Open...
http://use.perl.org/~jhannah/journal/27706?from=rss
<p>I need to write a book/doctrine/policy/manifesto called "<b>90% Savings
Through Open Source</b>" subtitled "Systematically Giving 10% of
what We save
by using open source software is Good for The Company" or something like
that. For years we've been using open source software instead of Microsoft
products (for example) on dozens of servers, and that saves us money.
A lot of money.
It saves us money
thanks to the hard work of thousands of developers world wide who have
<b>given</b> the fruits of the labor to the world to use, gratis. It is in
our best interest, as a company, to support these efforts so we continue
to save money. Therefore, systematically giving (errr... paying) 10%
of what we've saved every time we
choose an open source solution over a commercial one is in our best
interest.
</p><p>
Turning that notion into corporate policy strikes me as a tough sell.
One immediate
problem: companies don't <b>give</b> resources to anyone, ever*.
They <b>pay</b> for goods
and services. As a strict rule,
if organization X doesn't demand payment Y under direct threat of denial of
services then they're not getting it.
Further the arguments [1] if we don't give 10% we'll probably still get
everything for free and [2] to whom would the money go? are quite
understandable, especially from executives who don't know or care how
open source functions in the universe, but who do clearly understand that free
means they don't have to pay money.
</p><p>
* Yes, companies do engage in charity, but what I'm striving for
here is a corporate policy that will support open source on a per-project
ongoing basis, not some impossible to retroactively justify annual "tithing."
</p><p>
Solutions to the problems above? [1] If our choices were MS-Windows ($300)
or Linux Distro X ($30), The Company would gladly send $30 to Linux Distro
X any day. The problem in the real world is that a Linux Distro X organization
needs to invoice us for $30 or we won't pay. That's quite a dilemma since
that's not how the universe currently operates. And even when it does operate
like that (RedHat, SuSE) it only does so for OSs, not for smaller things
like ODBC drivers for $30/seat vs Perl/DBI for $3/seat. [2] We need some
sort of "savings grid"?:
</p><blockquote><div><p><small> <tt> We would have paid 90% savings<br> ----------------------- ---------------------<br> Operating system MS $300 ? SuSE $30<br> or GNU $30 ?<br> Database IBM Informix $40000/yr mySQL $4000/yr<br> Application framework IBM Websphere $20000 Apache $500<br> Perl Foundation $1500</tt></small></p></div> </blockquote><p>
So, dear executive, I can implement that project for you for $X or $Y. Oh,
you prefer $Y? OK, I'll have those companies invoice us... Uhh...
How do I do that? On I micro scale how do I get $5/seat
to Simon for
<a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/">PuTTY</a>
if Simon doesn't demand $5 through a shareware license? How do we keep open
source free to try, but still encourage The Company to support Simon's
development of PuTTY if Simon doesn't demand that we do so? There should
be some sort of "invoice us" switch we can throw when we are saving 90%
thanks to open source project X. (... Then the question is what, exactly, are
they invoicing us for?)
</p><p>
How can I institutionalize the support of open source software? <b>Seeking your comments!</b>
</p><p>(This is a paste of an entry I wrote in my blog this morning: http://jays.net)
</p>jhannah2005-11-23T12:42:36+00:00journal