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Re: [Fsfe-uk] BECTA discriminate against FLOSS?


From: Paul Tansom
Subject: Re: [Fsfe-uk] BECTA discriminate against FLOSS?
Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 01:30:23 +0000
User-agent: Mutt/1.3.28i

** ian <address@hidden> [2003-12-24 10:42]:
> > It is less obvious there is demand for a Linux based School
> > Administration system, 
> 
> This is really a different issue. SIMS has a monopoly but CMIS is eating
> into it and there is at least one FLOSS solution fairly well developed.
> The problem is more that individual schools choose their admin packages
> often directed by their LEAs, a lot of the cost of such admin is support
> contracts anyway. Control over admin systems tends to be by people who
> are unlikely to know anything about FLOSS and there are well-established
> relationships between the likes of Capita and those responsible for
> admin. OpenOffice.org is a much better candidate to get widely into
> schools than specialist admin software because it will ultimately be
> used by a lot more people for a much wider range of applications.

I'd be interested to know what the FLOSS solution you refer to is as I'd
like to take a look. Not that will help in practical terms as I have
just had to build and install a new server in a school running W2K with
MS SQL Server to support CAIRO (SIMS but without the admin side of
things I believe, just the acedmic bits).

> > so I'm not about to risk many months of my life
> > creating it, especialy under a licence where I can ony guarantee selling
> > one copy.
> 
> You could potentially get a lot of support business, but it would be
> very difficult/expensive to break into that particular market. Many have
> tried and failed.

This is both the strength and weakness of FLOSS. If you have a popular
'product' and can build a strong team and user base you are laughing. If
you looking at a more niche 'product' then the time to develop it has to
be funded somehow (even coders have to eat!). With the way the GPL and
other FLOSS licenses work it would be a very big risk to invest
significant time in developing something that somebody else can just
pick up as another offering in their portfolio and charge for support.
They then have all the same revenue opportunities without the initial
setup costs.

Personally I do my best to put back into the community wherever I can,
but it can be a hard aim to achieve given the need to put food on the
table and pay bills. Of course there are those that are both good enough
and high profile enough to be funded by the odd foundation here and
there, or by large companies, but these are the exception rather than
the rule. Without some way of addressing this issue there are some
applications that will never be available, in FLOSS form at least. Here
lies the chicken and egg situation for the desktop issue - more
applications to attract the end user vs more end users to attract the
commercial developers to cover the areas FLOSS won't or can't cover
(yet!).

Hmm, what was the question again? :-)

Happy New Year btw.

** end quote [ian]

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/




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