Building a case for open source

Yesterday, I attended a top-level review meeting for our project. In attendance, too, were heads of our partner agencies and institutions. The talk, which was free-flowing after the agenda was exhausted, came to the current "crisis" in some agencies regarding software licenses.

Some top honchos opined that they could not handle the costs of additional licenses. One guy who actually talked with the government e-procurement service said that even at the 30% discount of Microsoft products, the overall cost is still to much of a burden for them.

My boss said that we use a mix of open source and proprietary (legally acquired, of course) software for the project, and we will continue to do so. Another agency has been advocating the use of open source, and was willing to provide training and assistance in migration issues.

I felt a bit frustrated when some of the agency heads argued that migration was just too much work for them. Someone smirked that one cannot teach an old dog new tricks.

I fear that this is the same mindset from other agencies in government. They are so entrenched in what they have that they feel a move will not only be a hassle, but will also entail "too much work" on their part.

Now that is very sad. I guess we have to work on it some more: continue to use open source — or maybe strike a bargain: use open source software on top of some proprietary pre-existing ones — software and pursue (and document) best practices on its use. Advocacy is also key. The promise of one agency to help another in migration is a good start.

We can also hit on the bottomline: how the shift to open source can definitely improve benefits while reducing costs. Right now, our group is doing a careful study on TCO for our institute. We may be able to publish our findings and create some benchmarks from which to derive future calculations. ROI is a bit difficult to compute, as there are still no metrics on productivity boosts in using open source as opposed to proprietary software. Besides, we're a non-profit so ROI is a bit inconsequential.

We can build a case for open source. The timing is ripe. With the opposition continuously bombarding our (open source) camp with FUD, among other things, we can always hope that those in the trenches will win the fight, and the battle.