[Fsfe-uk] TCO and environmental argument for FLOSS

[Ian Lynch]

Having just installed Mandrake 10, I notice a definite improvement in
speed in just about every aspect of use. Now this is fairly unusual
since usually a software upgrade to a later version of an OS requires
some increase in hardware capacity to cope. One school of thought is
that improvement means adding more features, and of course the
expectation is that to run the latest and greatest will need a new
machine. It is then clearly in the interest of a software vendor who has
tight linkage between selling his product on every new machine to force
upgrades as often as possible. Ok, not a new concept, but it seems to me
that this upgrade is the first time I have noticed better performance
from a later version of a general distribution the OS on the same
hardware. So maybe we need to draw more attention to this in marketing.
It will certainly reduce TCO because there will be no need for 3 yearly
refresh cycles - this machine is a 1 gig Athlon and I can't see any
advantage in upgrading it in the foreseeable future. Also its
environmentally much better to keep hardware for longer and most
countries have environmental targets.

>From the point of view of someone who takes pride in their work as a
software engineer, elegance and efficiency are important goals. For
someone who wants to force the market in a particular direction these go
out of the Window so to speak :-)


-- 
Ian Lynch <address@hidden>
ZMS Ltd