Re: [Fsfe-uk] Cheats!

[David M]

<delurk>

On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 19:58 +0000, Ian Lynch wrote:

> In the case of the NHS, they pay more to MS for 3 years licenses than 
> it cost to buy Star Division and do all the subsequent development on 
> OpenOffice.org. If the customers are big enough to exert that much 
> muscle, its pretty certain that the amounts they are paying in license 
> fees would pay for any development work needed to fix any problem. 

Interesting thought, I'd never thought of it that way..
Do you have a source for the NHS license figures?
It's maybe a bit of an apples/oranges comparison, but it could be a
useful figure to have around?


Heck, if the NHS is really spending that much on software, it almost
begs the question as to why they don't set up their own (arms-length, if
need be) software development division, costing less overall (possibly
providing future sales potential), and soaking up large numbers of
underemployed IT professionals in the meantime?

Now, I wonder what free OS they could base their systems around, I think
the German Government has an idea or two about that..?


-- 
David M,              |  [en, fr, (de)]
Edinburgh, Scotland.  |  replyto valid <365d but reply-to-list preferred
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