By Andrew Colley, 13 November 2003 09:00
NEWS Proponents of open source and proprietary software are exchanging blows "on the wrong battleground" according to Gartner Research vice president Andrea Di Maio.
Di Maio argued that while open source disciples have arranged themselves on a front encircling Microsoft and its widely used operating systems, they should be pitching their battle in the application arena.
In Australia, Democrat Senators have introduced legislation to promote use of open source in government before both the South Australian and Commonwealth parliament. In each case Microsoft has been the main target of the party's criticism of proprietary software.
Also, Sun Microsystems has persistently attempted to undermine Microsoft's dominance of the government desktop market by highlighting potential licence cost savings available through its alternative desktop software, Sun Java Desktop and StarOffice.
However Di Maio, who yesterday advised the Australian government representatives on how to assess the value of public spending on IT, said that debate focusing on Microsoft licensing alone was inadequate.
According to Di Maio, governments could save far more by using openly-developed enterprise level applications than they would buying fewer Microsoft operating system licences, his comments touching controversial total cost of ownership studies comparing Microsoft and Linux software picked over by both sides of the debate.
Both IDC and Gartner have published reports attempting to address the question of which operating system is cheaper to run, but neither has produced definitive answers. Both analyst groups say it can only be addressed on a case-by-case basis.
While Di Maio believes the open source debate had become displaced he conceded it was good for "keeping Microsoft under pressure".
Di Maio said if nothing else the Linux-Microsoft face-off had given organisations a useful negotiating tool.
Andrew Colley writes for ZDNet Australia
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
I'm pretty agnostic in the Linux/Open Source vs Microsoft fight, it's a matter of horses for courses as far as I can see. But the idea of politicians making decisions on which software should be used strikes me as a recipe for disaster.
When selecting a system for a client I tend to look a stuff like: functionality, cost, support and stability of the vendor.
I now realise I was wrong. I should think about 'Will it get me re-elected','Is this a bandwaggon I should jump on' and 'What is software anyway'.
Yes, now we have failed lawyers dictating the choice of software for multi billion dollar projects we can look forward to some more great outcomes!
2. Randall James
Di Maio demonstrates exactly how so-called "analysts" are able to say nothing using a lot of words and get people to pay them for it. Open Source users have "picked the wrong fights". What does that even mean? There isn't a single statement in this article that can be used by anyone to increase their insight into the choice between Microsoft products or open source software.
3. Gerben Hoeksma
This comment comes from a simple Dutch electrical engineer (writing in open office 1.0.3 with English US spell check).
We have seen a lot of trials against MSFT mainly on misusing its monopolistic position.
If open standards and open source software would break trough, we would have a normal market situation, present in any other normal economical market, for the worldwide software industry.
If Open source and open standards were present on a large scale, we would have much lower TCO, better normal development of new ideas by normal market mechanisms.
I understand that an IT consultant cannot be so idealistic to choose at this moment for open source , because he would choose a solution that temporarily would give the user possibly less performance (that is less applications that he could run and less compatibility with the outside world (internet content, not perfect filters for .doc documents, e-mail compatibility, security compatibility and so on).
Politicians are in the position to deal with the long term implications of having a single world wide software monopolist, for PC and now also server and the mainstream of office and many other attractive mass applications.
It is a bit like choosing for an United Europe, or, in the past, for a united Germany.
Only massive switch over to open source can lead to a future normal market situation. It requires courage to make a decision to switch over to open source..
I do not think, politicians do this to be re-elected, it is a good and wise decision, and I really hope that politicians all over the world will follow.
And of course.... Microsoft can join the open source community.