[kwlug disc.] "people don't respect what they don't pay for"

[R. Brent Clements]

Perhaps one important inroad is the new company.  A small company with
6 employees and no IT staff can probably do everything they want to do
for far less than the most basic MS package, plus so much more.
Wholesale redistribution of Windows Small Business server is around
500 bucks including 5 client licences.  Add OEM Vista Business (150
bucks each times 6) plus whatever it costs for 5 more CALs for the one
extra user.  I will guess 200 bucks to be conservative--the info isn't
readily available on their site.  Assume I do the IT work, as I have a
habbit of being far too cheap for small business like myself.  So 10
hours of work at 25 dollars an hour.  I total that to be $1850.  That
is "barrier to entry".  They need that much to pay for the software
and labour, and yes it includes no software, but lets assume they will
use free versins of the online google office tools (do they even still
exist?)

So if I present them with the intro linux solution, the advantages are
obvious.  It costs me a couple of blank cds to get all the software,
and I still charge them $250 bucks.  One could argue whether that
meets their needs, but if a company needs to access the web, type
documents and manage email, they have just saved 1600 bucks.

They can use that money to buy copies of windows to run virtually in
order to get access to the proprietary software they need, or drop it
on the Cedega people for help getting a wine-based solution working.
Or buy the windows licences for the terminals and do linux-based stuff
using an X-server app.  Those are pretty seemless now.

Everybody here knows the future benefits.  TCO is the "Barrier to
Entry" plus ongoing maintenance costs plus cost of any upgrades
required or desired.  Conversion costs are not as relevent to a new
installation, and how hard is it to train staff that instead of
"start" you click the big "K" button in the corner, and has anyone
ever been too confused with OO.o to run screaming back to MS Office?

This may be taking the conversation to a more basic level than it
started, but big businesses buy support externally mostly because,
franky, change is Bad(tm).  And the FLOSS community does have Redhat
and Novell, and others to sell to people who see the value in that
sort of commercial IT infrastructure.

And frankly, if my business had had $1600 extra dollars to spend on
promotion and strategic aquisition of other things, they would have
been far more successfull (hypothetical of course--We have spent very
little on software, and IT it ourselves).  These business will hire
more people, and cost of expanding infrastructure will be lower by at
least the cost of CALs and possibly Windows licences, I don't think
that support costs more for Linux (does it?) and then a big business
uses FLOSS.

Linux and OSS isn't in a hurry, is it?  I have Windows on a harddrive,
not currently in use, that uses Winamp (just out of habbit really) and
Windows versions of almost every piece of software I use or hope to
use on Linux.  I have some old windows-only games I like to play once
in a while, and I can still work in a familiar Linux like environment
when I need to.

There is my 37 cents worth.  Sorry if it went a little on and on.....

Brent