Switching From Microsoft Office To LibreOffice Saves Toulouse 1 Million Euros 296
jrepin sends this EU report:
The French city of Toulouse saved 1 million euro by migrating all its desktops from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. This project was rooted in a global digital policy which positions free software as a driver of local economic development and employment. Former IT policy-maker Erwane Monthubert said, "Software licenses for productivity suites cost Toulouse 1.8 million euro every three years. Migration cost us about 800,000 euro, due partly to some developments. One million euro has actually been saved in the first three years. It is a compelling proof in the actual context of local public finance. ... France has a high value in free software at the international level. Every decision-maker should know this."
Put some of the money back in... (Score:5, Interesting)
The exemptions were given because some Word macros and sophisticated Excel files could not be reproduced in LibreOffice or other open source productivity suites. These are examples of what Serp calls “some less mature features” in free software: “When it comes to making some kinds of presentations, for example, there is often a little extra to do [compared to the same process in PowerPoint]. So for some people the process is not so clear, and this can cause adaptability problems in everyday work.”
How about they use some of the saved money to either donate or contribute code to make the software work better?
Instead we have companies and other organizations making and saving tens of billions of dollars off Open Source(like Google, Yahoo, Red Hat, Facebook, Twitter, Apple etc.) and then we end up with catastrophic security nightmares like HeartBleed because no one could be bothered to send a couple of bucks over to the overburdened couple of folks that everyone relies on for security. And then we have asshats on message boards like this one who likely never contributed to OpenSSL or looked at the code for bugs but feel entitled to call the coders stupid for the bugs after the fact.
Can't fix limited functionality in MS. $1M / year (Score:5, Interesting)
> or you're functionality is limited, or the feature plain sucks
Our experience is the cost of limited functionality in off-the-shelf software is a significantly higher cost than the license cost.
With the old proprietary system, an employee would spend 4 hours each Friday copying and pasting from one program to another.
With the new modular open source software, I spent an hour authoring a module to completely automate the data transfer, and have it happen in real time.
For just that one little function alone, this year we saved 4 hours X 52 weeks X ~$40/hr = $8,320 per year.
I do one of those every week. A little change to the software for a big change in the process. I'd be surprised if we haven't saved at least $1 million / year total, from all the little tweaks, correction, and additions we've done to the open source software to make our process better, faster, more efficient, and more accurate. I know the P/L from the from the program using the open source stuff sure has improved, but it's hard to quantify how much of that is due to the software. I could easily prove it's saved at least as much as my salary though, and my salary was being paid when we had the proprietary software too, for a specialist who was paid to admin the system and figure out hacks to get the proprietary system to almost meet our needs using duct tape and bubble gum.
Re:And... (Score:5, Interesting)
In my small company, we all use Linux on the desktop. Here are our answers:
Time to learn a new system: It took my employees maybe a day to learn LibreOffice (they already new MS Office). Anyone who needs more than a day to come up to speed with casual use of LibreOffice is too stupid to be employable, IMO.
Reintegrating mail onto a new client platform: Well, I just said "Here's your email program" and gave them Claws Mail. They were up and running in about 30 minutes. Again, anyone who cannot learn a simple graphical mail client in a day or so is too stupid to be employable.
Keeping patches up-to-date: One word for you: apt-get
Re:sure, works for France (Score:2, Interesting)
You can have all the vacation time you want anywhere you live, all you do is negotiate terms of your own contract. Vacation time is not something that government can force an employer to add on top of your salary, it is your salary, it is just a different way to pay you. You can get more money or more vacation time, your call. It is the same situation with anything that is mandated by a government that must be part of your employment contract. You want to get medical insurance through your employer then your hourly rate is going to be lower, same with any tax.
Re:sure, works for France (Score:5, Interesting)
You can have all the vacation time you want anywhere you live
Which is why every American takes 6 weeks in the summer.
In my experience, most permanent job employers don't like to negotiate on vacation time. Sometimes they'll give on a day or two, but usually they're not crazy about vacation time that deviates from whatever the position qualifies for. The only explanation ever given to me was that because salary is "secret" it's easier to compensate employees differentially; vacation is visible to other employees at the same level and differential compensation creates tension.
In a contract employment situation you can negotiate anything, but I've found in shorter term contracts there's usually some kind of deadline that's non-negotiable, making free-lance vacationing a little bit challenging.
Re:sure, works for France (Score:2, Interesting)
Vacation time is not something that government can force an employer to add on top of your salary, it is your salary, it is just a different way to pay you.
I don't know for sure about France but in many European countries vacation is by law on top of your salary, so you're still getting your normal paycheck when you're on vacation. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case in France as well.
Munich did it already (Score:4, Interesting)
Munich decided to move completely to Linux [wikipedia.org] (so not only from MS Office on MS Windows to LibreOffice on MS Windows) 10 years ago and managed to complete the move last year. One of the main complaints of users seems to be lack of compatibility when exchanging documents with the MS world.
Now if more cities move to Open/LibreOffice, companies trading with them might have to produce more compatible documents and MS might finally loose its compatibility "strangle" on its user.