Nick Chalk wrote:
>
> That might be useful advertising, but I'm not sure
> what level of take-up you'd get.
>
>
I just want to see it listed as a choice.
> CTX provides no technical support, so the
> charities using it are likely to have professional
> admins, either in-house or contracted. I doubt
> such people would find much advantage in being
> able to buy boxed distros.
>
>
not just distros, (although they could be listed in the operating
systems section) I want to see Free alternatives listed in most sections
of their catalogue. Obvious things would be OpenOffice.org, but then
tools like vtiger and OpenEMM would be great for charities.
> You're also competing with MS prices like UKP 4 +
> VAT for a copy of XP Pro.
>
>
but when you scale up to lots of seats any price greater than free can
add up to money worth spending on whatever the charity actually does.
Not to mention the cost of actually counting the number of licenses you
need and staying in compliance. There are also limits to the
entitlement,
http://www.ctxchange.org/getting_started/entitlement/microsoft_entitlement
and once you fall out of the limits (50 seats and a complex 2 year
ordering rule) I guess you are paying full price. I don't really care
what price they put on the proprietary software, I would just not like a
charity to look at the catalogue and get the impression that they had to
lock themselves in. I am hoping that CTX have the interests of the
charities at heart and will list free alternatives. If they have the
interests of their commercial vendors at heart then what they do doesn't
sound quite as charitable.
> Nick.
>
>
