Alan Bell <alan.bell@???> wrote:
> 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.
Yes, it's probably worthwhile for that.
>> 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.
....
>> 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.
Preaching to the choir, Alan. I built the SSJ
network on the back of Linux servers and routers.
However, show a price of UKP 4.70 per XP licence
to the Financial Controller, and he instantly says
"buy it". Much cheaper than retraining staff.
> Not to mention the cost of actually counting the
> number of licenses you need and staying in
> compliance.
Been there, done that. Still cheaper to pay me to
do it, than retrain the other ~200 staff.
> 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.
Once you hit the MS limits, you couldn't buy again
from CTX until the two-year period was up. You're
then back to buying standard charity licences -
around UKP 45 per XP licence.
> 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.
True, the advertising of Free Software is worth
the attempt.
Consider, though, the types of charity likely to
be looking at CTX:
- Those with no IT support: Probably won't be able
to handle the complexity of the CTX agreements
and what MS supply, so are unlikely to use the
service.
- Those with IT support that don't know about
Free Software: May be encouraged to try it.
- Those with IT support that have already decided
not to use Free Software: Unlikely to change
their minds just because it's on CTX.
- Those with IT support that already know about
Free Software: Are already using it, or capable
of downloading from the source sites.
SSJ fell, and still falls, into the last category.
> If they have the interests of their commercial
> vendors at heart then what they do doesn't sound
> quite as charitable.
>From conversations with them, I think MS, Cisco,
et al. can dictate their terms. So, whether you
can get Free Software in the catalogue is likely
to depend on whether it screw up CTX's agreement
with MS.
Nick.
--
Nick Chalk ................. once a Radio Designer
Confidence is failing to understand the problem.
