News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions. Parent comment

Re:Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions by alkonaut on Tuesday July 08, 2014 @09:38AM (#8004443)
Well, it could work either way I suppose, but in my experience, usability/productivity of desktop software is severely lacking in OSS software (unlike e.g server software). Perhaps due to problems attracting non-developers to work on them. Polish is expensive, but polish is productivity.

The potential upside like you mention would be more licenses at lower cost. Whether that was a bottleneck depends on the organization in question. Either way I don't think it's possible to make any conclusions without research.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions by scholia on Tuesday July 08, 2014 @12:16PM (#8005268)
I'd expect a loss of productivity from using OpenOffice that far exceeds the cost of Microsoft Office, plus ongoing losses in productivity as staff try to cope with its incompatibilities with complex Office documents that probably arrive on a daily basis.

However, staff productivity is not generally a major concern in local government offices, as far as I can tell. Maybe Munich is different, but I doubt it...

[ Parent | on HN ]