Re: Open Source for the Enterprise

I have observed this in several organizations; and I suspect that it is 
forced by the view that FLOSS is something "radically different", thus 
forcing the idea that it is difficult to model in the traditional way.
It is also interesting to note that most enterprises do not model anything 
at all; for example, Yankee Group's DiDio found " The most startling 
revelation coming out of the report was the fact that more than 50 percent 
of the respondents said they had performed a thorough TCO analysis. But 
when asked to calculate their specific Linux and Windows capital 
expenditure and maintenance costs, 75 percent, on average, could not 
answer explicit questions about their own environments."
So, a lot of this model-for-FLOSS is in my opinion quite approximate, and 
is basically a cover for demonstrating that it was taken due diligence in 
selecting a FLOSS package, but not much more.
cheers
Carlo Daffara

On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, [email protected] wrote:

>
> I just posted a review of this recently-published book:
> http://changingway.net/archives/230
> I'd be interested in any views from members of this community on a question
> in my mind (and in the review). There seems to be a tendency (not just in
> this particular book) to say to IT managers: here's how you should evaluate
> FLOSS for your organization. That's fine, but why not say: here's how you
> evaluate software for your organization (or here's a model or two for doing
> so); now let's see how FLOSS fits in to that model.
> The contrast is between model-for-FLOSS and model-then-FLOSS ways of
> getting at the subject. I think that Feller and Fitzgerald, in their book
> on open source development, use the model-then-FLOSS approach effectively
> (see ch. 4, in which they derive their framework for FLOSS development from
> existing, more general and established frameworks for software
> development).
> I perceive a tendency for people writing about FLOSS deployment to take the
> model-for-FLOSS approach. I have, I think, three questions:
> 1. Do others perceive the same tendency?
> 2. Can anyone explain it?
> 3. Are there any counter-examples, i.e., accounts of FLOSS deployment that
> take the model-then-FLOSS approach?
> Thanks for any thoughts,
> Andrew
>
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