Open SUNY

I’m not sure this is news. There has been a lot of information floating around the internet about how many governments and government agencies have switched to Linux to save money.

But this article does give you a nice bit of background about how the switch came about. It began with one person switching to Open Office. They found it was a suitable replacement to Microsoft Office. They encouraged others in their office to switch, and soon an executive decision was made to drop MS Office. It seems something similar happened with Firefox and Thunderbird.

It was after that, that they started looking into more ways to save money with open source, and that’s when they started looking into linux based operating systems. They made the switch, and it’s estimated that they’re saving 70% on their IT budget!

Moral of the story:
(i.e..my opining)

I’m often told that the biggest opposition to open source will be from bureaucrats with some irrational chip on their shoulder regarding making the change to open source (and perhaps change in general). This seems like evidence that bureacrats can be won over. How? Well it seems to help to start small. Convince a few people to try things like Open Office. Then convince them to try Thunderbird. Convince them to try GIMP (etc…) eventually you’ll turn some heads. When the bureaucrats realize they can save 70% by going down this road…they’ll listen.