I believe the government should use whatever best serves the public welfare. Given that the bulk of the IT expense for a government is going to be support not initial purchase.
Open software requires support approximately as much as proprietary systems do. The unfortunate fact is that although one can call Microsoft technical support, one cannot "get Linux on the phone."
The open software ecosystem is changing for the worse - e.g. Oracle's IP strategy with regard to software developed by Sun, particularly the mission critical (for a government) Open Office suite.
Do not misunderstand me, I have political concerns about governments partnering with business as the gateway to a slippery slope.
Were this story about IBM rather than Microsoft, it would largely pass unnoticed on HN (and were it a story about government using iPads which depend on Apple's cloud the praise would be laid on so thick one would need hip waders).
Oh please; both Canonical (Ubuntu) and Red Hat are more than happy to take your money in return for picking up the phone. Not only that there are hundreds of medium and small companies that will do the same, not mention the thousands of individual contractors. If not being able to pick up the phone and get someone on the other end to help with your Linux problems is bugging you, give me your money I'll be happy to fix your problem.
Linux is an unfortunate example. If you're talking about support, you have to consider the entire ecosystem you're signing up for. That means equivalents for Windows, Exchange Server, Office, SQL Server, IIS, etc. etc. And while there are commercial companies happy to provide support for many of the big sticker OSS products, it is fair to say that many of the smaller projects -- the kind of glue that makes the Linux world actually good, when it works -- are not so well-supported. At least if you're dealing with hulking monsters like Microsoft, their more obscure back office applications and such are going to come with support as well, and they're not going to be able to fob you off by claiming it's someone else's project not following the spec when you can't get Outlook talking to Exchange Server or a .Net application served using IIS talking to SQL Server.
What I don't understand is why the UK doesn't have a government supported OS (probably best to have a linux distro I'd say) - a small fraction of the over-spend on a typical government run IT project (one of the NHS ones probably) would give you enough to buy Canonical and mould them to your will.
>"Canonical (Ubuntu) and Red Hat are more than happy to take your money in return for picking up the phone"
Keeping in mind that Linux is but a stand in for open source in general, of course they are as ready to take one's money as Microsoft is.
I suspect that Canonical is no more likely to recommend switching to a Red Hat distro than they are to recommend switching to Microsoft...and vice versa.
But to delve into the larger issue, is Canonical or Red Hat more expert in supporting Open Office or are one's citizens better served by a separate contract with Oracle for that support?
And if one doesn't go to Oracle for that support, does one switch to Office Libre and if so, who does a government hire to manage that switch?
At the scale of the UK government, there is no course which is free of vendor lock-in. Governments don't pivot.
Support costs for the public sector are measured over decades, not years. In this sense, open standards are extremely critical: Microsoft won't sell you a copy of Word 95 anymore, and sooner or later they'll break compatibility with the format altogether. When that happens, millions of tiny open source violins will play a very loud symphony indeed ( http://xkcd.com/743/ ).
Open software requires support approximately as much as proprietary systems do. The unfortunate fact is that although one can call Microsoft technical support, one cannot "get Linux on the phone."
The open software ecosystem is changing for the worse - e.g. Oracle's IP strategy with regard to software developed by Sun, particularly the mission critical (for a government) Open Office suite.
Do not misunderstand me, I have political concerns about governments partnering with business as the gateway to a slippery slope.
Were this story about IBM rather than Microsoft, it would largely pass unnoticed on HN (and were it a story about government using iPads which depend on Apple's cloud the praise would be laid on so thick one would need hip waders).