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RE: Why Aren't Open Source Tools Being Considered?
Subject:RE: Why Aren't Open Source Tools Being Considered? From:"CB Casper" <knowone -at- surfy -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sat, 20 Aug 2005 16:23:12 -0800
I am but a small cog in a very big geartrain, the
opposite of a lone writer.
We are in the process of switching from Frame to XML,
and during the examination period I asked the tools
folks if they were evaluating Open Source software.
The response was that with purchased tools comes
support. With a potential install base of over a
hundred writers worldwide (I have no real idea of
how many of us there are overall, we're that big),
they don't want to have to pay someone to become an
expert on an Open Source tool, they would rather
spend the money on a company to install and support
their product regardless of how the product changes
over time.
They learned their lesson with Frame. They created
a tweaked version of it for internal use, and over
time we lost the people with the skills to make
mods as the product changed, thus we are in limbo
right now with templates needing changes, but no
one to do it. We have workaround processes in place
for these situations however painfull they may be.
Standard tools with standard support make life easy
for administrators and management, and they are the
ones making the purchases.
Although we were asked to provide suggestions of
tools out there, and were asked to evaluate various
tools, the choice of tools to evaluate was limited
by management and the admin team.
CB - Open Source tools on my home computer while
the family continues to use the stuff that came
with the computer.
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