An EU Commission-funded research studied costs and benefits of adopting open source software, such as Linux or OpenOffice.org instead of proprietary software such as Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office. 
The study was conducted on six organizations from European nations. The study concluded that:
in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports
of savings on the long-term costs of ownership of the software products.
In addition,
Costs to migrate to an open solution are relevant and an organization needs to
consider an extra effort for this. However these costs are temporary and mainly are budgeted
in less than one year. The major factor of cost of the new solution – even in the case that the
open solution is mixed with closed software – is costs for peer or ad hoc training. These are
the best example of intangible costs that often are not foreseen in a transition. On the other
hand not providing a specific training may cause an adverse attitude toward the new
technology. Fortunately those costs are limited in time and are not strictly linked to the nature
of the new software adopted.
The study also reported that they found "no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org" (p. 283) instead of Microsoft Office. 
This is bad news for Microsoft, who is in a legal battle with European Union over its monopolist behaviors. It is also competing with a number of open source software distributors for the market. Microsoft recently released an update to its popular operating system Windows, as well as to its browser Internet Explorer and its office productivity suite Microsoft Office. These products are competing with distributors such as Red Hat, Firefox, and OpenOffice.org. 

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!
Share this: 






This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
EU report in favour of adopting open source software