Matthias Dallmeier wrote:
Does this relate to maintaining/maintenance charges, or to purchase of new products? Suggest modifying to 'How much money has this department spent in the last financial year purchasing new commercial proprietary software products for which a viable open source alternative exists.'' -
[...]
It should related to both the capital outlay of new products *and* mainatinance. Now this is where Linux should not be promoted as *free* software. Not only should one consider the procurement of software, but the cost of employing staff and/or contractors to integrate, manage, and maintain the software. We also should consider what hardware resources are needed to achieve the desired results with the software and what technology lifespan is expected with the hardware resources that software is running on. Downtime is also a big consideration.