[plug] alternative business strategy?

[Quintin Lette]

> Has M$ published the file format?

Highly unlikely that they have or ever will...

>
> cheap != free.
>

free software also != cheap

(the only cost that is cut is the license cost, which is generally a
small percentage of a large NFPs IT costs, it is a larger percentage
for regular businesses, there are also the added reeducation costs,
and higher initial support costs while they work out how to use the
new products)

> The money is still channelled from their income stream to M$. The
> business of NFP's is to provide a service or a product to worthy
> targets, not to feed a machine that doesn't need feeding.
>

however they still require the tools to go about their business, and
in the case of NFP businesses that already have an IT infrastructure,
the cost of change would be more than the savings by moving to OSS.

>
> What if another organization sends them Framemaker, inDesign, Quark
> or PageStream files?

they would pay someone to convert it i guess, or ask them to resend in
Publisher, I haven't seen many being sent in those formats,  .pub
files are something I do see frequently though.

>
> The most important thing for non-profit organizatiosn is that they
> shouldn't put themselves into a situation where they can be held to
> ransom.
>

I thought the most important thing was that they ran their business...
generally NFPs go looking for a grant of some variety when they have
an IT upgrade requirement. <guess> It may also be a hard sell to the
organisation providing the grant if they are planning to go against
the norm and use OSS </guess>

> That actually applies to all, but is especially important for NFP
> because unlike "real businesses", they can't simply increase the
> price of their "product" to pay the upgrade fines ermm fees...

no but they can look for a grant in desperation :)

funny thing is, 6 months ago I would have fought for the "move to OSS"
side, however since I now work with a lot of NFP organisations and
have seen first hand their requirements I no longer feel that its that
easy/cheap a task.

I actually feel that its much more achievable for regular businesses
since the licensing cost easily exceeds $2000 per seat for the full
suite of Microsoft products, but in either case, it is only really
feasible if they are about to take on a major upgrade anyway, hence
already requiring retraining of staff members. Remembering also that
any organisation using Exchange will have a hard time moving as there
is no real OSS equivilent, and Exchange connectors for Evolution suck
(try using public folders) if you want to just move away from office
first.