During the last few weeks I have had a number of conversations with various individuals regarding the use of open source applications in both schools and in the business place. Let's take OpenOffice as an example. First let me say that I have been using some form of open source word processor for better than six years now and have only found a hand full of documents that I had to work hard to get them to open correctly. Given a few quick tweaks, less than 30 seconds, and most documents are just fine. Given the current economic downturn and with OpenOffice's ability to export to pdf, and in new versions the ability to edit pdfs (in a roundabout way), I am still amazed that decision makers shy away from even looking at OpenOffice.

I recently met a gentleman who made a valient attempt to help a public agency save a sizable chunk of change by moving to OpenOffice for their productivity suite and to Zimbra for email. He had done his homework and presented the idea to management and was turned down completely. Now mind you, for this agancy it could save over a million dollars per year. Given the wholesale dismissal of his idea, he took it to a state legislator who then began asking questions. This young man was then accused of lobbying by his employer. To make a long story shorter, this young man has now voluntarily resigned, in part, due to the political firestorm that the mere suggestion of using OpenOffice caused.

While at church yesterday, I had a conversation with an educator who is very frustrated with the amount of cuts occuring in her district. We got talking about OpenOffice, which by the way she had never heard of, and she was flabbergasted to find out that it was totally free. She asked if it was different than Word and I said not by much, and that I had been using it for years. The thought of riffing staff before even looking at something like OpenOffice just sickened her. 

So my question is this: why would a company riff staff rather than look at open source solutions that could potentially save a few jobs? If somebody could explain this to me I would really appreciate it. I am now jumping off my soapbox for the day.