Creating a Paradise FOSS Development Team

[David Wolverton]

The original respondent (below) didn't CC the group, in this response -
_but_ made some great points that _are_ relevant to both the thread and
the Group so I've removed all identifiers - to protect their privacy -
before putting it back to the group and BLIND CC'ing the original
author.


***Anonymous wrote***
> It would be beneficial, if the church is amenable, to 
> actually outline exactly how they've calculated that
> amount.
In the sermon I mentioned from this morning, Ashley didn't give a
concise breakdown (as it wasn't relevant to the point he was trying to
illustrate) and the conversation I had with him afterwards was really
only to ask if he'd considered FOSS as well as asking him if I could
organise a presentation for FOSS to reduce PCC's costs...  That said, I
can ask Ashley to authorise the person in charge of IT to give me a
breakdown if it's necessary.


> That said, the only advice that I'd give you is that the risk of a 
> transition to open source software is actually MORE than $350K. I 
> suspect a church might actually use more metrics than simply 
> money and 
> would factor in metrics such as: "We couldn't perform outreach 
> programmes to XYZ community because the ICT infrastructure failed.".
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here...  How is the _risk_
more than $350k?  Not being a  sysadmin I have less than no idea what
you mean when you use the term metrics.  (I'd always thought metric
referred to measurement - and have no idea how this can be applied to
Linux or FOSS)  And as to outreach's - what has the ICT infrastructure
got to do with whether PCC's ICT 'foundation' is Linux or Microsoft?
(Sorry for not understanding - these things are probably very obvious to
a Sysadmin/engineer, but are wayyyyy over my head.)


> Without examining the situation even further, I think you'd 
> agree that a 
> transition to any other operating system (open or otherwise) would 
> probably be a staged, managed process. Furthermore, given the risks 
> involved and the time it is likely to take to:
> 
>   a) Develop a plan
>   b) Implement the plan
>   c) Ensure said plan works
> 
> ...I'd expect that any team doing it should expect some form of 
> remuneration unless the team has sufficient number of members who are 
> self-funded (or have their own vegetable gardens or farm so 
> they can eat 
> :P).
This is the primary reason I've put this back to the list rather than
leaving it off-list...  Everyone, I'm sorry that I didn't make it more
clear that I had expected that whatever Team was assembled would put
reasonable remuneration into the package that was being proposed to
Paradise Community Church. (Translation: I expect people to be paid for
their effort.)

I am _not_ asking anyone in the Paradise FOSS Development Team to work
for free - but rather to offer a free quote that *if* accepted would
include a price to supply, install software as well as training to use
the software. (Preferably to also offer support for said software) that
would knock hundreds of k off of what PCC are currently paying to
Microsoft - on an annual basis.


> Changing over a medium sized church's infrastructure to an 
> open source 
> architecture would probably take more than 3 months; I daresay if it 
> happens to be a church the size of PCC then I'd estimate a 
> transition of 
> at least six months :)
I understand...  Apologies again to everyone for not being more clear
about remuneration.  I expect that whatever Team was assembled first of
all would have experience in this type of venture for an Organisation of
this size, would have the time to do a project this size and would be
remunerated for their time for doing an Organisation of this size.

This was never intended to be a freebie.

Hope this clarifies.


Regards,
DFW