A couple of follow-up points:
* Ease of recruitment – I 100% agree with you, and don’t blame you for this, but I do think it is a problem.

* The cost – my problem here is not that you say that you require support contracts for OSS software, but rather that your comparison is unequal. Both Windows and Linux require support contracts, and these are available from multiple sources at different costs. By all means make this point, but not as a counteraction to the ‘Linux is free’ statement, because support for both operating systems costs money.

* Code vs Data – I still find your statements with regard to open source code and access to data confusing, but, as you say, it was not a major point, so I will take it no further.

* MS Boycott? I take your point that software freedom is not something that Christian Aid sees as a goal. I do, however, know people who are genuinely concerned about the actions of Microsoft as a company, and whether they trade fairly in the marketplace, both in America and overseas. Richard Stallman (not that I necessarily agree with him on everything) as a confirmed atheist, states that he feels that Christians especially have a moral/ethical obligation to be using Free software. But, again, this is not your fight to fight

Anyway – thanks again for taking the time to reply – I hope that you haven’t spent too much time fighting fires over this particular interview; I know how vociferous the open source community can be!

* Ease of recruitment and cost of employment
This is a genuine issue for an organisation such as Christian Aid. The argument holds for the UK, but is especially important when you need IT staff in developing countries. OSS skilled staff are more expensive and less available, for us.

* Cost of purchase
This point was made in order to be clear that Christian Aid is not paying full commercial license fees.

* Access to CAid Systems
I made the point that to run open source at an enterprise level (600+ pc’s / however many servers) then you need to work with a support organisation such as Red Hat (or now Oracle). My sole contention was that OSS is not free at an enterprise level. You either need a support contract or more staff.

The interviewer then said that he thought the whole point of open source was that you could your code out to the community. The throwaway response from me was that we would not open up our systems to the outside world as that introduces an element of risk – as indeed it would if we were allowing people to review an application for bugs. The response to that from some in the OSS community is along the lines of ‘yeah right, like private companies are honest…’ – for us, dealing with private enterprise means that we have enforceable non-disclosure in place and the ability to vet and track who is doing what with our data. But as I said, this really isn’t what we set out to talk about on Digital Planet.

I don’t think I made any statement saying that Windows is more secure than Linux. As a Mac user I really don’t believe Windows is more secure for individual users! I wouldn’t / and won’t risk opening another can of worms regards security.

* Linux vs Windows
I was actually talking about the desktop rather than our server environment. We currently run Linux for our web servers (though hands up, that is about to change). The interview on Digital Planet followed what Mark Shuttleworth had said about Ubuntu and OpenOffice on the desktop. What he is doing is fine, worthy and will encourage big software companies to think long and hard about their stance in the developing world. But it does not mean an organisation like Christian Aid should adopt it right now and it does not mean we should stay quiet when some of the things he says aren’t true. OSS is not a panacea for the developing world, or the agencies that seek to serve that area.

* Should we be in the business of boycotting MS?
No. Christian Aid exists to eliminate the scandal of poverty and we need to do that in the most cost effective way using the tools that suit our ‘business’ best. Wherever we have tried OSS (a small Plone deployment for instance) the time required for the project has been significantly higher than had we followed a packaged solution. Moreover, our staff overseas have MS skills and are familiar with the software – we’re simply not in the business of needing to spend supporter funds on the cultural change, training and interoperability burdens of trying to take OSS to the desktop and information worker level. There are genuine interoperability issues between open office and MS office and we haven’t seen anything yet that is a viable alternative to SharePoint.

I hope this is of some help. We are genuinely excited about the potential for technology for how it can help us to do what we do better and that was the reason for participating in the programme. Key to all of this is helping Christian Aid staff to have decision support systems that make a tangible difference to their work. In the event of a major disaster, we’re able to have a team site (a collaboration area for all involved in responding to that emergency) live, configured and populated with all
the necessary information within 1 hour of the disaster being called. For me, that’s more interesting that what platform we’ve used to do that.

Finally, know too that we’re not MS clones. I use Mac at home and will be putting a trial of Ubuntu and Open Office in place soon.