Re: Windows-only software in government

[Dave Neary <bolsh gnome org>]

Hi Michael,

Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak wrote:
> One of the issues forcing me to keep a few MS Windows computer around in 
> my company are government services relying on Windows-only software, 
> like this example:
> 
> http://www.statcan.ca/english/exports/download.htm
> 
> My company is required to report all exports to non-US destinations 
> using the Windows-only program - or paper forms. Bleh.

This problem goes deeper than government - if you look at the
(enterprise oriented) 2007 Linux Foundation desktop linux survey, two of
the stats which jumped out at me (and which weren't even reported on in
most of the summaries I saw) were these (source:
http://devresources.linux-foundation.org/dev/dtl/survey2007/SurveySummary.html):

7. How critical are the following applications to your Linux
desktop/client deployment? (critical, extremely important, somewhat
important, not important)

Internally developed applications:
	30.1% (2997)	25.6% (2542)	23.8% (2367)	20.5% (2043)	Applications
specific to your business:
	40.6% (4063)	31.0% (3110)	17.6% (1765)	10.8% (1079)	

That is, 55% of enterprise users have internally developped applications
(often as insignificant as some spreadsheet macros written in VB, I
suspect, but doubtless a bunch of ERP stuff too) which might need
re-writing, and over 70% have some kind of business-specific software
which they depend on (critical + extremely important) preventing a
complete migration to a free software desktop environment.

Those are markets that are hard to crack, precisely because we don't
know what people are relying on, and we're not catering to their niches
in a way better than existing software.

That's getting better, because ISVs are starting to see a market for
free software niche solutions (think SugarCRM or Alfresco for good
examples of companies making money in this space), and there are lots of
niches left to stake a claim to.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
bolsh gnome org