AGIMO’s policy and planning division general manager Graham Fry told a Senate Estimates Committee hearing that scoping the potential for a platform change could cost more than it saves.

“Agencies are obliged to consider value for money on each occasion they apply a software,” he said.

“That means considering value for money between the alternatives of open source and proprietary software.

“If the cost of assessing it was greater than the cost of the software, you would have to think twice.”

The above quote shows just how much misinformation is fed to politicians by public servants in their efforts to maintain huge IT budgets and justify the annual expenditure of $500,000,000.00, mostly to Microsoft, for proprietary software licences. The last sentence shows how incompetent Graham Fry is – denigrating open source software because it is free. Graham Fry asserts that because something is free it is incapable of performing the tasks it was created for. He further goes on to say:

While open source software may reduce licensing costs, the cost of support could be an issue.

Does this mean that there is no support cost to proprietary software? If Graham Fry truly believes this then I would expect to see mass sackings and a significant reduction in salary expenses because proprietary software doesn’t need support. Does Graham Fry realise how ridiculous he sounds to IT professionals? Does Graham Fry care as long as his mates at Microsoft keep taking hundreds of millions of our tax payers money back to the US?

Ref: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/166884,open-source-not-free-senate-hears.aspx