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Story: Large public-sector Linux project flops

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Management not software

Some facts have been omitted from this article which shed further light on the appalling waste of taxpayers money that was the Birmingham City Council's Linux trial:

1) A trial of 4 differently configured Linux desktops (Ubuntu-based) and one Sun Java Desktop machine was held at Birmingham's central library in the summer 2005. A local research company was employed to measure the outcomes of the double-blind trial, specifcally which configuration was viewed as the best by participants. The Linux desktops took the top four spots with Sun's Java Desktop coming in last. Unsurprisingly the report was never published. BCC are a major Sun client.

2) The Open Source community, especially the Open Source Consortium (others included the Gnome Foundation), was entirely excluded from the project after the initial trial. BCC IT's department thought they could undertake the deployment themselves. The failure of this project proves this was not the case.

3) BCC selected an obsolete version of Suse Linux rather than the Ubuntu desktops that won the Library trial. They were unable to replicate the winning desktop configuration because the IT department accidentially erased it.

4) Open Forum Europe managed the Open Source Academy and were responsible for the dissemination programme.

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