For some IT managers, adopting open source software is like giving up smoking. The benefits of adopting collaboratively written, free-to-use software sound attractive - but the process of getting there is daunting.
This isn't helped by the fact that enthusiasts for open source often underplay the difficulties and cost of adopting the technology, such as getting help with installing and supporting such software. Such problems can be exaggerated by the sellers of paid-for software whipping up "fud" (fear, uncertainty and doubt), but they are real.
A new Open Source Academy, supported with £1.3m from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, is aiming to tackle both fud and misplaced enthusiasm. Three large local authorities, Birmingham, Bristol and Cheshire, will publish online their experiences of implementing open source software, with Shepway district council providing project management and other bodies contributing expert support.
Les Timms, IT manager at Birmingham city council, says the project will be balanced. "It's open source, open mind. We're not trying to prove this one way or another. It's often said it's cheaper to implement open source - let's see if it is."
Some councils have already decided. A survey of 99 local authorities by the Society of IT Management, released in May, found 60% expect to increase their use of open source. Cost was the most popular justification.
Birmingham plans to convert all 1,000 personal computers in its 40 libraries to an open source "desktop", meaning that PC programs such as word-processor, spreadsheet and web-browser will run on an open source operating system. Birmingham will use OpenOffice, Mozilla Firefox and Linux.
The city aims to convert as many staff and public-access computers as possible by the end of February. "We're out to learn lessons from it," says Timms. These could be how users cope with the new software, and how it works with the city's library management system, Galaxy.
In its part of the project, Cheshire county council will use open source to extend the life of old computers now running Windows 98 software: Microsoft and many other software firms are ending updates for such systems, which would normally condemn them to the scrapheap.
Instead, Cheshire plans to use open source operating system Linux and Citrix's Linux ICA software to turn its old machines into "thin clients" - networked terminals relying on central software and data. "Our first area is within social services, where staff will be able to access their key business systems," says Bev Roberts, head of ICT strategy and development for the county.
One question is how users will react to being issued with old computers: "How do we make it a 'previously loved' bit of kit?" jokes Roberts. It should make maintenance easier, however: "Our policy is, if it breaks, we don't fix it. Because it's old, we replace it with another old PC," says Roberts.
Bristol city council, meanwhile, has equipped most of its 5,500 office workers with Sun's StarOffice software, based on the open source OpenOffice.
Gavin Beckett, ICT strategy team leader for the city, says that the aim will be to provide practical information on StarOffice and OpenOffice rather than marketing. He says that the packages will not be right for every council.
Initial reaction in the first sections to begin the process of migrating to open source was positive - when people got their hands on the software, he says. "With our support, people are prepared to look at StarOffice, and find it's very straightforward to use. People who haven't yet seen it are more concerned."
Beckett says that although Microsoft Office has features not available in StarOffice 7, very few are relevant to the council's staff. In the case of spreadsheets, finance staff identified around 10 features available in Microsoft Excel, but not in StarOffice 7's equivalent, Calc. However "Only about five or 10 people use those features," Beckett says. In any case, many are due to be added in version 8 of StarOffice and version 2 of OpenOffice.
Some don't even notice the change. "One person quite happily opened up an Excel spreadsheet, worked on it for a while and saved it, without ever noticing they were using StarOffice Calc," says Beckett. "It gives us confidence that the majority of our staff will switch to StarOffice successfully."
Bristol is looking at linking StarOffice and OpenOffice to specialist software used by local authorities to manage housing benefit, council tax and social care. Beckett says that StarOffice's and OpenOffice's use of open standards in its document formats should help. Bristol's work to certify specialist software's compatability with open software suites will support OpenForum Europe, an association for companies involved in open source software, in establishing a programme of certification of specialist software.
Fears about compatability can be a barrier to small firms. "There are an awful lot of small, purely open source companies that find it hard to work with the public sector, because of their size," says Graham Taylor, director of OpenForum Europe. The organisation is planning a series of master classes for state-sector IT professionals, covering open source software for both desktop computers and back-office servers.
Weblinks
· Open Source Academy: www.opensourceacademy.net/
· OpenOffice/Microsoft Office compared: www.theguardian.com/online/businesssolutions
· OpenOffice: www.openoffice.org/
· Mozilla Firefox: www.mozilla.org/products/firefox
Background Pros and cons of open source software
Open source means that the lines of instructions making up any computer program, known as source code, are open for inspection and alteration - though in practice most people use a standardised version and never look at the source code. With "proprietary" software, the source code is normally hidden and unchangeable.
Open source software is normally free of licence fees, unlike most proprietary software. However, the cost of introducing software also includes installing and adjusting the software to work within an organisation, then training and supporting staff in its use.
Proprietary software vendors argue that open source software costs more to install and support, cancelling out the lack of licence fees. Open source advocates respond: 'They would say that.'
Some types of internet software are dominated by open source: UK researcher Netcraft says that 69.5% of the world's web-servers use Apache, an open source program. The case for open source is stronger when the same product can be used by millions of people world-wide: it is weaker for specific applications, particularly where regular updates to handle legal and regulatory changes are important.
Last year the Office of Government Commerce said open source was "a viable and credible alternative" for computer servers, and would meet the requirements of a majority of desktop users. But so far there are only a handful of UK state-sector organisations making substantial use of open source software.
The official policy from the UK's head of e-government is that open source and proprietary software should be compared on overall value-for-money, with no automatic preference for either.
Testing and trialling open source software can be used, at least partly, as a price negotiation tactic with proprietary software vendors.
Connecting for Health, which manages the English NHS national programme for IT, keeps open source software under review but, nevertheless, has 550,000 personal computers running Microsoft Windows and Office at (undisclosed) prices it describes as "lower than those obtained by any other comparable organisation anywhere in the world".
Other organisations have moved to open-source, then back to Microsoft after being offered a keenly-priced deal.