[scribus] Adobe ends perpetual licenses

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sat, 11 May 2013 21:04:52 +0200
Manuel Schmalstieg <webdev at ms-studio.net> dijo:

>Regarding the point of comparing the filesize: maybe I misunderstood,
>but earlier in this tread, John Jason and Christoph were arguing if
>disk space could be a reason for "corporations, government agencies,
>universities" not to install FLOSS software. So I was just checking
>the numbers, which happen to be in favor of Scribus. :)

It's other things besides disk space.

The only organization I know anything about is my university, a large
(25,000 students) urban state-run university. There are half a dozen
"computer labs" scattered around the campus, including two in the
library. Students can use these computers for whatever they need. Each
lab has about 10% Macs and the rest are 10-year old Dells running
Windows 7. At the time of their acquisition I'm sure the university
bought the cheapest thing that would get the job done at the time. I
have used these computers and they are painful. I doubt the hard drive
is more than 10 GB, 20 at the max. They are similarly underpowered on
RAM and CPU. 

There are probably 500 such computers on the campus. In addition, each
classroom has a computer connected to an overhead projector and
scanner. These are a trifle faster. Maybe they're only eight years old.
And the university provides a computer in each professor's office, not
to mention hundreds more used by staff.

Replacing all these computers would cost a fortune, and the faculty is
currently threatening to go on strike because their pay is close to
the lowest of any US university. Even upgrading the computers would cost
a lot, mostly because of the labor cost.

However, the computer horsepower is only a small part of the reason
they don't load Scribus, inter alia. The university has an IT
department that maintains a help desk for students. They support (by
telephone or e-mail) all the software that is on the university
computers. In other words, the people answering the phones are expected
to be fluent with Microsoft Office so when a student calls they can
explain which button to push. If they install Scribus on university
computers they would have to train their help desk people in how to use
it. Good luck with that. In fact, the university recently removed
Openoffice.org from university computers, simply because they couldn't
afford to support it. And as for Adobe, the Creative Suite is installed
only on computers in the one computer lab for graduate students.

Of course, universities have many features that are unique, yet I
imagine a good portion of the issues I discussed above would also
obtain in a large corporation.