Re: Unix philosophy under the gun?

[David Fuller]

Mike Castle wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 10:26:14AM -0400, David Fuller wrote:
> > time to get all those 'glue' pieces in place.  We ran some sample
> > numbers and it would likely cost us more in the long run to use CVS than
> > some $1000/seat software because of all the glue we would need.
> 
> Do you REALLY think you won't need glue for the $1000/seat software?  Or a
> full time administrator?  Or 6 months of configuration time?

Actually, we did take all that into consideration.  Configuration time
for either CVS or another selected tool, cost of a full time
administrator, training, hardware & OS were all taken into
consideration.  

We also took into consideration the amount of time we would need to get
CVS to where our desired processes would want it, and the costs of
having our people do it (including the cost of lost profit they could
have made for us), the possibility of contracting out to do it, among
much more.

> It seems like you took into consideration, the hidden costs with getting
> CVS integrated into your environment, but you failed to take those same
> costs with the other tool.

All options were rated on the same set of costs.  Those options include
what we are doing now (nothing), CVS, and other select tools.  Our final
conclusion was that while any option other than what we are doing now
would save us a ton of money, CVS was the least cost effective.  Now
don't get me wrong, the margin wasn't very big compared to the overall
savings of any of our options, but our estimates show it costing more.

> Sure, while CVS is free, the TCO is still there.  But it is a HELL of a lot
> lower TCO than many other packages.

CVS is free.  And I personally would rather use CVS.  I've been using it
for years and intend on using it for my own projects for many years to
come.  But the money people rule the business world.  And when I sat
down to figure in all the costs, CVS just doesn't look as appealing to
the money people.  (note: these money people also refuse to do work for
a sister company because we can't make a profit, even though it would
help us keep jobs.)

-- David F.