[wp-edu] Re: wp-edu Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5

[Brian Moynihan]

There is a great metaphor for the phenomenon of the cost of open source projects. While you often hear the "Free as in beer" vs. "Free as in speech" discussion, perhaps the best way to describe the way an educational institution employing a CMS like Wordpress is "Free as in Puppy". In other words, free to get, but a lot of time, energy and resources to keep going. I find it a good, quick way of describing it to people, since it seems to strike a chord. 

Hope that's helpful,
Brian Moynihan

--- On Thu, 11/6/08, wp-edu-request at lists.automattic.com <wp-edu-request at lists.automattic.com> wrote:
From: wp-edu-request at lists.automattic.com <wp-edu-request at lists.automattic.com>
Subject: wp-edu Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5
To: wp-edu at lists.automattic.com
Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008, 7:00 AM

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Advocacy (Chris Hajer)


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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 02:28:55 -0600
From: "Chris Hajer" <chrishajer at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [wp-edu] Advocacy
To: wp-edu at lists.automattic.com
Message-ID:
	<fc88cff80811060028t31f8833dyca80432b738ec535 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

James,

I understand completely the point you're making.  There is a cost to
getting anything up and running and keeping it there, proprietary,
closed, open, whatever (operating systems, CMS, desktop apps, etc.)
But the fact remains that WordPress IS free to start with, freely
available, and there is no ongoing licensing fee.  That's a huge
departure from what a lot of municipalities and schools are used to.
It is normal for a consultant to come in with a proposal, and right
off the top is software licensing..  It's expected, it's normal,
it's
what the administrators are used to dealing with.  None of that makes
it right, but it is one of the things you come up against, oddly
enough.

The other philosophical change for schools is changing from a desktop
app publishing mentality to a web-based, modern CMS publishing
mentality.  I mentioned previously iWeb from Apple, and I have seen
Dreamweaver, HomeSite, Microsoft Front Page and Publisher and probably
others, all in use on the desktop.  That's another hurdle.  Once the
foot is in the door with a modern CMS like WordPress, we need to
change behaviour again.

I think it's great that we are even having this discussion in the first
place.

Cheers,
Chris Hajer


On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 10:40 PM, James Groom <jimgroom at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the point that WordPress is free isn't exactly true, all
> software (whether open source or proprietary) comes at a cost.


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