Hello, On my technical side, I don't have insight into the contractual aspect or the costs involved. I'm not involved in the bidding and proposal writing phases either. My role comes into play after project maanger send me companies solutions to evaluate them from a purely technical and security standpoint. If the solutions pass our initial technical evaluation (performed by the systems teams), they are then passed on to more specialized functional teams for further testing.
I wasn't familiar with the English acronym TANSTAAFL (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch), but I completely agree with it. My internal technical specification is to have an equivalent to the commercial product I have on my Wyse PC for testing. The decision to promote Putty was mine as a Linux enthusiast and advocate for open-source software. It performed well in testing, except for the passthrough printing aspect. The only cost I'm aware of is that of a proprietary product I mentioned earlier, which is available on their website: "AnzioWin starts at $150.00* per PC with quantity discounts beginning at 10 copies. Anzio Lite starts at $40.00* per PC with quantity discounts beginning with a license for 10 PCs." So, if we consider the cost of the more expensive version and assume we have 1000 PCs, it would range from $150,000 to $75,000 without any discounts. I won't disclose the exact number of our PCs, but let's say it falls within the range of 500 to 1000. I assume that with the simple cost of software plus the undisclosed maintenance cost paid annually, we could allocate a budget for open-source development that would benefit our company and, subsequently, the community, especially if the open-source product becomes part of the official product branch with included maintenance. What I can say is that I have management's approval for my interactions with the community and exploring potential open-source alternatives. However, there are no guarantees at this point, as I haven't yet produced concrete results in terms of an open-source alternative or engaged with the community for further development, budget allocation, and associated assurances. My approach might be naive or clumsy because I'm not familiar with the customs and practices in this business field. For the time being, our project management team prefers that the system team engages with the community to find something and intervenes later on in the negotiation and commercial aspects. Regards, Thierry
