UK's Second City in Second Life

Whatever happened to Second Life? Well, somebody's still using it, apparently:

to create a geo-coded map within Second Life that enables you to explore a scaled 3D version of Birmingham, UK in-world, access geo-tagged BBC and CNN World News, and more.

(Via New World Notes.)

Brum Not So Glum

Some fine reporting from Matthew Broersma on Techworld has dug up some interesting stuff about the so-called "failed" open source desktop implementation in Birmingham:

Birmingham City Council has defended its year-long trial of desktop Linux, claiming it to be a success, despite an independent report showing it would have been cheaper to install Windows XP.

In an exclusive interview with Techworld, head of IT for the council, Glyn Evans, argued that the higher cost resulted from the council having to experiment with the new technology and build up a depth of technical understanding, as well as fit it with the complex system already in place.

The £105,000 saving that the report says would have resulted from going with Windows XP has also come under question as it was calculated using the special discounted licence rate that Microsoft offers councils - something critics argue is a calculated effort to prevent public bodies from building up technical knowledge of open source offerings.

Fishier and fishier - good work, Matthew.

Brum to Blame

I wrote about the apparent failure of an open source desktop project in Birmingham a little while back: now it looks like it wasn't the software that's to blame. Here's what the inimitable and highly-knowledgeable Eddie Bleasdale has to say on the subject:

"It's an unbelievable cock-up... They decided to do it all themselves, without expertise in the area," he added, saying that a lack of skills in open source and secure desktops would undoubtedly have raised costs.

His view is backed up by another expert in this field:

Mark Taylor, whose Open Source Consortium also exited the project in the early stages, said: "I have no idea how anyone could spend half a million pounds on 200 desktops, running free software".

Quite.

Trouble 't Mill - No, Really

This is not good - although it would be interesting to know what exactly went wrong. It may just be that the old GNU/Linux desktop just wasn't ready for what they wanted. (Via LXer.)