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Seems like they're tricking the news services into running free scare-tactics PR for them.

Unfortunately for them, it is getting businesses into compliance. High risk high cost software is discontinued as a possible business buster as low risk software becomes good enough.

Missing reciepts for MS Office and Photoshop are high risk liabilities. Missing reciepts for The Gimp and Open Office is no problem.

There are several high profile companies using open source.
http://www.aaxnet.com/design/linux2.html
http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/ Click on each catagory for the list of companies.
As of 2003-03-18, there are 557 entries in this list.

Citation needed.

Open your eyes and look. My dad bought a Mac Laptop and has migrated to Linux. I'm typing this right now on an ex-Windows machine. Do you know anyone talking about the release of Gutsy? Pay attention.

Anyway if you want ones in the news.. here;

http://www.news.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/ Open the links for the list of businesses in each sector using Linux.
And ones that we know about from the SCO debacle are Auto Zone and Daimler Chrystler.

Hell, I'm still on Windows 2000, works fine for me! I had too many driver problems and moved on. I got tired of hunting down a driver for a thumb drive every time someone handed me one. I still have it on the laptop hard drive I swapped out just in case I need it, but have found I seldom slide it back in the laptop to use it.

And that doesn't translate to throwing out their entire machine and spending loads on a Mac.

True, but it does often equate buying a Mac instead of a PC when picking up a new machine. The XP machine is still there and doesn't get tossed right away. It collects dust sitting there just in case it is needed for something until it is just in the way and gets tossed (donated).

And the only reason Vista nags so much, is because people (presumably Mac users) slagged off XP so much for not asking you,

In anything I have used that isn't Windows, updates and such being avaliable, don't stop the machine when a dialog shows up. A toolbar item gently brightning and dimming to get your attention for an application needing user input is one thing. Shutting off the movie that is playing to ask permission to do a Java update check (while there is no network connection) is just plain bad design regardless of how much it is a good idea to ask permission. It should not stop the show.

OS X was better because you had to enter your password to do such things

Does OS X freeze all open applications when it decided it needs the user permission to check for an update?

It's this simple, people are afraid of change, many people will not do change because it puts the testing of their reputation on the line. (many CEO's, CIO's, IT Directors, IT Managers, and the likes) Even though it is very evident the cost savings and the possibilities of re-allocating money to other projects that have never been touched because of current issues with M$ products or incompatibilities with others. These people are not comfortable with change and they do not want to put any effort or time in to making a significant change (they would rather deal with what they have been dealing with because of the possibilities of not having a job tomorrow, if they were wrong). Even if of it is evident that the benefits out weigh the eventual cost, productivity, time and effort of another product that they don't have now.

No one is willing to take risks anymore. They would rather agree with one another that it will not work out in the end. Even though I don't agree with these peoples though process, I do agree that it can be a task to get everyone to buy in to the change that would take place with the sagnificant change switching to OSS or Linux, but it is not impossible if you spend time to outline, plan and prepare for this type of rollout.

There are many success stories of people switching to OSS and Linux for their small, meduim and large size companies, who have taken the plunge to save money and troubles.

Ask the following companies - (I will kill two FUD's with one stone here - the use of OSS and Linux)

NASA - http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Projects/Columbia/co lumbia.html
- http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

DELL - http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/pow er/en/ps1q03_insights?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

Walmart - http://www.wirespring.com/ (firecast runs on Linux andfirecast is and OSS)

Sony - http://www.computerpartner.nl/article.php?news=int &id=2804
- http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/media_companies/sony3 .html

Google - Summer of Coders (need I say more?)
- http://code.google.com/

IBM - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource

Boeing - http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/TAO-boeing.html
- http://www.zdnetasia.com/toolkits/0,39047352,39379 125-39094247p,00.htm

Wall Street, Merrill Lynch, ETrade, TowerGroup, Shahrawat (even as far back as 2002 - they must be Linux and OSS giants now!)
- http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/27/0327linux.html
- http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/lin ux/story/0,10801,75271,00.html
-

other to name Remax, People Soft, Byte, Cisco, Credit Suisse

For a much longer lists.. and why enjoy the following!

- http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/

-

It's this simple, people are afraid of change, many people will not do change because it puts the testing of their reputation on the line. (many CEO's, CIO's, IT Directors, IT Managers, and the likes) Even though it is very evident the cost savings and the possibilities of re-allocating money to other projects that have never been touched because of current issues with M$ products or incompatibilities with others. These people are not comfortable with change and they do not want to put any effort or time in to making a significant change (they would rather deal with what they have been dealing with because of the possibilities of not having a job tomorrow, if they were wrong). Even if of it is evident that the benefits out weigh the eventual cost, productivity, time and effort of another product that they don't have now.

No one is willing to take risks anymore. They would rather agree with one another that it will not work out in the end. Even though I don't agree with these peoples though process, I do agree that it can be a task to get everyone to buy in to the change that would take place with the sagnificant change switching to OSS or Linux, but it is not impossible if you spend time to outline, plan and prepare for this type of rollout.

There are many success stories of people switching to OSS and Linux for their small, meduim and large size companies, who have taken the plunge to save money and troubles.

Ask the following companies - (I will kill two FUD's with one stone here - the use of OSS and Linux)

NASA - http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Projects/Columbia/co lumbia.html
- http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

DELL - http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/pow er/en/ps1q03_insights?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

Walmart - http://www.wirespring.com/ (firecast runs on Linux andfirecast is and OSS)

Sony - http://www.computerpartner.nl/article.php?news=int &id=2804
- http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/media_companies/sony3 .html

Google - Summer of Coders (need I say more?)
- http://code.google.com/

IBM - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource

Boeing - http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/TAO-boeing.html
- http://www.zdnetasia.com/toolkits/0,39047352,39379 125-39094247p,00.htm

Wall Street, Merrill Lynch, ETrade, TowerGroup, Shahrawat (even as far back as 2002 - they must be Linux and OSS giants now!)
- http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/27/0327linux.html
- http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/lin ux/story/0,10801,75271,00.html
-

other to name Remax, People Soft, Byte, Cisco, Credit Suisse

For a much longer lists.. and why enjoy the following!

- http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/

-

When talking about platforms if you want to refer to just the OS (or supporting libraries, specifications etc.) then you would say "software platform" and if you want to talk only about the processor (or other supporting hardware) then you would say "hardware platform". Otherwise, in computing, the word platform is understood to mean a particular combination of hardware and software.

Also be aware that cross platform is not the same thing as platform independent.

If you are still confused you may find the following helpful:

http://www.bellevuelinux.org/cross-platform.html
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/platform
http://www.atis.org/tg2k/_platform.html
http://mtechit.com/concepts/platform.html
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/ DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861738674

I would give your clients a list of other companies that rely on open source software. There is a good (but outdated) list of companies who use Linux, for example. That's just the OS. What about, for example, companies that use open source scripting languages (Like PHP, Perl, Python, etc.), open source databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, etc.), and open source web servers (Apache, LightHTTPd, etc.)?

Many companies rely on open source; Cisco, Google, Yahoo, even the US Military. Yeah, the "if it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me" argument isn't necessarily a strong one, but it does make a point. These companies are putting a lot of money - and in the case of the military, lives - at risk, so you know they are going to want to use the BEST product available.

http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/

Another product that tackles the problem of admin passwords id ID-Archive:

    http://mtechit.com/products/idarchive.html

It basically randomizes passwords every 24 hours or so, and uses a central server cluster to archive the newly-randomized passwords, and act as a central point of control through which IT staff retrieve just the ones they are allowed to access, after suitable authentication, with proper access controls and logging.

To those who say use sudo or endorse avoiding passwords entirely: what would you do to deal with 10,000 workstations, which may be offline and/or remote? Most of the privilege-escalation and strong-authentication technologies require a live network connection, which isn't always feasible, especially for workstations.

This product also supports lots of platforms - not just Windows/Linux. It will manage mainframe passwords, SAP, DB passwords, etc. etc.

I do work for the company, so of course you can take what I say with a grain of salt. :-)

- Idan

Linux is also proving popular in the public sector. Governments like the idea of not paying a proprietary vendor huge licensing fees for years and years.