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Free Software's Star to Rise During US Recession?
robvasquez: "Surfing the web today, I see that RedHat has broke even and that Corel has shown a surprising profit (they are they still considered a linux company, right?), so I'm seeing Linux companies out of the red! Perhaps this 'recession', whether we are starting one or even going in to one, is what we need to popularize free software. Think about it: with companies laying people off and cheapening up, whats better than free software? They could lay off 5,000 people, OR quit shelling out that much in MS licenses and pay salaries!" It's a nice thought, and a good idea for established companies to look into, but quite a few Linux companies have been hit just as hard during the recent economic crunch. I guess only time will tell if the use of Free Software is as much an economic advantage as people have been making it out to be, and now is as good of a time to test this claim as any.
If it is more expensive to maintain unix than windows then why do, without exception, every web hosting business charge less for unix hosting than for windows hosting? Is it an "anti-Microsoft" conspiracy, or maybe, despite what MS whould have you believe, its just cheaper to install and maintain unix varients?
First of all, just because Linux systems are free to purchase does not necessarily reduce the cost of ownership. Granted, I agree that it would be cheaper than running everything from Microsoft.
However, large corporations use hundreds of file and printer servers for basic network connectivity. Then factor in the millions spent on highend systems like Sun Hardware for mission critical systems (data warehousing, customer service, etc).
Suppose a lot of the above is replaced with Linux systems were it currently makes sense. The only folks in my company that could handle supporting these systems would be the Sun guru's. That leaves out the following people. Helpdesks, LAN Centers, and Desktop Tech's. That's about 300+ techies who don't even know what Linux is.
Where in the heck are we to find enough people and pay them industry rates? Sure we can buy contracts with RedHat, etc for support but they aren't going to handle every single little problem. We would have to train a whole mess of tech's to get them up-to-speed on how a real operating system works. Most of our IT Staff are clueless, mindless, idiots who don't know a thing about Unix or Unix like systems.
According to my count, there are approximately 50 IT people enterprise wide that really know what's going on and could easily handle supporting Linux. Sadly, most of our IT Staff is lame.... It's hard enough to just get people, let alone quality people. The top 50 I mentioned are mostly Network Engineers, Programmers, and Unix guru's. But the rest of IT is basic support staff.
"What do you mean just Secure Shell into it and stop the database daemon and restart it? Can't we just reboot it?"
The cost of training everyone is ridiculous... We need more of a grass roots movement to get the general IT staff up-to-speed on Linux. Unfortunately the majority of IT workers are in IT because they were told it's a good career. They are not all geeks. The true geeks would be doing this job for no pay if they didn't have to worry about putting food on the table.
Even if the software is "free", the implementation and maintainence of said software is where a lot of the costs come into play. The talent pool for MS software is broader than that of Linux (or other "free" applications), so it would seem to me that hiring an equivalently competant staff of Linux gurus over MS gurus would cost a bit more. The costs of running a successful IT department aren't only those of liscencing, but of keeping the IT staff trained and up to date.
*ahem*
Speaking as someone who _does_ produce things, you can take free software away from me when you pry my cold dead fingers off it- when I write something it's _my_ choice how to license it, not yours, and it's simply comical to see you insisting that free software will go away. Not a freaking chance, Sparky. What have _you_ written besides Slashdot comments?
"Linux doesn't save any money to a IT shop due to licensing fees becuase windows licesne fees are not that much. However linux can save a lot of money if the machines are set and forget. administrators are the expensive part."
Yeah, admins are expensive, but at thousands of dollars for a 5 user license pack for Win 2000, the difference starts to diminish -- remember, we're not only talking about the big iron in the back room (which, frankly, is likely to be running a *NIX anyway), we're talking about the thousands of desktop boxes that a large corporation needs to administer on a daily basis.
Further, when you consider the anecdotal evidence suggesting that a single, competent UNIX admin can handle more machines with less downtime than a competent Windows admin can handle Windows boxen--even without "set and forget"--the "TCO" starts to look favorable for UNIX.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
"Linux is only free if your time has no value." -- jwz
Boy, was he right. Look at how much time it takes to get things working. It's not as free as it looks.
And don't tell me that MS software is worse. It is. But it's indicative of software as a whole.
-Dom
Yeah, for people like me. When I drive a car with an automatic I can get started fine, but about the time to shift I automaticly push the clutch, and miss. By the time I remember I don't have to manually shift I've coasted to a stop, and the process starts all over a couple more times. (For a shift lever you just need a sympathetic girl who has her hand in the right spot, and let me move it to the next "gear" from time to time)
Okay, I don't really coast to a stop, but I do attempt a shift and miss. And I have seen my dad reach down by habbit and move mom's hand. (Being a geek I'm not allowed to have a girl myself)
If I have a choice I refuse to drive anything with an automatic, but sometimes I don't.
Tell that do one guy I know who twice put gas in his diesel van. (Accually his wife's van, which he rarely drove) Fortunatly he remembered at about half a tank both times, but he still had to tow it in and get the gas tank flushed for grabing the wrong pump at the gas station - the handle that normally is the right one on his other cars!
Sure, you can save your company $50,000 by using linux of NT, but that is licensing costs. If you have to hire anouther admin because it is more work for your administrators to get their job done, then you haven't saved money.
The cost to hire a compitent administrator are about the same for Linux, NT, other Unix, or anything else. The cost to train someone to do that job is about the same. It doesn't matter if you are using macs, windows, multics, Os/2, linux, solaris, or Os/390, the hard part of administrating the machine isn't learning the job it is knowing how to do it right.
Linux doesn't save any money to a IT shop due to licensing fees becuase windows licesne fees are not that much. However linux can save a lot of money if the machines are set and forget. administrators are the expensive part.
Money is not the most important thing to a bank, it is the ability to get customers their money all the time and accuratly refelect it on their statements. A bank wants to save on comptuer costs only if they are sure the ATMs are working. A phone company cares more about calls getting though then about the cost of comtpuers. I've seen several places with 2 Sun E10ks sitting right next to each other, one a hot standby incase something bad happens to the other. They have a 3rd E10 in a different city they can bring online quickly. They still wouldn't let me re-boot the master e10 despite having backups avaiable just in case. The data was far more important then considerations like computer costs. they told me that 1 minute of lost data is more then the cost of those machines.
Linux isn't a factor because it is free (beer). It might be because it is free (speech). I have seen places with custom linux kernels when they needed it, but that is rare because that same shop had to manually merge in every security patch.
For a shift lever you just need a sympathetic girl who has her hand in the right spot, and let me move it to the next "gear" from time to time.
You know, you really shouldn't have her hand there while you're driving, it's rather distracting...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
RedHat did not "Break Even". And free software or not, either people are going to spend money or they won't. That's the end. If they want free 'as in beer' software, they aren't going to pay for the support, or they may as well pay for MS solutions. So no, this will not help redhat and the like.
Using Microsoft products doesn't protect you from this- quite the contrary. It places you on an ugrade treadmill *forever*.
Corporations were discouraged by Microsoft from upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows ME. But when Windows XP comes out RSN, Windows 98 will go on the dustbin of history and cease to be supported by Microsoft. Corporations will be forced to upgrade their entire networks immediately. I hope they're preparing.
Brian
Even a "training center" is only going to set you back $500 per person day assuming that you are paying an individual rate for the training in question.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Someone that's going to need to be retrained to migrate to GNOME is going to cost you just as much money when Microsoft subjects you their next major version upgrade. Using "only microsoft" does not insulate you from such problems.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If the question is of how many Nines, then Microsoft is simply out of it's league. For genuine HA, Microsoft system software doesn't even support the proper hardware.
REAL systems that you are talking about are the domain of vendors like IBM and Sun who can garauntee the entire package from hardware to OS. You may manage to get yourself a single source (of blame) for the software with Microsoft. However, you still need accountability for the combination of software + hardware.
OTOH, Linux is remarkably cheap and similar enough to any unix that your Unix talent (and unix apps) transfers relatively easy from platform to platform.
The notion that you get a Unix notion of "support" with just a Microsoft OS licence is simply absurd.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
VA Linux is about as far from paying for software as you can get but they had one of the largest staff reductions of the year on a percentage basis. Software licenses are 1/100th of the cost of one employee. Remember that insurance often costs more than the salary. It may seem academically correct for companies to defer sofware costs to employee salaries but the fact is no-one is going to tranfer assets when they can liquidate the employees and keep even more cash. Computer scientists in industry are more like fuel than valuable contributions. Stay in academia.
Yes, I realize that this is a troll, but it serves to illustrate a point.
Star Office is licensed under a "free beer" style license. You don't get access to the source code, but you can install it on as many computers as you like. Check it out. OpenOffice, Star Office's next generation, is available under the GPL.
And don't think that Microsoft isn't worried about this. They know very well that once the customer's only reason to stick with a piece of software is "it will cost too much to migrate" that the software is essentially doomed. The short history of computing is littered with products that had tremendous market share and were eclipsed by less expensive (and often less able) competitors. Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and Novell Netware are probably the best known examples. Migrating away from these programs cost businesses a mint, but they still did it.
Linux has a lot of advantages. Chief among them are that it allows developers and solutions providers to cheaply an inexpensively create turnkey solutions that are then deployable without license fees. So while it may not make financial sense for a company to chuck out existing systems in favor of Linux, it does make sense for new systems to be written using Linux and other freely available tools. By and large this is what is happening with Linux today. No one is replacing Windows with Linux across the board, but lots of shops are finding ways to implement Linux based solutions instead of Windows based ones.
This is a *GOOD* thing. Moving from Win95 to WinXP is as big of a move as moving from 3.1 to 95 was. It's a huge evolutionary step which is really going to boost the possible uses of our desktop computers.
As far as the upgrade treadmill. Honestly, at some point the software does become good enough.
I believe with XP we have reached this point.
There has been a movement to upgrade to Win2k, but it is not as high of a priority as just completing day to day work. Also many companies at this point are just going to wait for XP on the desktop.
Barring a complete overhaul of the way we use computers, I just don't see much motivating factors in jumping to the next version.
There is also the same upgrade treadmill with Linux as there is with Windows, and the costs are nearly identical. The problem is *NOT* the cost of software licensing, but rather the cost of DEPLOYMENT.
You would have had to be involved in a large scale upgrade to understand this. Imagine the number of people involved in planning, testing, rolling out, etc.
Even with automated tools to push the installations, there is a signifigant amount of prep work involved.
What you say is partly true, but your reasoning is out of touch.
The Recession occured between 90-92.
The Migration from Netware to Windows NT didn't begin to occur until 96-97.
But the cost cutting wasn't driven by the Bush Recession(especially considering that had occured years previous), but rather because of the new revolution occuring in desktop computing. The introduction of Netware 3.x, Windows 3.x, etc. had caused a huge increase in the signifigance, importance and usage of desktop computers in companies.
Prior to this point they had generally just been somewhat distributed PC's running some DOS apps such as 123 and Wordperfect for personal use.
Obviously as PC usage started to displace Mainframe usage in the companies, the costs assocaited with supporting these solutions went up. This was primarily because of all these individual solutions that grew up at the department level.
In the mid 90's there was the movement to bring all these individual department solutions under the umbrella of corporate IT using the catch phrase "enterprise solution".
This was also about the same time as Novell released their Netware 4.x product line. Which was notable for being one of the buggiest software releases ever.
At this time Microsoft did introduce NT with a very competitive pricing structure as compared to Netware. But they did more than that, they also introduced a platform which could do more than Netware. They were quick to point out that you could also run your email server, database server, web server, etc. all on the same box.
While you could sort of do this with Netware, the solutions were not elegant, and from a developer point of view a pain in the butt to create.
So Microsoft won that war through a combination of competitive licensing, but also better product alignment. By offering the one size fits most all, they allowed for a reduction in support staff, which was part of what IT was looking for at the time.
Today this new found integration of various solutions has resulted in incredible productivity improvements to companies.
If you think Linux is going to come in and replace this existing solution, you had best think again.
Right now we're not looking for ways to cut software licensing costs, because they are a small part of our budget, as is hardware procurement.
Half our IT cost is custom software development, and thus are goal is to more rapidly create and deploy software.
I do not see the tools out there today to allow us to do this well on Linux.
Not to mention the tools to replace our existing productivity tools don't exist.
If the RedHat salesman comes calling with numbers in hand, I'm going to ask him "Fine, but how will this be better than what we have now?"
Ok, once again Malcontent is obviously showing his ignorance. Sigh.
I didn't say the problem was Software distribution, that's actually quite easy as well under Windows using tools such as Tivoli, SMS, etc.
I said the issue was Deployment. I then went on to talk about the various issues surrounding coordination, testing, etc.
Actually Tivoli is what we use, and it's worse than SMS. At least for software distribution.
But again, you missed the point I was making. The costs have little to do with the actual file copy. That's the easy part.
I tend to agree that a lower budget helps popularity in free software. Where I work we have
had plenty of budget cuts and other money problems. Because of these money problems people have looked to open source alternatives. We have come up with many open source solutions to problems for the Univeristy. Without the money problems, and other reasons, people would not have considered using our lab or the solutions we came up with. Departments and people are now using open source software and now realize that free software is just as good, if not better, than other closed source software. They now are armed with cheap solutions to their problems. They also have more options. If an open source solution does not work they can either adapt the code or use closed software. And before they just had to settle for the closed software that they purchased. Anyway, the point is alot more people were I work have opened up to open source solutions/software because of money problems and now realize that not only is it cheap, but open source software, most of the time, is really good software.
Can you see Iron City here?
As somebody's signature says "Linux is free if your time is worthless".
__
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
They have clutch pedals for automatic gearboxes? That's weird.
Actually, each of these are pushing Linux to the front. It's just that the predicted time period was (and is) much too short.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Hmmmm... where I live the rate is closer to $30 Gs/year for Linux people.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Actually, you miss several facts. First of all, much free software actually comes from outside the U.S. where economic conditions are much worse. Secondly, you will have companies more willing to contribute than before. For example, my company is considering hiring someone to modify HtDig to do what we want it to, rather than paying for a commercial search engine. Commercial search engines cost about $75Gs a year, while we can hire a part-time programmer for $15/hour. It will take longer, but the savings will be tremendous. I can see this happening a lot.
Engineering and the Ultimate
With "Open Source" specificly "GNU" you have the right to USE the software, but you are guranteed NO SUPPORT. Your guranteed NOTHING really.
Unless you choose to purchase it (try looking for it, many companies are selling support). Of course, with MS, you pay for the licensing AND for the support.
Atleast with Microsoft and Windows NT advanced server on specific hardware your guranteed 99.99 percent availability.
Read the EULA recently? They guarantee nothing. They claim 4-9's, but then don't show anyone actually getting it. BTW: Anyone guaranteeing 99.99% without including HW & apps is lying through their teeth - that's a max of 1 hour of donwtime PER YEAR.
Have you used the Gnome suite of stuff? Or StarOffice? Or any of the other office suites that are out there? If you know how to use Office, and can't figure out how to use Abiword, you need to get that lobotomy finished up....
You will need to seriously train only a very small number of people (your current power users) if you were to switch to a new product. Most people will get by knowing how to open and save documents, and how to do basic editing. The rest will be able to survive on a 3-hour group class with handouts that tell you how to "use" the software. Not everyone needs to know how to cascade formulas across 4 worksheets, collect the results on a 5th, import that data to create a graph, then embed that graph in a document for circulation.
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1) Large companies don't always do layoffs to "reduce expenses". They do it to reduce the supply because of a forecasted reduced demand
Then what do you call layoffs at a company that supplies nothing other than the manpower to operate the parent company? I call it cutting the bottom line.
2) If we are talking about technical people being laid off, it will still happen: they don't know Linux and so have to be replaced
There will still be computers that still have "I can't log on" or "I can't get my mail" problems, and we will still need helpdesk and cable monkeys to take care of them.
3) MS licenses are not an operating expense, they are a capital expense (capital offense?). Meaning they already have money locked up in licenses
Yeah, buyiong a piece of software is a capital expense. But owning the livcenses to a piece of software over the life of the company becomes an operating expense. If I run a company with 2,000 people in it, and use Office for my App Suite, then I have to stay at either the current or the previous version to maintain support from Microsoft. Older versions are not supported, and I can't afford to support an old piece of software on my own time. Dumping the software only loses money until the point where you would have had to relicense the new version to keep you supported.
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What company are you working for, then? The last two companies I worked for both spent well over a couple of million dollars a year in OS and Application licenses for the desktop. That doesn't include things like Oracle, Notes, or whatever that ran on the servers and weren't directly visible to the user.
If I could save my company 2 million dollars a year, you better bet I'd be getting a raise and a promotion...
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It would be nice if Free Software was saving people money, and even helping companies make more of it. Nothing wrong with saving money and making money. Even if using Free Software turned out to
be a viable fuel for outright greed, fine, doing a good thing for a bad reason still gets the good thing done.
The reasons for using Free Software though, have to do with liberty, and even if the big companies don't remember that, even if users don't care about it, it's nice if the smart people who develop the code do remember and do care. Maybe it isn't something as blatant as a quarterly earnings statement, but profit margins can't be instilled in the character of a human being, but a love for freedom can.
I completely agree.
I can never solve win32 problems by searching the net.
Conversely, google solves 80% of my quick unix problems.
I ring up my MSCE friends and they almost NEVER solve my win32 problems over the phone.
Conversely, people call me and I can usual point at the right resource to use to solve the problem.
Actually,
Free software will suffer even more in a poor economic cycle. Because it will be harder to make ends meet, programmers will have less spare time. Those with more spare time (i.e. laid off) will likely find themselves looking for non-programming jobs, or are programmers who could have only contributed minimally anyway.
Free software was popular while the times were good. Now comes the real test, now that the days are no longer sunny, we'll see how much progress is made on the Free software front.
- Woodie
> Vi and emacs have horrible workgroup support.
Can you elaborate on that? I'm not sure what you mean by "workgroup support."
> apt-get? You're joking right? It's version tracking blows, take a look at how a Mac handles it
Clearly you have not used apt-get enough to realize how much it rocks.
And even if MacOS does have something better (which I highly doubt), you mentioned Windows too. You must be smoking something nasty if you're going to tell me that updating software in Windows is simpler than in Debian.
> Yeah and it works and is coded for in a totally independant way from KDE
So what? I can run KDE apps on Gnome without any problems. All I need is the KDE libraries (and apt-get will retrieve those for me automatically).
> Tell that the the OpenBSD team. Tell that to Apple.
MacOS has few security holes because it's used solely as a desktop, not a server.
If you disable all services in Linux which are not required for desktop use, it'd be at least as secure as MacOS (for remote security - obviously local security in Linux is *far* more advanced).
You are correct in your assessments!
I think a lot of people forget that switching from anything to Linux involves substantial retraining costs, to say the least. And that retraining cost could run into the thousands of US dollars per employee.
Linux is cheap, but training users is definitely not.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I think the whole issue of Linux acceptance outside of the server realm comes down to this: there is TOO much choice in how to set up Linux.
Alas, this results in a major IT manager's nightmare, to say the least. Above the kernel level, the choice of various components you can install can result in non-standardization, which results in totally silly IT maintainance costs.
I think this is why everyone has more or less gravitated towards to major commercial Linux distributions and IT managers are strictly enforcing a policy of which Linux components each individual workstation can have. That means you have to run either KDE or GNOME, not both.
Hopefully, the Linux Standard Base (LSB) effort will bear fruit, which means there will be standardization in regards to every aspect of Linux. This should reduce system administration costs, to say the least.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
It used to be "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" Then came the cheaper clones and M$ and "Nobody ever got fired for saving money" Now comes the even cheaper clones with Linux and its "Nobody ever got fired for lowering their TCO."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This has been on my mind lately. I've noticed the costs of all of THOSE things seem to be a lot more on Windows-based machines than on the Linux machines in our small company. The hardware requirements seem higher to get the same performance, development seems quite easy on the Linux machines - at least as much so as it would be on the windows machines [web-based stuff which can also be accessed from other platforms, so long as a decent web browser is available on it], testing and deployment are simple enough, the Linux machines have thus far required a lot less help-desk support than the windows machines....you get the idea.
On the other hand, I haven't yet tried Linux on an "ordinary user's" desk. I'm hoping to get a spare, older machine set up as an X terminal for all of the employees who don't have their own computers to get email, do web browsing, etc, with. We'll see how that goes...but I fully expect the support for this will still be a lot easier than another windows machine would be.
The costs of one-time software license purchases ARE tiny in the grand scheme of things...but the cost of many purchased upgrades and extra support, hardware, etc. over the years does add up...
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Now that there are many geeks who had high paying jobs that are now laid off, they may have more time to work on free software projects.
NT boy here is hold company hostage with the implied threat that he'll call in the SPA if they lay him off ... which they should have done six months ago.
:-)
During that time all email moved to unix, all network management moved to unix, etc, etc.
I don't think Mr. We've Got A Software Licensing Issue has ever heard of Samba, but he may, very, very soon
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
What if your developers were working on open source software for company use on company time? I don't get any time at work for my personal projects, but I'm assigned to working with open source all day long when it helps the company bottom line.
Maybe this is what you were getting at, but I got the opposite impression.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Except, as discussed in other stories today, you can't really get away with a much cheaper Windows admin without losing the ability to stay on top of security updates (especially the ones that Microsoft tells you you don't need :), service packs, etc. I agree that many companies are hiring cheaper Windows admins, but I disagree that the quality of service provided is the same as it was before switching to Windows.
Ultimately you get what you pay for, and you may have to pay the same amount in different ways with an open source solution. However, you're still better off because then you have a trained staff on-site who understands the technology and will let you decide what direction to move in. Control of the technology that you depend on is hard to measure at the end of the day may be your business' biggest asset.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
they broke even in the last quarter
No, they lost money last quarter. Just because someone rounds up to zero doesn't mean that the number isn't negative.
Cheers,
Cheers,
While I agree vi and emacs may not be appropriate for Joe in Sales who needs to update the product information page, have you looked at some of the other editors available. If there is one thing Linux/UNIX has is text editors. Try Quanta or BlueFish. I don't use it myself but you could use an editor with integrated CVS support, using CVS to update websites can work out very well. There may also be an editor with WebDAV support which may be even better. vi and emacs aren't the only text editors ever created. 8^)
Again, you may have a point there. This is debatable, though, and definately won't stay behind forever. We currently have DCOP and Bonobo with a damn near guaranteed upgrade path for both. The developmenet process is open so you can at least follow where everything is going, if not participating yourself.
The comment about JetDirect is pretty silly, but there are more advance print systems than lpr (gack!) available. CUPS is a good example it can do everything you want (I don't know about color-correction, only Macs and SGI's seem to do this acceptably).
I have worked a little with Mac systems but I have no idea what you are talking about. The Debian APT system, filled with packages conforming to the Debian Packaging Guide book, is the best packaging and software distribution I have had the pleasure to use. Ever. Could you enlighten me as to what system Apple has that compares to APT, please?
I'm not sure what your beef with Mesa is, my experience shows that it is one of the best OpenGL API implementations that exists. I haven't had nearly the trouble you seem to have had getting it working (I assume you mean with hardware accelerated graphics, GLX outputting to a regular X window is a no-brainer). It usually goes along the lines of: Compile DRI module, modprobe DRI module, start X. Look Ma, 3D. Maybe I've just been living my life right or something. I've had more trouble with video drivers on Win9x/NT systems installing in different, strange ways or corrupting the system settings so that it doesn't boot. Strange graphical glitches that occur on a per-app basis are common as well. Macs may be easier, I haven't used them enough to know.
So? If you want to use GNOME you have no need to worry about KDE, and vice-versa. Each environment seems to be quite self-sufficient. Of course if there is some app you just can't live without in the other camp, the only thing you sacrifice by running both is disk space and memory. Just because there is choice doesn't mean you need to go crazy obsessing about it.
Hell, you're both right. All Operating Systems have shipped with security problems of varying severity (even OpenBSD). RedHat has been getting better but are definately not there yet, Debian or Immunix is a much better bet. There are also some tools like Bastille, OpenWall, LIDS, SE Linux, Pitbull, etc. that can make a Linux system very secure. Also many security vulnerabilities are in third party software that may or may not be distributed along with a copy of Linux. Holes in wu-ftpd and BIND effect many more operating systems than just Linux!
Internet security has only become the important field that it is in the last couple of years. Linux, *BSD and UNIX have been at the forefront of operational security technology throughout this period (discounting academic research projects). Heck most other vendors haven't figured out that you shouldn't send cleartext passwords over an open network. As an example look at the OpenSSH project, from OpenBSD. They recently issued a security update to fix bugs allowing passive traffic analysis to discover the length of a password as it was typed in. I have not seen any other, commercial, systems that have reached a level where they would even consider fixing this kind of thing, most seem to be still trying to figure out that blank admin passwords and world writable files are a bad thing.
In conclusion let me summerize: All software sucks! Some software packages (Linux, *BSD) suck less than others (UNIX, Win*). When we have the perfect operating system with the perfect utilities, I'll let you know. 8^)
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
The proplem is with existing apps, people use special programs to solve specific needs,
those need to be able to run under wine (you need a windows licence ?) or there needs to be an eq. app.
Or you need a completly new solution.
Look at how much apps and what apps people use...
They need to be ALL available, when they switch, or a solution atleast as good.
Also you could be talking about retraining for that too (after all people use Apps not so much OS's) !
New things are always on the horizon
Just out of curiosity, what's nsh? I recognize all the other tools, but not that...
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Free Software is a luxury good. The recent explosion in free software is due to the fact that a) free software companies could get enough venture capital to fund developers and b) tech workers have been in such high demand that programmers and sysadmins have been able to work on free software on company time without getting fired.
This will not be the case in the future. Unless they drift into health care or government work, open source developers will find themselves faced with a choice of "contribute to the company's bottom line" or "get fired." Either way, they will be unable to be as productive. The simple fact is that the PC is a luxury good. It is far from being a necessity. The idea of free accessories for a luxury good is laughable.
Free software will not dissappear, but as the developers find it harder and harder to make time to code voluntarily, they'll code less.
--Shoeboy
What is an MSCE?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The Linux Terminal Server Project provides one solution to this. As far as IT issues go, it should provide a "win-win" -- you get to use standard, cheap PCs as a "thin client" AND you get the centralized control over everyone's configuration that IS loves so much (and that does help lower TCO).
For a look at how this works in the "real world," read Major Law Firm Installation of Linux. This provided a standardized KDE desktop for the administrative staff. Since the customer was a long-time WordPerfect user, the staff did not require application retraining, and only required minimal training on the Win* to KDE conversion.
This also had the nice effect of changing an IT manager's nightmare into an IT manager's dream. The law firm ended up with a single point of control for all their desktops, which they could then even oursouce many operations back to Unique Systems, the company which did the rollout in the first place.
What IT manager wouldn't like to be able to say to their boss "Look, for a small consulting charge and minimal retraining, I managed to cut our license fees AND support costs, preserve our legacy data and applications, outsource our administrative overhead, and I did this without purchasing any new hardware"?
(And no, I don't work for Unique Systems, I'm just familiar with them from them from their good work with the Toledo Area Linux Users Group, and from considering just this setup for a former employer.)
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> Except with the smallest of companies, software is rarely a major expense for companies, especially OS's.
On paper, at any rate. In practice, everywhere I've ever worked was really tight-assed about spending pocket change during tough times, presumably because everyone was afraid of getting a chewing from above every time they dropped a dime.
Also, correctly or no, employers tend to think labor is "free" in the sense that since you're already on the payroll they already have to pay you anyway. Most employeers ask their employees to do 4-5 times as much as they can realistically do, so adding on "learn a new trade" or "manage a bank of new machines" for your spare time is not likely to faze any boss I ever worked for.
Your argument has rational force, but PHBs and PHMMs are about as irrational as it comes.
> It may be cheaper for a company to pay a few grand for Windows, then save tens of thousands by hiring a generic Windows admin.
Or a tribe of them?
Reminds me of the joke about the town in the wild west that telegraphed Washington for help during a riot. The citizens were dismayed when a single US Marshal stepped off the train. His response was, "You've only got one riot."
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> In every company I have ever worked for, the attitude has always been to spend what you need to in order for your people to be productive.
Whoa! I need to consult you about job hunting tips. I've never met a boss who wouldn't waste a month having high-priced engineers dig a ditch by hand because he was too cheapskate to rent a backhoe.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Remember the sudden "discovery" of the market for sub-$1000 computers? Perhaps the move to open source, or maybe more specifically, *less expensive* software is just the same thing that happened for the PC market.
:)
Its nice when the average person (or company) can afford to buy solid, high-quality applications, like those available for Linux (Office suites, development tools, network tools), without spending four figures.
This might continue even if there isn't a recession. People just can't afford this constant "thousands of dollars a year" upgrade cycle. Its too much, and its really unnecessary.
My $0.02
My Uncle's company is growing and they looked at the licence compliance issue with MS Office. For each 10 people they would need to shell out $4,000. Or they could just give people a copy of StarOffice and by a new Hazmat suit (they do clean up operations). So the office is going over to StarOffice. Not too shabby.
--Peter
The value in any product that solves a specific need is the value it adds to your business, the value it adds to your products and the effect of the ownership of that software.
By far a 2,000,000 purchase of software and licensing is alot cheaper then the billion dollar payroll, HR, administration, training and consulting fees.
Free software isn't free when it comes to businesses either. You aren't going to rollout linux on 10,000 pc's without a hefty support contract and trained UNIX admins.
You can consider a Microsoft license a license for support and a license to use the software
With "Open Source" specificly "GNU" you have the right to USE the software, but you are guranteed NO SUPPORT. Your guranteed NOTHING really.
Atleast with Microsoft and Windows NT advanced server on specific hardware your guranteed 99.99 percent availability. Isn't that worth paying for? Or is the open source solution that is free as in media cheaper simply because your costs are not the software but the support and gurantees that a commercial program offers right out of the box?
All I see is a shift from products to services. Instead of creating a total package which is 99% complete and charging $1000 a head, you download an 80% complete package for free and pay someone (internal or external) to add the other 19%.
:)
The 1% of course is that feature which never gets done
Any bets on how long it will be until we're back at "Microsoft's inability to deliver" again?
.NET and WindowsXP will be out? :)
I don't know. What are the latest guesses on when
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
God forbid she accidently minimizes the app, then she complains that she doesn't have "the white screen" (AKA the word processor) any more.
People really are that dumb.
Same thing we always did...smile politely and keep them away from the servers.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Microsoft's inability to deliver was going to push Linux to the front.
Then the dot com revolution was going to do it.
Then the consumer bandwidth revolution was going to do it.
Then the globalization of computing was going to do it.
Now an economic recession is going to do it.
Any bets on how long it will be until we're back at "Microsoft's inability to deliver" again?
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Heh. Basic internal debit for a pc at the place I work is at $3000 per year. Oh, and thats with nothing but the basics in software.
You wouldnt have to do much more training for switching over to a corporate Linux setup than you have to do anyway when you change Windows and Office releases.
If you hadnt noticed, you pay as much for a good NT admin as you do for a good Unix admin. Of course, there are a lot more cheap drooling retard apes pretending to be NT admins than there pretending to be Linux admins, but trust me, you dont want those people running your NT machines. Unless you enjoy letting everyone take a 7 hour coffee break every other week as your company grinds to a standstill after someone opened their virus of the day mail.
Actually, i've heard varying stories of MS support. Anywhere from the equivelent of "fsck off", to sending real live developers on site, to many things in between. One developer I know even got help from them with glibc pthread compatibility (i believe. I don't know enough about Windows to know if that makes sense, but it surprized the crap out of me).
-ben.c
With MS Turning Screws on Customers the way they are, I would imagine that many mid size company's would turn to free software, instead of being faced with up to $10,000 per unlicensed product.
It needs to be remembered that the cost of a, per machine, licence is not just how much you pay for it. But also the cost of an administration system to ensure that licencing is kept up to data and that proof of licencing can be produced.
Very few payware software companies offer a true site (or organisation) licence.
For a large company the actual cost of purchasing the software may not be the most expensive part of switching. Things like retraining, time spent rolling out the software, technicial support, document convesion can add up to alot of money.
Following the "buy Microsoft" route can mean doing this every 18-24 months. With the added disadvantage the the methods used last time to ease rolling out a package across the network may no longer work.
Most IT people do not know very much about writing a business case. Most management types don't know technical speak. As a result the tech who thinks it is obviously cheaper and better to use free software has a hard time convincing management.
Also the tech has a hard time getting mangement to understand that just cos it's easy to install something from a CD on a standalone machine dosn't mean that it will be easy to install the same program on a network.
Especially in the worst case senario of requiring manual configuration after install.
Corporations were discouraged by Microsoft from upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows ME.
Probably because all of the "improvments" between 98 and ME are aimed at the home user and offer little to the corporate admin.
This simple premise makes upgrading and maintaining remote windows machines awfully difficult especially considering the fact that a typical windows app spews files in all kinds of unpredictable directories and the fact that registries have to be kept in sync.
/apps" won't do fine anyway :)
Another thing you tend to find is application programmers asuming they can write to any file with programs sulking if they can't open a file they only ever need to read as R/W.
I would place the blame more on app writers than Windows. Since it is possible to write well behaved and structured apps, even under Windows. e.g. most of the app goes into one place (which could be shared network area), any changes to Windows system area or registry are well documented and sensible defaults are chosen if the program finds it is lacking registry keys. However most Windows programmers prefer to produce "sphagetti"...
Overall tools such as rsync, httpsync, cvsup, cfengine, nsh, ssh, perl etc are so great that a single sysadmin can manage a widespread network if trained well enough.
Assuming that "mount server:/apps
The last two companies I worked for both spent well over a couple of million dollars a year in OS and Application licenses for the desktop.
How much did you also have to spend in man hours administering, recording and filing those licences too? Would have been far less hassle to have a "site licence" which simply said you can use software X in your organisation. You could consider "free software" as being a "site licence" which costs nothing and also allows people to use the software at home.
You put Gnome in front of the average user, and they're lost. I hate to say it, but the average user gets confused with the 'Save' command.
Yet the same user who's only ever driven a car can probably manage to drive a small truck without much fuss.
If they get this lost how are they going to cope with the next version of Windows which has the UI changed?
Switching software platforms means you need to either hire new specialists or retrain your techies... either costs money.
:)
It's kind of tricky to not have constant switches in software platforms where you use a platform which changes ever 2 years or so
Games: You want to play all the newest games on a PC (which is a unique market compared to the console market), you have one choice. Windows.
What has this to do with corporate networks?
Try CUPS with GTKlp. I'll take that over windows printing anyday thank you very much. I mean, send duplex print jobs, specify print trays, even 4 pages to 1 sheet of paper. And no, the windows print drivers do not support those options.
Also Windows printing is a poor standard in the first place. e.g. no ability to limit paper size choices. So people set up documents for the wrong size paper and either have them auto deleted or jam up the printer.
This is the whole point!! Do you realize how completely clueless 99.99% of all users out there are? They can't use the clipboard in a word processor and it takes them 30 seconds to find a scrollbar. Do you think they want to type "rpm -Uvh" in some shell?
No you are missing the whole point. Installing software is a job for the sysadmin. NOT the end user!
If someone has a company car should it be servicable using the driving controls because the driver dosn't know how to hold a spanner? Do you force a mechanic to service the car from the driving seat because some driver might sometime think that being able to drive a car qualifies them to be a motor mechanic?
No you don't because this is self evidently daft. Indeed most of the problems with Windows are probably down to encouraging end users to fiddle with things they know little about, rather than getting on with using the computer as a tool to help in their job.
The end user dosn't need to know what "rpm -Uvh" or "USER.DAT" means any more than they need to know what size bolts hold their car engine in place.
End users shouldn't install software in a corporate setting. End users tend to install melissa.
Or manage to break things, or install software without making sure that they have a licence and the paper trail to prove they have a licence.
However, the people doing upgrades might like the fact they can upgrade every machine with software package foo by running a script that will automatically install it on all the machines rather than clicking n times per machine.
Also without needing to physically go to the machine, not much of a problem if it's 2m away, an annoyance if it's 1km away and a very big problem if its 1,000km away. Not only that the install can be done without needing to bother the person actually using the machine.
There is a lot of difference from a home machine which is end user administered and even the simplist of networks. The same way that there is a difference between someone tinkering with their own car and running a corporate vehicle fleet.
I'm sure that all of you who have done tech support will identify with this. It's not that people wouldn't learn if they tried, they just won't try unless they have their hand held every step of the way.
It's actually a wetware/peer preasure issue. If someone could only operate one type of car the'd be looked on as a fool. (Even though there are a few silly things done with cars.) But it can be almost a kind of perverse pride for people to be only able to operate one kind of computer.
The radio isn't a vital system. Everybody places the gears in PRNDL order. Unless GM wants to get sued by a lot of people, they must place the pedals clutch, break and gas from left to right in that order.
An automatic car with a clutch pedal, interesting concept. Not unknown for automatic cars to have an auxillary brake where the clutch should be though.
Actually, back in the days when cars came standard with this wonderful thing called a manual transmition, the gear order could have a variety of permutations, most commonly altering where the reverse gear would be.
In many parts of the world automatic transmission is uncommon. There is also semi-automatic, has a control similar to manual but no clutch pedal.
Manual gearboxes also vary between 3 and 5 forward gears.
Consider this, and this. Businesses not only must wade through enormously complex licensing from Microsoft, but they run the very real risk of being audited - with the price of running an unlicensed copy at $150,000 per instance ! Massive effort is required to maintain software licensing compliance, with no real guarantee that the auditors couldn't find something.
How much does this cost, in terms of man hours? How many sysadmins would the same money buy?
It seems all good, free software to cut down in licensing fees, but what about the cost to retrain staff?
You are still going to have to retrain even if you stick with Microsoft. Since every couple of years or so Microsoft will be bringing out a new version.
Point 1 about HTML editors.. tsetem replies "I prefer VIM anyday". Point 4, installations, tsetem replies "rpm -Uvh or rpm -Fvh".
Hello? This is the whole point!! Do you realize how completely clueless 99.99% of all users out there are? They can't use the clipboard in a word processor and it takes them 30 seconds to find a scrollbar. Do you think they want to type "rpm -Uvh" in some shell? That's the whole point that the original poster was making - that it's not just the COST of software that matters.
Do you have any idea what the cost of getting these 99.99% of clueless users to the skill level where they could do anything productive with Linux - at it's current state? License costs are totally meaningless in that perspective. Mac OS X is pretty close to what a USABLE UNIX should be. I'm sure most users could switch to that without any big learning curve. But Gnome and tcsh on Linux, not a chance!
RedHat has broke even ... so I'm seeing Linux companies out of the red!
So Red Hat should really change their name to Black Hat.
Wow! According to your definition Jesus was the biggest communist in the world.
War is necrophilia.
I don't think he was talking about large corporations (they are too conservative), I think he meant small to medium sized companies who can not afford the lawyers to fight MS.
War is necrophilia.
Software distibution is much harder to with windows then unix. This is mainly due to two factors. One unix has been doing it for twenty years now and it has a wealth of proven and tested tools. Two is that primary assumption of windows is that there is only one user and that person owns the computer. The primary assumption of unix is that there are many users and root owns the computer. This simple premise makes upgrading and maintaining remote windows machines awfully difficult especially considering the fact that a typical windows app spews files in all kinds of unpredictable directories and the fact that registries have to be kept in sync.
Overall tools such as rsync, httpsync, cvsup, cfengine, nsh, ssh, perl etc are so great that a single sysadmin can manage a widespread network if trained well enough.
As far as retraining goes well every major upgrade of windows is sufficiently different enough to retrain your employees anyway. Besides if you can port your app then you are 90% there anyways.
War is necrophilia.
I think kylix is pretty damned hot. It's way more productive then VB. As a bonus you can run your apps through X terms.
.NET (yea right!) then you should have nothing to worry about. .NET will allow you to build apps in anly naguage which will run on both windows and linux. If MS is lying about that then you have tools like perl or python which are very productive and wxwindows which is very cross platform.
.NET).
If MS is not lying about
It may be true that you have a staff full of VB developers but remember you are going to have to teach them VB.NET. VB.NET is so different then VB that they may as well learn another language like object pascal (which ironically will seem more natural to them then
War is necrophilia.
I love posts like this!.
I save them and show them to high school students who are deciding what to learn. "Linux professionals get better pay then Ms professionals" It makes great advertising.
Thank you very much.
War is necrophilia.
If your employees are that dumb (I don't doubt it) then you'll have to retrain them for XP anyways. In fact once the .NET hits you'll have to reatrain your entire company on how to use rented software. Most companies I know regulary send their employees to training sessions. I really don't see why they couln't adopt to openoffice or Koffice or whatnot.
Really if your employees are that stupid get macs for them. Save yourself millions just on helpdesk calls.
War is necrophilia.
network shell it's a commercial product and an excellent one at that.
War is necrophilia.
Unfortunately I have intimate knowledge of software distribution including the horrendous and expensive monster that is called SMS. Maybe one day MS will produce a version of SMS that works as advertised but they seem to realize that they just can't do it and are moving to terminal services and of course the panacea known as .NET which will magically solve all of your software problems.
Tivoli is actually not godawful but it sure is godawful expensive.
War is necrophilia.
You don't have to you could script the whole thing. Many of the tools like cfengine support all different flavors of unix so it's really not that bad of a problem. Certainly much easier then trying to manage a network of win95, win98, nt3.5, nt4.0, ME, w2K machines. I would say it's easier to manage a network of mixed linux, solaris, and freebsd machines is easer then trying to manage a network of mixed windows versions.
War is necrophilia.
It's not like most of these companies going out of business ever bought their M$ licensces anyway. The lack of compliance is amazing.
Wal-Mart had some of its strongest growth and expansion during the recession of the early 90s. While the economy and the retail sector in general was hit hard, Wal-Mart steamrolled on.
As a company with the price advantage in a completely different industry, we are also finding a lot of new business lately.
Well, the rest of the world knows that Merkins are stupid, and can't learn new things. In the rest of the world, where most cars do not have automatic transmissions, some have reverse on the left of the gate, some on the right. Some have a lift collar to select reverse, some have a push down to select reverse, some have no safety lock mechanism. Most have the gear shift on the floor, some have it on the dashboard, some have it on the steering column. Some have four forward gears, some five, some six; most 4x4s have at least ten, usually with an additional manually operated transfer box. Any non-American driver can get into any of these vehicles and drive it without retraining.
So I think, really, your example does not work - except, perhaps, for Merkins.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I'm basically a web developer now, 3 tier, database, middleware, webserver. Any or all of those tools could be free or $$$ depending on which group of developers in my office you talk to (ie. some want MySQL, some want Sybase....Apache vs IIS, etc) but the costs incurred with those choices are incidental to the hardware, the development time, testing, deployment, help desk support, training, documentation, etc. I'll bet if we were 100% LAMPS, it would save us less than 10% (but I'll still try :))
SuperID
Free Database Hosting
5000 people at $40k each is $200,000 per year
Erm, do you mean $200,000,000 per year?
-sid
My company constantly bitches about CVS. We are about to move to Perforce and they are putting together a list of requirements that it will have to meet. So basically I ask: Why not take the requirements and fix cvs? Nah, we'd rather pay some company for a product we cant fix and then bitch when it doesn't meet our requirements.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Granted, but I prefer VIM anyday.
3. Poor printing services
Try CUPS with GTKlp. I'll take that over windows printing anyday thank you very much. I mean, send duplex print jobs, specify print trays, even 4 pages to 1 sheet of paper. And no, the windows print drivers do not support those options.
4. Its harder to update anything on Linux than Windows and MacOS
Umm, rpm -Uvh or rpm -Fvh . Many an NT Admin has worshipped RPM, rather than sitting down & doing click-next, click-next, click-accept... There is WinInstall, but that's another bastard of a story.
5. Poor graphics support
Well, I do really like the NVIDIA drivers
7. Each Linux variant ships with security holes
Ahem, MSIE 5.x, Ahem
As a workstation OS, I'll take it over any commercial Unix OS anyday.
what will we do with all those
microsnot certified engineers???
Nevrar
Possibly because the stock market as a whole has taken a real dive over the last 2-3 weeks. The Dow dropped over 300 points before lunch today and the NASDAQ ain't been looking to hot lately either. Somehow, I suspect that the root of all this isn't that every company in the US is going to go bankrupt this year.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
There is actually a sizeable portion of the population who would be very confused if you were to replace the word Start with a picture of a foot or a gear. Even though the reason to click the lower left corner remains to log off. In reality, from a user's perspective a bash or command.com CLI are strikingly similar. You type the name of the program you want to run. Save files in directories and move between them with the cd command. Likewise, the window environments are all quite similar. It would seem to me that it would be much easier to move from Windows to Gnome or KDE than to MacOS, but people seem to think that MacOS is easy to use so that's not given any consideration.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
If people reacted to automobiles the way that people react to computers they would need to be taught how to drive again when switching from a Ford to a Chevy. I can just imagine it.
I'm sure that all of you who have done tech support will identify with this. It's not that people wouldn't learn if they tried, they just won't try unless they have their hand held every step of the way._____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
I'm usually a Linux/Free software advocate, however...
I see some major flaws in the logic here. If my company were to change over to a new platform, we would probably spend millions of dollars changing over the rest of our software, that it would negate the money we would be saving with the free OS. Unfortunately, we are sooooooo MS dependant, especially here in engineering.
I can see change overs happening slowly, starting with the larger, more mission critical, more expensive applications, and eventually working down to the individual user's desktop. But that will take years.
The RedHat salesman? The guy who comes into Megacorp and tells them that they only have to buy one $49.95 copy and install it on every one of their 50,000 servers. Right.
For good or bad, this Free Software is a different business model. There certainly won't be much room for software sales types and other middlemen.
If Megacorp is to be sold on Linux, it won't be salesmen who do it. Maybe a RedHat salesamn will come through with an attractive Enterprise Support and Training deal, I dunno.
What might do it is when people install Linux behind the back of the IT departments, like you say happened with Novell. If people start to get lots of work done with File and Print services based on Samba with excessed hardware lying around, then maybe those CIOs will notice that they really don't need to buy licenses for this anymore.
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You can pretty much forget about CIOs, for the most part, being convinced that Linux will save them lots of money. There just isn't the money floating around to drive the schmoozing and the magazine articles that convinces them of anything.
What'll happen is this. There'll be one of those brain-dead-we-can't-trust-middle-management-to-spe nd-any-money-at-all-because-they-are-all-a-bunch-o f-idiots, edicts like "All IT hardware procurement is frozen. No purchases except for replacement of critical systems is approved until further notice or the signature of 2 executive Vice Presidents. No exceptions." Someone will notice that John's department is deploying good infrastructure still with excessed hardware and Linux while Jerry's department is just whining all the time. John gets put in charge of Jerry's department and the amount of Linux in the organization doubles and a bandwagon starts which the CIO jumps on board.
It won't come from the top down, that's for sure.
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Free software definately has upsides now that the economy is in the shitter, but I think that in the long run the cost of the hardware is more important, and that is what will push Linux.
One of the reasons that linux has become such a popular webserver platform is because people love to run webservers on Sun hardware. Sun hardware provides a reliable, easy to manage hardware platform, with great support options. Beyond that, it comes with a wonderful OS, that most popular free software has been ported to. The downside of the Sun hardware is the cost. For a webserver that does not need the massive throughput provided by a Sun CPU and bus, Sun hardware is damned expensive. X86 hardware usually costs many tens of thousands of dollars less, but until recently it was hard to get support for x86 platforms running Linux.
Now that major vendors like Dell support Linux on their hardware (And vice-versa.) people will be far more likely to abandon expensive sun hardware in favor of dirt cheap Linux machines. This will probably lead to some nice trickle down business for companies like Penguin computing (And perhaps even the always-overpriced VALinux.) and further help the Linux market, by inspiring competition that leads to lower prices.
There was a quote flying about a while ago "Linux is only free if you don't value your time."
(I'm sorry I don't remember who said it.)
This has to be the greatest point, a relatively clueless person could set up a NT server to do file and print sharing (I know I've seen it done) in an hour or less, and this server could do a reasonable job.
The fact that a Linux/*BSD box could do a much better job is really beside the point for many people - because they would have to learn how to use a UNIX system or hire someone who does, that's your difference in cost nullified.
There are a lot of arguments against "point and click" server management, but if we want Linux to replace NT then I think that it's needed.
-- You ain't seen me, right?
While some evidence may point to the possibility that Free Software is on the rise, there is some contrary evidence that not all stars are rising, or stand a chance of rising.
Sorry guys, but if it works for RHAT, that doesn't mean it'll work for everyone.
All Your Plunging Stock Options are Belong to VALinux
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
I guess only time will tell if the use of Free Software is as much an economic advantage as people have been making it out to be.
Free Software has a cost. That cost is the risk of your IP if you are not careful.
Look at how Corel 1 and 2 had trouble 'getting it right' The risk to Corel is great enough vs the profit potentional, they are trying to sell off the Linux version they make. Free Software is not worth it.
Open Source software (something the most visable supporter of Free Software RMS wants to not be associated with. The Open Source Movement -- I do not support it.) *CAN* protect your IP. Understanding HOW you can have protection for your hard work AND work with Open Source software is the key to protecting your IP.
Free Software wants to destroy IP. IP is the backbone of the information economy. Free Software does *NOT* have an economic advantage when it comes to IP. Open Source software *CAN* provide IP protection and therefore economic advantage.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
[tongue in cheek]: If it looks like unemployment may (*shudder*) increase - then the pricks go into 'crisis mode' and start FUD. And damn those little old ladies on fixed incomes to hell!
Oooh. Negative feedback. What a concept. When the demand drops into the floor, lower production. Grow something else for a while. Live to raise production another day.
Because the Deep Pockets on wallstreet need Big Profit Now(TM) - and they dont care otherwise... if they loose confidence in XYZ stock because this quarter is bad - they sell - if they sell, then the CEO and the top 400 people in a Fortune 500 company loose big dollars on their stock options... so they are VERY motivated to make every quarter better than the next ... "the future" be damned,
[tic]: Oh, yeah. We, the public, don't want growth. We want low salaries as a sign of faith. =)
Hmm... If the development isn't sustainable, then obviously there's a problem. Duh.
these top '400' people will be rich beyond imagination before that ever matters...
[tic]: What the future where their stock options potentials have stopped rising, crashed into the floor, and are now negative? Oh yeah, there really rich now, as long as they like minuses.
Perhaps not beyond imagination... Yours (admittedly fairly active) seems up to the task. =)
the whole scheme is ready to eat itself...
Yeah, if it's unsustainable.
current Capitalist Economics are about to reveal the failure in their basic logic...
[tic]: Wow! You heard it here first, folks. Unsustainable growth leads to nastiness ... It's a revolutionary new economic theory!
Am I the only one on the planet who has taken a freakin' macro course? Jesus! Buy a good book on the subject or something.
The training curve is expensive. That's the "proprietary lock-in" at work.
If automobiles were this way, you'd have to completely relearn how to drive on a completely different road system if you wanted to switch from Ford to Chevy.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
Errr...hello??? applications? We're not an IT firm, but we do have somewhere in the order of 1000 developers working internally building applications for our use. Now these are running on all sorts of platforms, but there is a lot of stuff running on the desktop, which is NT. The cost of rewriting/replacing all these apps would be astronomical, not to mention the time it would take. We spent well over a year on Y2K, and that was just testing apps, not rewriting anything!
While a slow trickle over to Linux could be done, there's no way it's going to happen quickly.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
It's like comparing applies to oranges. IT money is IT money. What? So instead of paying MS license fees they pay linux admin salaries???
- kk
I've noticed a surge in interest in the open-source foundations of my projects at work. We'll be presenting on Linux, Apache, Tomcat and Cocoon at an upcoming installment of the CTO's roundtable. There is considerable curiousity about how I'm funding my work in the current budget environment. The answer, of course, is that the stuff is free and runs on hand-me-down hardware.
<herb>It looks here as though your only costs are salary....</herb>
illegitimii non ingravare
Can you imagine the backlash this is going to cause?
Coupled with their cock-eyed, "big brother" registration scheme and you're going to have one huge cadre of enraged IT managers.
Furthermore, add to it the costs of upgrading hardware in order to be able to run their latest bloatware.
And don't forget their borglike insistence on moving towards a pay-per-play model.
Sure, they can do all of the above, but they'll pay a massive public relations price in the long run. I believe that the free software companies can latch on to this and really raise some hell in the next two years. I see an opportunity for massive scale conversions from MS to Free softs if the benefits of real ownership, smooth upgrade paths, and owning the source code can be marketed in the right manner during these next two years.
Big opportunity for free soft to step up to the plate and deliver the goods. Let's hope it happens.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
Go stick a stock Redhat box on the web.. I dare ya!! ;)
Actually they lost $600,000.- or less than 1C a share, which for Wall Street is the same as breaking even.
The important fact on Red Hat is that they are NOT burning cash, and they have a healty amount in the bank. So, they are well positioned to come ahead through a recession. You will be surprised to know how many big corporations are actually in deep debt, and with a receding economy, big names could go under (or get bought).
Red Hat to me, has a great chance to survive and prosper during the next boom.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
For a large company the actual cost of purchasing the software may not be the most expensive part of switching. Things like retraining, time spent rolling out the software, technicial support, document convesion can add up to alot of money.
Most IT people do not know very much about writing a business case. Most management types don't know technical speak. As a result the tech who thinks it is obviously cheaper and better to use free software has a hard time convincing management.
One of the good things that Microsoft provides is business cases. If you want to move to a MS product, all the informaiton that you need is made available. (if it actually works as stated is another argument) On their website you can often find migration guides and business cases.
This is an area where free software is greatly lacking. We need to build business cases to prove our case.
I am currently taking a course that trys to bridge the gap between the tech speak and the manager speak. For my term paper for Emerging Technologies I am going to be building a business case for the adoption of OpenOffice in the enterprise. (www.openoffice.org) I will gladly donate the business case to Sun to use to help promote OpenOffice.
I would encourage anyone who has to do a term paper like this to pick a free/open source solution to try to support.
Need a website host? Try out http://WebQualityHost.net
Is it really flamebait if it's true?
> 1. No really solid HTML editors
a lot of the best webpages are written by hand anyway, use vi or emacs.
> 2. Poor application linking
my linker and links seem okay.
> 3. Poor printing services
HP just released JetDirect for Linux.
> 4. Its harder to update anything on Linux than Windows and MacOS
debian:
# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade
> 5. Poor graphics support
OpenGL, OpenInventor, Nvidia, ATI, Matrox...
> 6. No unified GUI (KDE, Gnome, who cares, just make ONE of them work)
My ximian gnome box works fine.
> 7. Each Linux variant ships with security holes
to some extent, all s/w products have security holes. or perhaps you mean the recent bind problems? fixed months ago, and the "apt-get" lines above (provided the security.debian.org entry is in your sources.list) took care of that pretty fast...provided you use bind...long before the Lion was out. Or perhaps you mean a boot disk against a non-passwd protected bios? all mainstream OSen are subject to that.
Go install a stock NT 4.0 box and stick that on the web. I dare ya.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
But some software situations are worth paying for, and would be very difficult for a volunteer community to reimplement. But it's a matter of time for most of them to simply convert to open source once software has eventually been reasonably universally commoditized. The exceptions to that would be very rare, obscure, and niche-oriented. So it won't be utopian, but source code and standards will eventually become more open, even if not always truly free as in libre or gratis.
I have other notes listed at my site if you'd like to see an old rough draft of my idea of an I.T. department. I'd just like to be able to make one from scratch in a survivable company. ;-)
===
I'm sure there would be a grace period during which a company is allowed to fulfill their proprietary commercial software licenses. And during that period, an emergency open source migration service can be unleashed! Now that would be hard, potentially expensive, but immediately worthwhile. Let's start one!
===
Instead of buying new machines with WIN on them, we've started using P200 class machines and putting Linux and *BSD onto them and putting those out to do the work. A lot of time all someone needs is an x-server to do the work and the CPU time is actually on an Ultra 80 or something similar. Do you pay out MS fees, get exceed AND have to get new machines, or do you use what you already have, drop on of the *NIX versions on there and rock with the same or greater stability and a LOT fewer fees upfront. Basically free because you've already written off the machine to be donated etc and the money's long gone for that
Recycle, it's the only way.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
You must mean "No weenie GUI HTML editors." There are gobs of HTML editors that really smoke anything I've seen under windows. Try Quanta for one.
3. Poor printing services
Just for shits and giggles, why don't you examine windows NT (or 2000) printing service. Guess what . . You'll find LPR.EXE.
4. Its harder to update anything on Linux than Windows and MacOS
apt-get upgrade. Well, now, all your software is updated. You want a webserver? apt-get install apache. Quake? apt-get install quake.
7. Each Linux variant ships with security holes
This must be a troll. Are you claiming that Windows doesn't "ship with security holes"?
Dude. Get a clue. If it is really that hard for you to remember, use Gnorpm. Or Kpackage. Or use Debian and make an icon (so you can double-click) that calls apt-get upgrade.
Yes, we realize that. You have already stated you you are partial to OSX. You do realize that it runs on a BSD core, which really ain't all that different from Linux . . . . ?
finally someone on Slashdot who's not a Linux zealot, just may be older than 16 and has a clue about what matters to a business versus hobbyists with too much time on their hands.
------
sigs are a total waste of bandwith, especially when the signal-to-noise ratio is lower than 1:10.
... but the news about company X moving to the Open Source software won't lift its stock the same way as the news about blowing a few thousands of employees.
The reason for that is a totally rotten system of Wall Street with a vultures aka "respected industry analysts" running the show. I remember how HP had an excellent quarter and exceeded the numbers, but the stock had dropped because one of them told that the growth in the UNIX servers was "just a 15%".
Reducing the workforce significantly decreases a company's liability on about everything - pensions, health and other benefits, labor expenses and the amount of computer seats necessary whether computer is just a piece of metal, and software cost is just a small slice of the expense pie.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Consider this, and this. Businesses not only must wade through enormously complex licensing from Microsoft, but they run the very real risk of being audited - with the price of running an unlicensed copy at $150,000 per instance ! Massive effort is required to maintain software licensing compliance, with no real guarantee that the auditors couldn't find something - anything - if they tried hard enough.
It begins to feel like anyone choosing to run Microsoft software does so at grave risk to their businesses, which at any moment may be invaded by the software licensing gestapo, and be fined as much as the SPA figures they can pay.
Microsoft, faced with declining revenues, is going hard against businesses running their software to ensure software license compliance. Even a good faith effort doesn't provide enough protection.
My company has begun using Open Source /Free Software everywhere it can to reduce our software license liability. I expect that as Microsoft muscles in on more and more businesses, we won't be the last.
Whoops! That first Internet Week link should have gone here. Got an extra piece of punctuation there.
The real issue, at least where I work, is not one of real cost. We have a person who earns in the mid-40s whose primary function is license compliance. That's a justifiable business expense, considering what an audit might cost us if only a few stray copies of something or other turned up.
What switching to StarOffice (for example) where it's practical buys us is a reduction in our exposure. If noone is running a Microsoft Office suite, then we don't have to worry about a stray copy costing us $150K. The cost of the software license is nominal next to the very real risk of a costly audit, and whatever fines/settlement arrangement gets worked out.
In February here in Chicago, there was a radio ad in which some threatening sounding guy was telling businesses that they were "one disgruntled employee away from an audit." Responsible liability management suggests (to me at least) that you spend money to make sure you're in compliance, and reduce dependence on potentially risky software everywhere possible. Open source makes great sense in this context.
Not just that, but M$ doesn't actually make money anyways. Here's an old (1999) article on that. They're one of the many companies living on their overinflated market value. Does anyone know if this "redhat's breaking even" refers to their market value, or their actual revenue and profit. And yes, I realise how closely tied those are, and how difficult to seperate. While the modern business system seems to focus on overinflating ones own stock, not on actually contributing to the economy as anything other than a horse to bet on.
"rpm -Uvh"
Thats not for end users.
End users shouldn't install software in a corporate setting. End users tend to install melissa.
However, the people doing upgrades might like the fact they can upgrade every machine with software package foo by running a script that will automatically install it on all the machines rather than clicking n times per machine.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Don't forget that switching from MS to Linux, especially at a big shop, will cost mucho denero. Not only will they have to put manhours into it, but they may also have to hire new people to do it.
Chris Armstrong
Chris Armstrong
Calling Corel a "Linux Company" is like calling GE a TV company. Corel turning a profit likely has little to do with the Linux side of their business.
So why is there no direct Access equivalent for GNOME or KDE?
(GNOME Basic and KBasic are steps in the right direction, but there's no app that will take a VBA coded Access database and present it in the same way.)
Unitl this exists, alot of small office environments will be a tough sell.
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
The introduction of Windows 95 really kicked it off. Banyan didn't support roaming profiles until it became too late. Banyan's print queues didn't really integrate with 95. Long filename support took time to arrive, and when it did there were severe problems with European codepages. And so on.
Management couldn't wait for things to be fixed, and installed NT instead, despite NT not being as advanced in the enterprise.
The real killer for Banyan, though, was internet Email. StreetTalk addresses became obsolete, removing the requirement for Banyan's naming services.
Banyan are now history, just another e-commerce consulting firm.
I see this as less something to worry about and perhaps something more to take advantage of. It's time for more innovation and not just cashing in on the hype.
aztek: the ultimate man
No sig for you!!
Hate to be a nerdy economist, but this is not the definition of a luxury good. You have described free software as a luxury good because of how it is produced. Luxury goods are defined in terms of their demand: a luxury good is a good that people demand more of when their incomes rise and which they replace with substitutes when their incomes fall. Under this definition, Free Software might be regarded as either a normal good or inferior good. Don't flame me here, inferior goods are just goods who have demand curves that rise as income falls.
If it is an inferior good (possibly an inappropriate name, in a digital economy), then its consumption will rise as incomes fall. This is a pretty interesting thought, because unlike other goods, its price will not rise. There is some speculation that the Irish potato famine was caused because potatoes were an inferior good and as the Irish incomes fell, they substituted potatoes for meat, causing a spike in potato prices, causing lower real incomes, etc., etc. Of course, this will not happen with a free good.
So, I think that the argument that a recession will cause businesses to substitute away from costly software is a reasonable one. The poster here is missing the point, which has to do with consumption, not production. If, of course, a bad economy destroys some of the production mechanisms behind free software, its quality may diminish, but I am skeptical of this idea. Good free software predates our recent goofy boom.
If the RedHat salesman comes calling with numbers in hand, they will listen.
Or the Apple salesman.
Price out a Mac OS X Server box, running Apache, CommunigatePro, and soon to ship with a GUI admined SAMBA. Sure, the hardware is more expensive--but you're thinking desktops. Take your $500 POS Wintel machine, and it's cheaper than a Mac. But put a version of NT Enterprise on it, with paid up seat licensing (and MSFT there to make sure you're paid up and legit), and suddenly the price curve changes. Mac OS X Server is expected to ship for under $1500--3K at the most. Free seats, and free Unix tools--maybe with a GUI added, gratis, by Apple. Combined with even Apple's top-of-the line G4, and you have everything Enterprise about NT, for much much less. Sure, it's more than Linux will ever be, but you'll get a GUI admin, and the whole shebang from one brand--the box, the OS, and even support. And if you don't think Apple is targeting the business, you need to read between the lines.
--
$tar -xvf
erm... yes.
Unless I meant $40.00 each, which would be very low labor costs, eh?
Damned daylight saving time... It takes me a solid week to be awake during the day again after the time change. (I don't look forward to next week, when I obviously will be cleaning up mistakes like that from the code that I've been writing today.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Perhaps because the financial database is not"the lifeblood of the firm" at a women's clothing retailer.
Handbags designed to match shoes and white Oxford shirts priced at 3 times the cost of the same shirt tailored for men... that's their lifeblood.
It's very easu for us techies lose site of the fact that what makes a company rich is not the technology choices they make, but how much product they move and and how high of a margin. That's what pays our checks. That's what allows us to get paid for something as easy and unstressful as hacking out code.
To imagine that our company will sink or swim based on whether we choose mySQL or Oracle, Solaris or Linux, MS-Exchange or sendmail... it's just silly. Yes, the success of our departmenthinges on these decisions. MIS has the capability to save, or cost, huge ammounts of money to a company, but in the big picture it means less than you might think. A company that moves thousands of pairs of capri pants every hour can afford to weather the storm of the occational IT disaster, and one that has the best and most efficient IT department in the world can still go under if they do not make sales.
We programmers should have a "Sales Rep Appreciation Day", when we tip our hats to the grunts who spend all day dealing with horrible people so we don't have to. Short of that, at least take one of them to lunch once in a while. Just a thought.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
When the Fed was raising rates, it was during a period of very strong ecomomic growth. This controls the rate of growth to prevent runaway inflation, and allows a nice buffer so future rate cuts can be used as an economic stimulus during down times.
Your conspiracy theories concerning the Fed and current vs. "next guy" office holders (it appears you are talking about Clinton and W) simply does not hold up. Alan Greenspan has run the Fed since long before Clinton took office, and has done a pretty darn good job for every president he has served. During the Clinton boom, it was mainly Greenspan's rate adjustments that prevented us from running into double-digit inflation (which surely would have had a negative impact on Clinton's popularity). W has even chosen several of his cabinet members based on their past working relationships with Greenspan.
So, if Greenspan was some kind of political co-conspirator, it would be difficutl to establish which side he is conspiring with... He's been critical to the successes of both.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Damn, I can't even count 0's today. That does it, I'm spending the rest of the afternoon reading slashdot, and not writing another line of code until after I take a nap or something.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
How very sadly true. NT administrators must feel like Sega game console owners sometimes. :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
4) 5000 people at $40k each is $200,000 per year (plus you save tens of thousands in seat licenses for your software, because there are fewer people using it.
5) Switching software platforms means you need to either hire new specialists or retrain your techies... either costs money.
Bottom line is that a company will change to open source for one reason and one reason only: if they are convinced that they will make more money using it. In every company I have ever worked for, the attitude has always been to spend what you need to in order for your people to be productive. Whether that means dumping huge cash into an Oracle database, or hiring a Postgres DBA, productivity matters more than expenses.
A CEO (or any manager, for that matter) who does a really good job of cutting expenses (mostly via layoffs) gets a reputation for being a great "hatchet man", and all of his job offers start coming from sick companies that need to make cuts.
A CEO who does a really good job of raising productivity and sales gets a reputation that lands him powerful jobs in healthy companies. Think about it: If you were a corporate executive, which type of CEO would you prefer to strive to be?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Most system admins are still scared about linux, while others embrace it, and while others are curious to find out about it. Alot of system admins say that there isn't enough software for Linux. StarOffice is very close to M$ word but i think that many users are afraid of their new word processor. I think this new money should be spent to educate system admins about all there fears of linux. You also have to rember that it isn't a turnkey operation to change from Windows to Linux. System admins are also afraid because they don't know about linux and are too lasy to learn.(Not all though!) Alot of people still see linux as some sort of rouge project that can't be used by the masses because they're confused about software being free. (The motto "You get what you pay for" comes to mind)
Hell, free software keeps company's running!
Pirated M$ stuff counts as free, right?
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
I like this alot
unfortunately, if you have a company addicted to MS, making the transition is going to be uncomfortable. In a lot of smaller companies, the Access databases are designed by people with home grown skills. They are not professionals. You have the most amazing kludges running just to keep everything going.
I have a friend who went into a place where they wanted him to fix a database (just patch it up) in 2 days, and the setup would need at LEAST two weeks to inventory. And they were trying to gype him every step of the way. and this IS a 100 million dollar company retailling upscale womens clothing. (names omitted to protect the guilty), They wanted to do the fix inside certain budget parameters that were far too small. But this is the database that runs the financials for the whole company. It is only the lifeblood of the firm. Talk about penny wise and pound foolish.
And yet they sort of manage to stagger by. I wonder how they stay in business at all.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
With MS Turning Screws on Customers the way they are, I would imagine that many mid size company's would turn to free software, instead of being faced with up to $10,000 per unlicensed product.
Unfortunatly, there are more corporations with a never ending supply of downright dirty greed tactics that I don't think that anything is going to be 'revealed'. link It was revealed a nice long time ago. For instance, let's talk about John D. Rockafeller. The man had control of the National Gaurd! Hell, he had control of the goverment! So, what did he do to make him go down in history as a 'good' man? He donates sh17loads of $$ to different 'causes' (which might I add, he made profits on quite well, as have his progeny). We see the same thing happening with Gates. But wait, it is still only a minor fraction of the wealth they have earned (read stolen) from the customers (read victims) who have purchaced (read strong armed) their (again, read stolen) merchandise. Although Capitolism sucks, there has been no likly alternative introduced. Ever. Capitolism has been the only 'way of living' ever to appeal to the more natural way of life. If you can find a better solution, I can can you an idealist who doesn't bother to take into account that man is an animal, and just as any other animal will kill his own to keep ahead.
I don't care what anybody says. This whole recession thing is a bunch of whooey. Companies feel they aren't making enough money. So, they lay people off. Why? Because that is what happens in a recession. But wait, how does the effect cause the effect? Well, I suppose there is a real life implementatoin/usage for recursion after all! I do think in all seriousness that this recession stuff is a bunch of crap. Why is it that inflation happens? Because companies want to make more money at a faster rate. Why does intrest rates go up? Because the fed says so. Why does the fed say so? Because the businesses are laying off workers. Why would the fed raise interest rates if people are being laid off? Well, that is because they want the economy to go down for a while, so that the next guy in office can look good, while the current victim(official) has to waste time wrestling with the economy.
This is just like how the easiest time for communism to gain support is after a war, during a true economic recession. There couldn't be a better time for us. Let us not waste the chance. What are we waiting for? :)
Today's Linux Desktops are getting more and more user friendly all the time. KDE2 and Gnome have the equivalent of a start button, and with many office suites in development there are a plethora of options for all those MS-Word mongers who happen to need Office Premium edition with the free spa day.
Seriously though, there will always be a transition period, we can't really help that, but it's worth it. I'm not just advocating Linux here, but all alternatives, Linux just happens to be a nice example. Sure, we'll see a learning curve, a learning curve softened by the millions of dollars people save with free software. There are so many advantages to using other OSs and apps in workplaces I can't even begin to list them. People are scared of change, I'm scared of change. It took me two years to move to Linux; ie. to feel comfortable that I didn't need anything else. It's to be expected. But just because we're going to need to relearn a few things doesn't mean we can't start right now!
yoink
Time and time again this debate has raged, and most actual metrics that measure the real cost of implementing various solutions have agreed that Windows NT/2000 has a significantly lower total cost of ownership than Linux, Solaris, etc. While it's easy to look at the prices of the software alone think they're expensive (though from a consumers perspective), those prices are often absolutely dwarfed by the cost of implementation, training, etc.
Does this mean that I wouldn't recommend that firms consider BSD, Linux, etc? Not even remotely. The problem is when you get Linux fanatics who want to push Linux for anything and everything at an organization, and it turns into one high risk experiment. However, moderately implementing "alternative" OS' can be very beneficial for organizations. For instance there's no way I'd pay thousands for a copy of 2000 & ISA Server. Instead I'd take an old PC, stick FreeBSD with IP Filter on it, and would have a fully functional firewall transparently a part of the organization with extremely little maintenance required : The TCO for that is very low. However I wouldn't consider replacing MS servers with Samba at this point because the many minor nuisances (non-updating directories, security issues, etc.) aren't worth the trouble. It's "less expensive" to just buy an 2000 + CAL license pack for SMB serving. It's less expensive to use SQL Server than it is to play with the experiments that are open source SQL solutions (I realize there would be disagreement to this, but that has been my experience). It's FAR less expensive to equip end users with 2000 desktops than it is trying to shoehorn Linux+TheCoolGUIOfTheDay.
Heh...I think she works here now...and we cloned her for some reason....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I would think free software is ideal if you're a start-up, since you don't have any legacy software/apps to support -- everything for production can be done using the free software.
Otherwise, trying to make all of your old apps/files/etc work, or to port your old software costs.... bucks... Lay off 200 people, or use those people to port all your software over? Hmm.... not sure about that.
Let's just hope that this here will not eat up their future profits. I want RH to succeed.
Alot of fluff has risen around the industry,
like the small flowers and shrubs that grow
around the base of trees in a forest. Now
that the forest fire has come, alot of that
will go up in smoke... Free Software is going
to be the first to burn out completely...
Lets hope that giant Prozac helps to elevate the mood of Wall Street and pull us out of this bear market before the million pound poop hammer falls on us all.
We've laid off half our staff at Ridiculopathy.com just because we didn't want to feel left out.
They could lay off 5,000 people, OR quit shelling out that much in MS licenses and pay salaries!
he's correct, as long as all the workers need to do is read Slashdot, compile hello.c and play with widget themes. Of course, that is all that the noisier Linux zealots do with their boxes, which is why they're so convinced that saving a few dollars on software is necessarily cost effective.
Mexico City is supposedly taking the plunge and going over entirely to Linux. It'll be interesting to see how that works out. That's assuming it actually happens and it's not another bit of "one million Linux PC's in Mexican schools" posturing.
That's for desktops. Servers obviously are a different story.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
As a strictly mutual fund investor, I lack the skills to reach a conclusion myself. I encourage partisans of both sides to present data and links that will end this dispute.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Look at http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2001/press _Q42001.html - It states that RedHet only lost $0.03 per share. Which is not break even, but is pretty good compared to their earlier losses.
I would like to make some side comments about the reactions I've gotten from my post, and this post seems like a good place to start. From and outsiders point of view, many of the reactions are nothing more than knee jerk flames. It seems any form of criticism one makes about Linux, even light criticism, it is taken as a flame. A flame to be flamed back. Many, instead of addressing a single issue, have resorted to ad hem attacks. FUD, Troll, Moron, I've heard it all. Not only that but some of you seem to think that I had the impression Windows was better than Linux (it isn't) and that any form form of comparative statment on why Linux isn't as popular as something that is essentially given away should be is an attack against Linux (it isn't).
You want to know why people don't use Linux, I'll tell you, it's because flames I've recieved in response to any constructive criticism I've made about Linux. They come in many shapes, but its always a some form of a "holier than thou" attitude. Does that mean all Linux users are trolls? Certainly not. But really, with fuck heads out there ruining it for the rest, like some of those who responded to my posts, I don't even care about your "free" operating system. (no binford, you're not a fuck head, and probabally not troll...you asked what appears to be an honest question)
To answer your question. Just beacuse two OS's share a basic technology of multitasking and a limited ability to cross compile non-gui apps does NOT make them similiar. The design of OS X is a far cry from Linux. I could NEVER get Linux to a useable desktop OS. I Tried. I wanted to. I couldn't. When I asked in newsgroups and on IRCs, I was trolled and told I was stupid because I didn't want to make -install anything. OS X was usable out of the BOX and even ran my MacOS 9 apps ina better form than MOL could. They aren't similiar, don't fool yourself.
Burn Hollywood Burn
a lot of the best webpages are written by hand anyway, use vi or emacs.
Vi and emacs have horrible workgroup support.
2. Poor application linking
my linker and links seem okay.
I chuckled when I read this. I'm talking about application communication services that go a lot futher than "|" or ">" do.
3. Poor printing services
HP just released JetDirect for Linux.
I'm talking about color management, spools, trays, easy to use multiple printers. Take a look at what MacOS can do and come back with educated comment.
4. Its harder to update anything on Linux than Windows and MacOS
# apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get? You're joking right? It's version tracking blows, take a look at how a Mac handles it
5. Poor graphics support
OpenGL, OpenInventor, Nvidia, ATI, Matrox...
All need to custom configured, and if you think Mesa is a replacement for OpenGL you need to open your eyes. OpenInventer is no where near production quality. Getting Mesa to work with any given graphics card is not easy.
6. No unified GUI (KDE, Gnome, who cares, just make ONE of them work)
My ximian gnome box works fine.
Yeah and it works and is coded for in a totally independant way from KDE
7. Each Linux variant ships with security holes to some extent,
all s/w products have security holes. or
Tell that the the OpenBSD team. Tell that to Apple.
perhaps you mean the recent bind problems? fixed months ago, and the "apt-get" lines above (provided the security.debian.org entry is in your sources.list) took care of that pretty fast...provided you use bind...long before the Lion was out. Or perhaps you mean a boot disk against a non-passwd protected bios? all mainstream OSen are subject to that. Go install a stock NT 4.0 box and stick that on the web. I dare ya.
I'm talking about the fact that all Linux systems ever shipped always have had some misconfiguration that allows remote attacks. All of them. Not good for desktop use. IHMO NT is a piece of shit
Burn Hollywood Burn
Try CUPS with GTKlp. I'll take that over windows printing anyday thank you very much. I mean, send duplex print jobs, specify print trays, even 4 pages to 1 sheet of paper. And no, the windows print drivers do not support those options.
My reference is MacOS, which as far as I know nothing compares to it. Does Linux have anything that compares to ColorSync?
4. Its harder to update anything on Linux than Windows and MacOS
Umm, rpm -Uvh or rpm -Fvh . Many an NT Admin has worshipped RPM, rather than sitting down & doing click-next, click-next, click-accept... There is WinInstall, but that's another bastard of a story.
Yet another command line to remeber, what ever happened to decent version checking and double clicking.
5. Poor graphics support
Well, I do really like the NVIDIA drivers
I keep reading that. Graphics support though is more than a good driver. OpenGL performance is subpar and hard to set up. The OS doesn't support all the buzzword compliance of image formats. Video and sound performance isn't very good. I hope you don't have to actually do any kind of graphics editing on Linux (yeah, I know about, I use Gimp, it's no Photoshop)
7. Each Linux variant ships with security holes
Ahem, MSIE 5.x, Ahem
Which is why I dont use Windows.
As a workstation OS, I'll take it over any commercial Unix OS anyday.
Try OS X for a good desktop commercial workstation. Try BeOS for a good desktop OS (I've grown rather partial to it, it's not MacOS, but its good enough for email/web/graphics)
Burn Hollywood Burn
Do you have return ticket to Redmond, WA?
Thank you and enjoy your trip, TROLL!
I don't use Windows. Not sure what makes you think I do.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Games: You want to play all the newest games on a PC (which is a unique market compared to the console market), you have one choice. Windows. Yes I know, MacOS has improved dramtically to the point that it is viable and Linux isn't that far behind, but face it game performance is usually better on a PC and there are more high end graphics orientated games for WIndows than MacOS and Linux combined.
Server: Here is where Open Source has a large following. Apache, Samba, mySQL, Perl, and other such OSS technologies make Bill Gates wake up in the middle of the night sweating, and for good reason too. But, there are some things they don't do as well as something like Win2K does, but in general are more flexable and certainly significantly cheaper than the alternatives.
Workstation: This is the majority market for computers and the biggest expense most businesses (and people) are going to make. Here Linux lacks some key ideas.
1. No really solid HTML editors
2. Poor application linking
3. Poor printing services
4. Its harder to update anything on Linux than Windows and MacOS
5. Poor graphics support
6. No unified GUI (KDE, Gnome, who cares, just make ONE of them work)
7. Each Linux variant ships with security holes
I could go on and on, but you get the point. Not only that, Linux has to deal with misconceptions in the workplace (its ONLY a server, its a hobbiest OS, If its free it can't be any good, It doesnt have any good Office compatible software...yadda yadda)
People want something that they KNOW for a fact will work. Windows may have its cavets (instability, high cost of maintance, et al) but at least it runs Word, it connects to a custom database, and company can call MS (or the OEM) and get help when it dies. In a word, its "simpler" to just choose something convient than it is to built a custom system from components and then deploy it to every desktop in your business.
If you want Linux to suceed, make a distributation that is NOT a server (meaning fix whats written above) that has a significantly better UI and easy to make custom install CDs (and I mean EASY), then you will see LInux being used.
Burn Hollywood Burn
That has to be one of thee most short-bus esq theories I have heard. RedHat is in "the black" because they stopped spending money they didn't have, the recession hit them just as well as everyone else, While it is amazing that someone using a slightly unorthadox bussiness plan (taking a product and turning it into a service) could even function at all, it is not suprising in this age of worthless crap and superfulous garbage another company that makes somthing that isn't quite so bad survives. Corporations ask for RedHat when they are planning on using linux for servers. I am thinking of building my first FreeBSD port /usr/ports/emulators/redhatloginscreen
and my second /usr/ports/sysutils/redhatuname
*8@)
Guttermouth is a really good band.
Wow! Sounds great! Amazing!
Now that we've gotten our little anti-MS tirade/pro-open source plug out of the way, let's look at those numbers, shall we? If we assume everyone in the company is Using Win2K Pro/Office 2000 Pro, that's ~$250+$600. If we estimate an average salary of $40K for the 5000 laid-off employees, that's $200Mil (not including overhead and all), or over 235,000 copies of Windows and Office. So we've saved 2% of the workforce, and had to retrain a quarter of a million employees. Whoop-de-do.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Funny how if you pay a bazillion dollars on a bunch of windows licenses you can hire some scrub a 20 grand a year to admin it, yet if you get a *free* OS, that rate magically turns into 80 grand+ per year.
Now I'm not knocking linux, cause I know of its finer points; just giving you a different perspective on what a corporation would look at when deciding this sort of stuff.
------------------------
It seems all good, free software to cut down in licensing fees, but what about the cost to retrain staff? Think of all the people out there who have never used anything except Microsoft, it will still be a costly exercise to train them all. Long term this is a great idea, long term free software will save money, but it's the short term that most employers will be looking at. During a recession most employers are looking to cut costs in the immediate to short term, they aren't thinking about the long term benefits and wouldn't want to shift to anything that will not only initially cost them in terms of retraining, but also in productivity as users adjust to new programs/set up.
Switching to stable, well-developed software will involve a one-time cost for the migration with permanent cost-savings. IANAAOATA(I am not an accountant or a tax attorney) but you might be able to write it off as a capital expense - it seems like you can claim just about anything as a capital investment without the IRS complaining. From then on, you can remove software expenses from the budget. You don't have the same downtime/security issues to deal with under Linux - they're much less. UNIX people are more expensive, but they have a higher chance of solving the problem instead of running up a massive bill for outside help.
/bob. Office = StarOffice or Word = AbiWord, whatever. Anyone with any brain should be OK from there, more or less.
Furthermore, it's amazing how closely you can make Linux mimic Win9x/NT anymore from the user level - run the Redmond95 theme in Gnome and the win98 theme in Sawfish(or other win-clones), run StarOffice, and people can't tell the difference. I have an account on my machine called WinUser with this setup for when normal people have to use it for a minute - after about 2 minutes they're happily typing away. Foot = Start. C:\Windows\Desktop\Bob's Work =
While the original poster points out a valid observation I have to say that the following sentence really bothers me:
... is what we need to popularize free software."
"Perhaps this 'recession'
I have to say that this is without a doubt one of the most self-serving/pompous statements I have ever heard. It is equivalent to saying "Perhaps more people dying in car accidents is what we need to popularize seatbelts". If we want free software and open source to obtain the level of wide-spread respect that it deserves then we should be more careful about how we word things that the public will read.
I think the following statement contains the same message and gets the point across in a more palatable way:
Perhaps a positive side effect of the current 'recession' will be the popularization of free software and the realization of the true value in open source.
At least it does not sound like we are wishing a recession on the entire country just so we can prove our point.
For most people learning to use a new OS/Office Suite/Browser is something they did once because they had too. And, rather like a root canal, something that they hope they never have to go through again.
Face it, for the vast majority of people learning Linux is alot like having a root canal and they will not do it until they have the equivalent of a puss filled abscess forcing them to either do it or die.
What will lead to wide spread adoption of Linux is Microsoft excercising their legal right to audit fortune 1000 companies for license violations. Those audits and the forced purchase of licenses cost real money. Just one audit can cost 10s of millions of dollars to conduct and can cost 10s of millions of more dollars in added overhead expenses to make sure they always pass the audits.
What will REALLY hurt Microsoft is when school districts stop using Microsoft software in classes because they cannot afford the cost of an audit or the cost of new licenses to replace ones they own, but cannot produce.
Microsoft license audits are the puss filled abcess that will push the adoption of Linux more than any other single force.
StoneWolf
Oh, I agree. Software costs a lot. The thing is, how much did they get for $2 million? Let's be conservative and say it's for a thousand people ($2000/seat). For that thousand people, you'd have to pay for training (very expensive, generally $1000/person/day). And, you'd have to get extra support people (at least, at first), and those support people would be much higer paid than your average MS wonk, because there's less supply of Open Source people. It's the NET difference that executives who do buying look at. That $2 million may have been a drop in the bucket compared to what it would cost to change over their infrastructure and retrain and retool all of their people. Who knows?
I wish that that were true. But unfortunately, I worked on a help desk for several years before I became a developer. You put Gnome in front of the average user, and they're lost. I hate to say it, but the average user gets confused with the 'Save' command. I think that training would be expensive. But even if it isn't, there are still lots of other costs that come along with changing infrastructure that you can't take lightly.
Except with the smallest of companies, software is rarely a major expense for companies, especially OS's. Usually, a MUCH higher cost is associated with development and support (paying salaries, contractors, etc.). Whether the TCO of Linux is really lower than that of proprietary software is still up in the air, I think. It may be cheaper for a company to pay a few grand for Windows, then save tens of thousands by hiring a generic Windows admin.
If this is the case, why is RHAT trading at a 52 week low? I bought today, but I'm no wall street genius.
When VPNs are outlawed, only outlaws have VPNs.
I would like to further extend the fluke. Whilst all comments appear to fully justify their opinions with economics and predictions, the industry is simply still too young to be able to say for certain if there is a link between the two. There is nothing to suggest that free software would suffer in a boom, or do particularly well in a depression. I think it seems inappropriate at this young stage to make definitive links between the two.
<P>It is possible to say that as the general economy suffers, there is more need for free software. Equally even in a booming economy, a company will go for whichever option is best suited to its needs, which basic sums will tell us is the cheaper one.
<P>It is therefore simply impossible to create a correlation between the two without making ill-informed judgements.
repeat after me ... the US is not in a recession right now. Our GNP went up in the final quarter of 2000 (albeit only 1%). Technically, a recession is defined as 2 consecutive quarters of DECLINING GNP.
The problem with the economy right now is that people got used to bringing in 30% returns, and now that we're just barely growing, everyone is in a panic. The press is a major factor in this whole thing. Sheeple believe whatever the press tells them, and panic sells newspapers
Rubbish
You rush a Miracle Man, you get rotten miracles - Miracle Max, TPB
Actually, back in the days when cars came standard with this wonderful thing called a manual transmition, the gear order could have a variety of permutations, most commonly altering where the reverse gear would be. For example, in my mom's Taurus, reverse is the lower right gear, below 5th gear, however, I remember a few cars where reverse would be lower right, below first gear. Also, to confuse the issue, in trucks, there could be another stick with 2H, 4H and 4L, for high and low gear in two and four wheel drive modes. These vehicles would commonly need someone to *gasp* exit the vehicle and manually lock the front hubs to enter 4 wheel drive mode.
If Megacorp is to be sold on Linux, it won't be salesmen who do it. Maybe a RedHat salesamn will come through with an attractive Enterprise Support and Training deal, I dunno.
Right. Migration services too.
I said "salesman" because someone needs to get some real numbers together (which include realistic things like a support contract and not support==Usenet==free) and present that to decision makers. That's a sales function in IT, even if the decision is being pushed by internal managers.
The IT scrubs can get Linux into production here and there in the under-the-nose fashion, but nobody is going to stop paying MS site licence fees until someone on top makes the big decision. This can happen if there's sufficent pressure to reduce costs.
I'm out in the SF Bay Area, which was hit especially hard, and I can confirm that the recession wasn't officially over until 1995, although things were looking up by late '94.
Furthermore, I worked at a couple large Novell to NT conversion jobs in 1994-5, so from my point of view, the trend away from Netware was already under full swing, and this was joined at the hip with the great IT centralization movement. While many shops might not have migrated until a few years later, NetWare 4/NDS uprades were put on hold while IT debated using NT. Novell might not have known it, but NetWare was effectively dead by the time 4.0 stabilized.
Half our IT cost is custom software development, and thus are goal is to more rapidly create and deploy software
Judging by your previous posts, I figured you were a Microsoftie. If so, your software costs and internal IT operation are by no means typical.
But anyway, we're talking servers here, and I don't think that there's a compelling argument that NT is going to "improve your productivity" any more than Linux. In fact, the web development tools on Linux/Unix are at least as good if not better than on the NT platform, and, outside of some entrenched VB operations, that's the direction things are moving.
At one time the corporate PC LAN was ruled by Novell NetWare. At it's peak in the early 90s, it had about 80% of the "LAN Server" marketshare. It wasn't the most stable or capable product, but it provided a very managable system for file and print needs, and was often expanded for departmental e-mail service or database needs. Often these Novell systems where installed under the nose of the main/mini-centric IT department in a guerilla manner by departments.
It was also pretty expensive by modern standards, costing something like $1000/seat/year.
Meanwhile Microsoft had been slogging along with about a 10% marketshare for a OS/2-based product called LANManager. Even though LANMan had some nice features like TCP/IP support, Microsoft literally couldn't even give away (and they tried).
Then, the early 90's recession hit, affecting certain corporate headquarters-heavy areas like California and the East Coast especially bad. For those of you who are relatively new to the job market, here's what during a recession: The corporation cuts costs to please Wall Street. An prime example of a "cost" here is the IT department and IT projects.
So, as new generation of IT managers took hold, what they found was a mess: dozens of different mail systems and departmentally managed networks. Different warring tech support groups backing different technology. Hundreds of little Novell servers out in closets managed by relative amateurs.
A few things happend as a result: 1) PC and PC network management was taken from the departments and centralized under the main IT department, 2) IT support was outsourced (it was virtually impossible to get a perm sysadmin job back then) and 3) Aggressive measures were taken to reduce licence costs.
Meanwhile, the Microsoft salesman was standing at the door with their relatively new Windows NT product that carried a very attractive price. If you were large enough, they would negotiate a licence costs that was less than 1/3 of what Novell wanted. No matter that the file and print was less managable and less scalable, you could also use it as an application server to centralize (say) e-mail and/or move it off of those expensive mini's and unix systems.
The result was devestating to Novell's business. Even though Microsoft's prices gradually went up, and Novell's went down, Novell was left with something like a 20% marketshare when it was all over.
So, now we have a situation where Microsoft's prices are going up even higher and IT spending is due again for another round of cutbacks and centralization. Well, those licence costs might have seemed relatively inconsequential when the budget was expanding and you had things like Y2K and webification to worry about. But in a static or declining budget, they will stand out. And CIO's who are paid bonuses to cut costs will notice. If the RedHat salesman comes calling with numbers in hand, they will listen.
Here's some figures for you:
http://www.silvervalley.k12.ca.us/chobbs/xterms
That school saved a large amount of money through using Linux. That school is saving money everyday because of reduced maintenance costs.
Your 400 dollar Office example as the only way that people save through using Linux is the real BARMY here.
As to why you bother to theorize that companies will shift to a
The cost to corporate America just to retrain all of its VB programmers to use the new VB.Net will alone probably be BILLIONS. VB is now a completely different language. A former MS VB project manager refers to VB.NET as Visual Fred. People are going to ditch all of their old development tools and practices, spend BILLIONS on
>>article discusses using clapped out 486 boxes as X-Terminals
if you had bothered to read the article you might have noticed that they replaced the 486's with diskless machines from ThinkNIC
>>there isn't any poor sad git
Your entire paragraph here is nonsensical, or at the very least we are talking about two very different things. I am talking about using OSS to save people money. THAT is what this Slashdot article is about.
>>you can buy Citrix or us WinNT terminal services
Since when is this discussion about having school districts and other cash strapped orgs spend the mega bucks that WinNT terminal services cost?
>>you simply have no understanding of the market in question
market in question? you have retreated to bullshit market speak because you realize that your argument "recession will make dotNet" makes no sense. You completely ignored the obvious rebuttal that in desperate times companies stick to what works not beta software from MS that no one in any serious business position is going consider as some kind of recessionary liferaft.
Exactly how many copies of windows 2000 or NT will my company have to get rid of to pay for my 50k/year salary? Either way they will still have to pay someone to fix/maintain/administer the systems that break....and they all break....eventually.
The overarching falacy here is that it is a case of either or, if a company believes it has 5,000 surplus employees it will get rid of them in a recession no matter what 'alternative' cost savings it can find. Any 'alternative' cost savings will be considered additional.
Let us see an office license is $400, average cost of a hi tech employee including admin and benefits $80K. So it takes 200 licenses to save one job, so to save 5,000 jobs you would have to be considering purchase of a million software licenses. The figures don't add up, in fact they are barmy
Let alone the fact that retraining, deployment and support costs for any desktop software chage are considerable. Marginal cost of continuing to use existing Office software is zero, cost of moving to 'free' software would be several hundred dollars per seat.
Recession will cause a squeeze on software purchases and it is possible that companies will delay upgrades to OfficeXP. But the big ticket software costs are for enterprise software, ERP systems, the type of product made by Oracle, Entrust, Ariba, Peoplesoft etc. Microsoft's dotNet strategy is to rent this class of software as a service instead of sell it. This is already done by VeriSign in the PKI space.
The advantage of the services model to the provider is obvious, they only have one version of the software to maintain (no need to support versions six years old) and there is only one platform to support. In addition there is a guaranteed stable revenue stream. The service provider has support costs to bear but these are amortized over hundreds or thousands of customers.
The advantages to the customer include much lower startup costs and the majority of the admin costs are covered by the service fees. In addition upgrades will be provided automatically, in many cases without any need for the customer to do anything. Over the lifetime of the contract the supplier will recieve more revenues, but the supplier will also have done much more for the customer whose total cost of ownership will be less as a result.
dotNET has very little to do with the Office product line, renting desktop software is not such a great idea - partticularly in the dotNET model since most people would want to use their copy of Word on an airplane.. What dotNET is really about is breaking into the ERP and Enterprise class software market so that Microsoft can grow the business into new markets and wipe the smug grin off Larry Ellison's face.
It makes a lot of sense both for Microsoft and its partners. There are plenty of opportunities to add value.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Well, this is a nice way to think of it for us Java geeks, but I don't think you're inventing anything new. The reason the Fed was invented was to blunt the changes in a natural expansion/recession wave that follows economics. There is a 25 year depression/growth cycle with minor recessions at the crosspoints...meaning that if it weren't for controlling measures like the fed to smooth out the lines we'd surely be bottoming out.
:).
I'm no economic historian...hell, i don't even like Adam Smith...but it's important to realize that this cycle of growth is nothing new, it can be tracked as far back as the middle ages (the beginning of modern trade practices). Nothing can stop the swing, but several factors limit it in recent times...the Fed, FDIC, and all sorts of locking measures in the stock market including the releativly short trading day (things always swing down in the evening and back up a bit in the morning; i guess things are just brighter after a nice breakfast
Are these things dependent on each other? Well, yeah, of course they are, it's a free market economy. Without regulation there's going to be undulation according to the 25 year cycle which appears to be a human thing. Can we do anything about it? Yeah, we already are, and if they prove not to be enough we'll do something else (like provoking a big strong nation into a prick waving match in which we focus the country on our "enemies").
Anyway, free software was around long before GNU LINUX -- remember the code samples in the back of Run and Apple World? They saved as much time for us in those days as PHP and Apache do now. It's nothing new or revolutionary. It won't stop the recession -- recessions are caused by panicking humans, not friendly bits -- but it certainly does make computer usage a lot more fun.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Sigh... I'm actually having an average day.
In Denmark we have a tank station company, Q8, that switched to Linux and StarOffice a year ago. Savings? 1,5 million Danish kroner (~175.000 USD). Same goes for the Danish Consumer Information, a governmental agency. Quite good for something that, according to Microsoft, cost 37 procent more than Windows NT, don't you think? How pathetic can you get, Bill.
When I think of Free Software, I do not think of the corporate pursuit of profit, but a most efficient and effective community-based approach to providing solutions for the greater good of the community.
big deal i'm still out $800 on my redhat stock i bet many more people are worse off than i am in doubt of a recession ? check the dow jones.. ti's been losing 200 points a day for weeks.. like a wounded whale flailing around in an ocean of FUD
It is ridiculous that "free" software, which could save $10,000 - $20,000, would possibly have even the littlest effect on a multimillion dollar company. What, is it going to avoid the layoff of a quarter of a person a year? Go team! Get real guys. And besides, isn't the free in free software suppose to be free as in speech and not free as in beer? In that case it would have no effect on the economic future of any company.
Giving products away or for a much lower cost (service&support) so that allot of people in tge tech industry loose their jobs is really a good way.
Get real.
It's great to hear that some of the Linux-related companies are not suffering from that dot-com disease that says, "profits don't matter -- only market share and total sales." It's like the Japanese semiconductor companies in the 1980's ("we may lose a nickel on each chip, but we'll make it up in volume"). Unfortunately, as these companies crash and burn, they're hurting other businesses in the market, too. Take servers and routers. If you're looking to expand your business right now, are you going to buy new equipment from VA Linux and Cisco when you can get close-to-new stuff from bankruptcy auctions at dot-coms for pennies on the dollar? Nope. It's going to take a while for the ripples to die out from all of the dead companies run by people who didn't understand the basic tenets of profit and loss.
1. Open Source Software is free
2. Proprietary platforms that run on a foundation of Open Source Software increase margain for business customers b/c Software development doesn't incur expense of licensing dev tools and the licensing costs associated with the base platform.
let me give you a lesson in business that I learned the hardest way. Margin is god. You must reduce costs and grow revenue. In every sales meeting I've had in the past 6 months I've pounded this point into the ground. It's like the scales fall from my client's eyes. They are amazed who is using these products. It's like once one boy has jumped in the fishing hole, everyone else is bound and determined to get in! Pretty soon, everyone will migrate to Free Software to maintain margin. If your competitor isn't paying platform licensing fees, then you can't pay licensing fees if you want to compete.
This is my company's, (EastCore) pitch and competive advantage. Sales have grown 100% YTD.
Long Live Open Source! Really, at this point a tautology.
"a) free software companies could get enough venture capital to fund developers"
Never mind the fact that nearly all free software comes from individuals and that "free software companies" are generally just repackagers.
"b) tech workers have been in such high demand that programmers and sysadmins have been able to work on free software on company time without getting fired. "
Conversely, now that so many programmers and sysadmins have been fired from the high-paying jobs that allowed them to sock money away, we should see a huge increase in their output.
"The simple fact is that the PC is a luxury good. It is far from being a necessity."
Only for home use. For business or scientific use it IS a necessity.
--
324006
"Think about it: with companies laying people off and cheapening up, whats better than free software? They could lay off 5,000 people, OR quit shelling out that much in MS licenses and pay salaries!"
1) Large companies don't always do layoffs to "reduce expenses". They do it to reduce the supply because of a forecasted reduced demand.
2) If we are talking about technical people being laid off, it will still happen: they don't know Linux and so have to be replaced. Of course, firing an MSCE for being an MSCE might appeal to some...
3) MS licenses are not an operating expense, they are a capital expense (capital offense?). Meaning they already have money locked up in licenses--dumping the software loses that money. I know, I know--it's the fallacy of sunk costs. Nonetheless, some business people work that way.
--
324006
Think about it this way... in the 30's when the economy wasn't looking so bright, some folks came up with the New Deal to put people to work building American infrastructure. It was a major investment into things we thought we could make good use of in the future, such as new highways, dams, etc...
Free software development is a major investment in future GLOBAL productivity. I keep thinking back to an article in wired I read about a year ago. What do you think is going to happen when China becomes more modernized and all of a sudden there are a billion or so new people looking for affordable software to build businesses on? (or to more accurately steer their planes into ours) You think they're going to be willing or able to spend a few months of salary each to buy MS software? Free software has and will continue lowering the entry cost of business.
...to Black Hat?
Linux owes its over pumped popularity to recently sucked out Internet companies. Well, many of them made their choice towards Linux servers because they were cheap. Now that era is over, who is gonna use Linux? of course the Linux community will continue to use it like those times it was not this much popular. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that Linux companies out there will make it another year. Their sales are flattened like the internet balloon did. Not much to say, Linux is still welcome within its community like any other free software. However, Linux as Desktop choice of the future, not in a million change with X window System. regards
This may be a foreshadow of industrial trends to come with the present economic recession because, for the past 8 years or so, particle physics has been in a major recession of its own. After suffering 20% cutbacks in Department of Energy funding over the last few years, we got a 5% cut last year, and rumors of a 15% cut this year are very threatening.
Other reasons for basic research programs to switch to Linux include security of having the source code, and the way that the free software movement is consistent with the philosophy of our research. Scientists can get very fearful of any software that's not under their control, so having the source code gives a kind of reassurance that their computing platforms won't break in some way that can't be fixed. And also the basic goal is to increase public knowledge, not to create intellectual property. (I sure am glad I don't need to pay royalties to Einstein's great grandsons every time I boost particle trajectories from one reference frame to another, or compute invariant particle masses.) So it makes sense to use, and develop as the need arises, free software whenever it's feasable.
Okay, I'm getting further off topic, so I'll stop.
Pretty cool thought, but it still seems like it might be a fluke. Was the recession taking place during the time span reported in the earnings reports?
Suggesting even in quotes that the US is in recession sure sounds like repackaged mass media hype to me. In fact, a recession requires 2 seperate quarters of negative growth. The US economy grew about 1% in the 1st quarter of 2001 - which means even if we are heading for a recession (which the media jackles want more than anything else to pump up headlines) we won't officialy be there until the last quarter of this year! While the economy looks bleak compared to last year, remember last year was a fluke, and the markets were WAY overinflated! Lets try on the 'Recession' word when we are closer to that time. PS - slashdot IS in fact a great break from the "Infotainment" which our media has degraded into - I don't mean so much to flame slashdot as to remind everyone that "Recession" should only be used for... Well, for a Recession.