A Clearinghouse for Linux Market Data?

avdi asks: "Every day we see stories on this site and others about how another movie studio is using Linux for production, another Fortune 500 company has switched to Linux to support their infrastructure, another local or national government has mandated use of Open Source technology, or another major vendor has begun marketing a Linux-based product line. Clearly Linux, Open Source, and Free Software has arrived, and in some areas is marching towards dominance. Yet deep in the beige-walled cubicles of the biggest corporations, where Nobody Ever Got Fired for Buying Microsoft (or Sun, or...) the people who make technology decisions have yet to hear of it. In the land of BigCo, Open Source technologies have an artificially low profile due to the insularity of the corporate culture, the marketing budgets of vendors, and are often viewed as risky, untested curiosities. Is anyone out there gathering all the success stories together in an up-to-date, management-readable format? Is anyone collecting hard data on the number of major companies which have trusted mission-critical systems to Linux, the number of vendors who have invested a significant amount in Open Source-based product lines, the amounts saved by various departments which have migrated from proprietary to Free software? Where does one go when researching data in order to sell management on Linux or some other Free Software solution?"

Comments

For one...

[Otter]

Red Hat's inventory of case studies and whatnot

I'm sure all the other major Linux businesses have similar archives.

A problem for "smallcos" too - can you help?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a timely Ask Slash question. I'm on the board of my smallish local library (3 million USD budget, about 40 employees). When I ask about proprietary licenses and fees, I hear that they are expensive and "killing us" and there are all kinds of software stability problems. But when I suggest free software as an alternative, all I get back from the other board members/director are "does not compute" looks. They've never heard of it. Or if they have heard of it, it's too complex, new, etc. for them to even consider in their busy worlds. How does one get the un-linuxed to the knowledge land? Ask Redhat or somebody to come in and do a demo? (I'll probably do a destop distro demo for them myself pretty soon). But if anyone has any ideas, I'd greatly appreciate your insights. Thanks!

Re:A problem for "smallcos" too - can you help?

[matthewyoung]

You might want to look at this library system that is GNU.
Koha

I think your missing the big picture.

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

VB, vbscript, .net, InterDev, asp, SQL and IIS are all things that you have a ready surpus of cheaper workers. Not like JavaScript, php, mysql, Linux, Mono, etc..etc..

I can find 40 low to middle end developers at the drop of a hat, good or bad on the cheap and quick.

That is the #1 problem with open source, it has not reached critical mass for there to be a huge amount of cheap programers. Yes there are many out there, but in now means the numbers that microsoft has.

If you could hire 5 php/mysql/mono programmers and a project manager in less than a week and pay under 250k a year for all of them that is when you will get the corporate world to stand up and notice. Pluse keep in mind that the person looking for these people is going to need to understand what they hell he is trying to find. Until then, it is not cost effective or easy to do even if the OS and software is free.

Re:I think your missing the big picture.

[perlchild]

But then the commercial model for those who don't believe in "free-as-in-beer" software collapses...
The whole idea is to pay for what you use. Since most Open Source makes you pay for the knowledge, instead of for the "Right to use" those people SHOULD stay more expensive than the "per license" seat specialists...
In fact... it only makes sense, in a market economy, that if a customer has X money for a project, and you reduce costs, it ends up partly in the pockets of the people who help you save that money... Otherwise they'll go save money... for someone else...

--
Being a cheapskate does not pay
Not paying for more than you need/use does...
PHBs seldom seem to understand that

That's pure FUD

[Gerry Gleason]

We heard the same thing in the '80s when UNIX vendors were virtually taking over the mid-range computing platforms and all the second tier players with proprietary OSs were dropping like flies. The skills are there if you need them, particularly in this down market. Further, there are lots of consulting firms that would jump at any new OS business.

Give me 8 people who can navigate a Linux distribution and have decent systems and programming skills, and I'll beat those 40 low to middle end developers that you hired at a drop of a hat. It is not unusual to find that productivity varies by a factor of 10 to 100 in typical group of programmers, so it means nothing to say that you can find N people with X skill.

Further, I claim that OS programming languages and environments are more standards compliant than all the crap MS is peddling, and any quality systems architect will put a big emphasis on designing with well established open standards. Investment in software systems is always a long term deal, and the only way to protect that investment is by sticking with standards that do not depend on the success of a particular vendor.

Re:That's pure FUD

[Gerry Gleason]

So, your point is that the managers at most companies are stupid? I'll buy that to a point, but eventually people do wise up.

I also dispute your point about the position of MS on the 'food chain'. MS development environments and tools have never been all that significant when organizations plan and implement 'enterprise' class systems to their own specifications. Sure, if you are slapping something together to scratch an itch ..., but if you are really going to spend some bucks on a project that has to deliver value over a number of years, your going to worry about standards and protecting the investment.

I know that a lot of projects, particularly in small or mid-sized companies, just get thrown together and nobody ever thinks about the long-term, but these are time bombs for any organization that has them. Eventually somebody gets burned. If I had to guess, I would say this is as much a source of the growing anti-MS sentiment as the apparent low priority the MS puts on security related problems. Managers don't have to fully understand this the way I am explaining it to know that they have been screwed by using MS tools for critical systems.

WRT the question posed, I think it is just as important to build the database with negative cases where organizations are hurt because they didn't protect their future by using open standards. It is the only way to ensure you will have migration paths and good choices available down the road.