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How Would You Argue for Open Source?
Nate asks: "I am currently working for an international corporation, and the site I am working at was (until very recently) entirely run on Windows. We recently purchased a Solaris server, and I am in charge of setting it up and resetting the global UNIX standard. The problem is that management doesn't want to install software that does not have 24 hour, worldwide support available along with it, yet they want the capabilities that only open source software can provide on a UNIX platform (VNC, OpenSSH, etc..) without spending insane amounts of money. I was wondering how the Slashdot community deals with convincing management that Open Source software is safe to use when creating a global standard, and what your solutions have been to supporting users working with open source software." Two years ago, Slashdot tackled the Enterprise Support question. Now, say you had that particular problem solved and the only thing left is that all-important pitch to Upper Management. What arguments would you use in your attempts to get their approval? What statistics and references would you point to, in order to back everything up?
I've had the same problem at all organizations I've been at, except for one.
It usually ended up in me in a shouting match
"We'll have access to the source code, and be able to update the app as needed due to new requirements or OS upgrade."
Worked for me.
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
if they want to take responsibility for aligning their IT strategy to their business objectives, or their systems provider's.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
For statistics about open source software / Free Software, see my paper, "Why Open Source Software / Free Software? Look at the Numbers!", at http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html . It has a large collection of information you'll probably find useful.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Show your boss how easy it is to ind online troubleshooting documentation for the various software packages you are proposing to use, as well as documenting the entire install so a monkey could reinstall the software if something breaks.
Your company wants to make sure that anyone who might administer those servers has access to the information they need to fix any problems that come up if the person who initially installed the software falls off the earth.
A 24hour support line is one method of getting that support, you just have to show that there are other less expensive support routes that are just as viable.
If need be remind your boss that it is your ass on the line if something goes wrong with the servers and you'll be the one showing up to work at 4AM on a Sunday to fix the issue.
Do you Gentoo!?
It seems odd to me to decide on a solution and then develop arguments to use that solution. IT is generally a service provider for business needs. You present the business users with the available options, outline the pros and cons, and allow them to decide. The other danger of engaging in proseletyzing is that if something goes wrong, everyone will be quick to point out the guy who did all the yelling about open source.
When telling my boss why it would be foolish to use Oracle for a web content database when MySQL is cheaper and faster (I know, I know), she wanted to know what the TCO is on it. Huh? I just said it was free other than labor. "Well I'll have to talk about TCO. My bosses don't believe that OSS is actually free." I wish they would just leave me alone and slip the checks under the door....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I guess it depends on how much money is considered 'insane'. RedHat offers support, HP sells contracts supporting Linux... I would think the support costs would not exceed a comparable contract supporting Windows systems.
.:diatonic:.
So give her estimated labor costs of installing and supporting MySQL vs cost of purchasing, installing and supporting Oracle. Don't forget hardware costs.
Talk about two things:
Cost: Cost of rollout of a commercial product is comparable or more than the cost of 3rd party support contracts for open software.
Risk Management: Buying proprietary software gives you support, but the support is with a monopoly supplier who can then choose to charge whatever it wishes down the road for both software upgrades and support. Tying yourself to a monopoly supplier is a poor risk, since every move a monopolist will make will not be for the benifit of your company, but for the benifit of thiers. Similarly, with Open Source, since our company has the right to modify the software, every change you make will be for the benifit of your company.
Upper Management does not grok Geek. Upper Management groks Dollars and groks Risk.
Just keep that in mind.
-- Funksaw.
that only open source software can provide on a UNIX platform (VNC, OpenSSH, etc..)
VNC and OpenSSH are available for windows so they might not be convincing. Try using ROI and TCO as persuaders.
Now, say you had that particular problem solved and the only thing left is that all-important pitch to Upper Management. What arguments would you use in your attempts to get their approval? What statistics and references would you point to, in order to back everything up?
I wouldn't even bother. I would call the local IBM Global Services office and ask them to pitch for the job, and dangle the carrot (whether it exists or not right now, it might to in the future) of outsourcing the management of said Open Source infrastructure to them. I assume that you don't actually care who runs it from day to day just so long as it's Open Source. They'll make a far more convincing argument that you can alone - remember they employ people full-time to do nothing but research and put together fancy presentations (as do all consulting firms... you don't think the slick performers doing the presentation will actually show up to do the work, do you?).
What you need are testimonials from others running mission-critical applications using FOSS.
One Fortune 500 executive won't achieve comfort with this kind of a spending and deployment decision (face it, they don't know the tech) until, unless, and, only if, they have seen more than one other Fortune 500 executive put their own necks on the chopping block, made a courageous decision, and have it succeed wildly with no glitches whatsoever.
Getting those testimonials might be hard for an individual on their own ("Mr. Big's office, how may I help you? Right...."), but the web is full of articles showing different businesses using FOSS successfully.
If you were tied into a vendor with a lot of FOSS contacts (eg, RH, IBM), then they could probably help you find those important reference testimonials. Sun is late getting on board the FOSS bandwagon, despite having produced a lot the standards and technology that has made it possible. Their Solaris servers will run FOSS just fine and interoperate with Linux machines, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
...give it to them:
Form a new company with you as the only employee.
Submit monthly invoice for $50,000 to your current company for "OSS Platinum Support".
Sit back and watch the money roll in.
This works to your benefit since they'll probably call you at all hours of the night to initiate the support call, anyway...
- Tony
There are so many different angles to attack this issue from, and unfortunately there are more sides to the issue than we'd like to admit. However I think there are several areas that would be good to discuss:
- Closed source has more bugs, and the exploits are typically more severe.
- Actual turn around time for Closed source is much slower than open source for new features and enhancements.
- Closed source hampers IT productivity as the fear of sharing "Intellectual Property" infects and permeates many people that work in closed source environments
one of my favorite all time articles is written by Clay Shirky, entitled In Praise of Evolvable Systems
This article addresses what many people consider to be open source's weekpoint. It is however it's strongest point. This is a fantastic read and is a must in any presentation to management about open source and open standards in general.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
software that does not have 24 hour, worldwide support available along with it
... and say hello to the 24 hour, worldwide support team.
Greetings,
We have a number of clients, from mid- to large enterprises, who have switched to *NIX/Linux over the last 3 years following our advice. The key for us was to define quantifiable targets in terms of $$$ and time-to-resolution, and kept statistics of similar environments running Windoze or commercial *NIX software.
Two test cases that immediately come to mind are Samba and VNC. In the first case the monetary quantification was instant: $0 against licenses for a 75-person department. There were no calls to support at all once we switched the servers. For the VNC case at another company, we pitted it against PC Anywhere. Once users understood the new logon sequence, they began champion VNC by themselves because they realized that *NIX machines and Macs were opened to their control, some of which had been closed before.
Both of my examples focused on solving specific problems, with a set time line and quantification targets. Don't try to implement everything in one single deployment because if something non-mission-critical breaks that affects a mission-critical app or service you'll invalidate your own case.
Good luck and have fun!
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
A small presentation showing the cost of Microsoft Word VS. gvim on 5000 desktops should be a good start. (And yet there is still that grumpy old guy with the beard who insists on compiling Emacs on all the servers....errr...)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
If your company wants 24/7 support go with a company that provides linux solutions. Buy IBM servers with linux on them and get a support contract. Likewise some Linux distros like RedHat provide 24/7 support contracts.
My software is free and that makes it better..NEENER NEENER NEENER!!!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
this guy if you want all the Microsoft dirt present and future.
http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit021.html
That is his latest. Look around on the site a little. Lots of stuff there with many current references.
Blogging because I can...
What makes you think that those developers were making "off-the-shelf" applications? It's likely that some of them are, but I'd wager that most are meant for internal use.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
CIO: My techie's say that UNIX is the best and is backed up by the entire Slashdot community.
CEO: Your telling me that you trust techie's over marketing droid's?
CIO: Yes, sir.
CEO: Your fired. Have a nice day.
MS has stopped releasing security updates for NT4, so companies using it are forced to decide between having security holes or paying MS for a newer version that locks them into a more draconian license agreement. How long until your company faces the same problem with whatever version of windows they use?
With open source, you can patch whatever version you're running, or just upgrade whatever is necessary without the draconian eulas.
Jason
ProfQuotes
They'll ask you "Why go with Solaris over any other Unix variant?" Better have that answer.
They'll ask you "Why not Linux?" Have an asnwer.
They'll ask you "Will it work with our existing Windows infrastructure?" Answer that as well.
They'll ask "How much will the rollout cost?" Better have those figures handy.
They'll want to know "Why not just stick with Windows, especially since Windows 2003 is about to ship?" Have a retort ready for that.
They'll want to know (if they're savvy) how the data crunching numbers will compare UNIX to Windows, MySQL to MS SQL. You'll want that handy, too.
And finally, they'll want to know why should they switch to a different platform when they're already so heavily invested in Windows. Got an answer other than "Windows sucks"? You better know those things, becuase bosses aren't about to "just take your word for it" they demand facts, figures, and spreadsheets for proof--and if anything goes wrong it's your ass. Switching is fine, but you better be ready for the backlash and have oodles of proof ready or the resistance will be an unsurmountable chasm.
Easy. Stop making it a big deal. What you are meant to be providing is a solution that suits your company's IT needs. You are not the company Open Source advocater, shouting blue murder every time someone implements a system which isn't open source.
Use clear cut facts. Show the TCO, show the support channels, show the migration cost and schedules, provide a backup plan if things go pear-shaped, etc. Basically, the FACTS. And while you are at it, keep your own mind open. Y'know, often, closed source solutions are far superior than open source solutions. Don't be afraid to keep an open mind and have the openness to choose a proprietry solution if that is the best way forward.
And if you manage to keep an open mind, you'll be superior to the vast majority of open source advocates...
Before you go to upper management find out how much the non-open source applications are going to cost. Factor in any consulting fees for setup. Then factor in the cost for global support on an ongoing basis over say the course of the next five years. I'd also suggest adding in any special hardware requirements.
Next find your open source "products". Then find developers who are very comfortable with the "products" that you are recommending. Factor in the cost of hiring them and their salary on an on going basis. They will be your "support" team. Also factor in hardware if needed.
The first hurdle is to prove that it will cost less or at the very least no more than the "off the shelf" products. Then you'll need to put your sales hat on and do a side by side "feature comparison" of the OSS alternatives to the products that you evaluated.
Most of all, be objective and very matter of fact about your presentation. Prove to them that OSS is the way to go becuase it costs less to aquire and maintian and has an equal or superior feature set. Apache is a great case study...
Good luck!
the capabilities that only open source software can provide on a UNIX platform (VNC, OpenSSH, etc..) without spending insane amounts of money.
Since the two examples you cite are available on Windows, perhaps you need to get a better understanding of Windows. In fact, Windows Remote Desktop feature in XP is superior to VNC in functionality, response, and seamless integration, so VNC is hardly a compelling argument in favor of open source operating systems.
Perhaps you need to have someone with a more balanced perspective come into the organization and evaluate where Unix derivatives are the best choice and where Windows is a superior pick. Those who blindly promote *nix and open source as the solution to every computing problem are no more enlightened than those who automatically choose Microsoft products for every function.
Why do you think that they're going to be anything other than in-house apps?
Heck, I expect to write a Linux app in the next year. Frankly, I expect to be doing it in under 6 months. And nobody will ever see it since it's the core infrastructure for a service my company is offering. Pure backend stuff.
The vast majority of software written is not written for the commercial marketplace. It's written for inhouse use.
I work at a university, and over two years ago, they asked me to help evaluate authoring systems for online courses. One of their requirements was that the company we chose needed to be willing to partner with the institution to extend the capabilities of their software to meet our needs. We gave several suggestions, but I told them they should get on board with MIT's OKI and OpenCourseWare.
They had two concerns about open source solutions: 1. There is no company behind most open source solution. No company means no tech support. 2. OKI was just getting off the ground and would not be ready for prime time for a while.
Over a year later, the university finally chose a company to go with for their authoring system. We paid for a 30-day trial and got 5 days into it before we realized their marketing people had straight-up lied about its feature set.
So, we went with the company our university had ranked number two on the list. We worked with them for 6 months, hired one of their people to work for them on a university paycheck, and gave them a substantial fee every month for licensing. Then the company decided to get out of the authoring systems market, pulled our license and left us with nothing.
In the meantime, OKI has picked up steam, and the 11 universities that got on early with them have been developing solutions that will soon be GPLed.
The long-short is that having a company behind the product is a double-edged sword. Sure, they could give you tech support, but what happens if/when they're gone?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Also, if you're talking to your manager about being "bent over" and using the term "BS", you're not in the most professional of atmospheres and might consider getting out.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
In the beginning, no large company would use Apache because it was open source and therefore was not supported by any specific company. Nice thing about OSS is that large projects like Apache are supported 24x7 worldwide by MANY companies -- so if one company provides poor support, you can use another one. BTW, Apache is up to 63 percent of all websites now. :-) And now that it runs on windows, it will become even more popular. Same is true for Linux which has the backing of many large companies, so there is no shortage of technical support. And I haven't even touched on the web forums, newsgroups, list servers, websites, of free support avialable. And traditional media too -- books, magazines, etc all cover OOS projects like Apache, OpenSSL, Linux/*nix, etc.
Support is not an issue. I think the reliablity factor of running on a *nix platform will help a lot.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
The only arguments that make any sense to bean counters are ones that may be reduced to dollars and cents. All arguments should be of the form: If we do (not)? X, then we will save Y over Z years for the following reasons: A, B, C,.... If you cannot reduce the argument to ROI, then there is no business reason for doing something - Mind you, ROI takes on many forms - You need to apply your insider perspective to figure out an ROI model that your management will swallow Forgive the RegEx notation
I'm a little surprised this hasn't come up yet...
:)
If you're looking for "enterprise" level support (God I hate that word!), Red Hat offers exactly what you're looking for, from what it looks like. Maybe you should give Red Hat a call and get one of their sales people to pimp themselves to your boss?
The Free desktop that Just Works
"Worldwide and 7*24h Support" and "Open Source" are no contradictions. I think we (NetUSE) are not the only company to offer support for Open Source products like SSH, Squid, Apache etc.
Typical customers purchase support like helpdesk, patch services or (espescially for Solaris) packaging.
It's not a lot of work to offer SSH packages that you can remove and install in a newer version without a new host key. But it's those small things a lot of customers pay gladly for.
Thanks to Open Source and the community, companies like are ours usually faster with patches than a lot of other big software companies i could name.
On the other side the Open Source products get a benefit when enhancements on the request of customers (LDAP support here, there another command line option) find their way back into the community. I believe this is win-win at its best.
Open Source says "you can patch/modify/package it by yourself". But it's not a holy duty to do so.
Yours, Martin
P.S. If you want to use OSS and don't know where to spend your huge support budget, feel free to contact me ;-).
PeopleSoft is on its way - a pretty significant addition to the Linux world, I think...
Yours,
tom
The Army reading list
No, I don't work for them, but Linuxcare has a professional looking website using the CEO-lingo that might comfort the big-wigs you need to convince. There are other companies that support Free Software too, check out Red Hat's Support Services. A site called OpenEnterprise looks to have a ton of resources on exactly what you're asking for.
Also, take a look at IT Management's special report on Linux. It offers a lot of ammo to you in making a presentation. You can point to the other heavy-hitters that are using Free solutions and have concrete examples of success.
The same site even has an article entitled Selling the 'Suits' on your IT project which looks to have some good advice for you.
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
convincing management that Open Source software is safe to use
Most Open Source advocates really need to think about something before they go charging in assuming OSS without vendor support is really better for all situations: Management wants 24x7 support not because they think the software is unstable, but because they cannot afford downtime when that software does fail.
"So what?" you say, "I've been using this stuff for years and I can solve pretty much any problem they might run across. I am 24x7 support!" What happens when you're gone? On vacation? What happens when you get burned out and sick of being the only guy capable of supporting an application that's taken off in the enterprise and now has a hundred installations all over the world? What happens when you have trouble finding someone with the skill sets needed to replace you?
This "guru" support model simply does not scale. This is why management wants 24x7 support: so that no matter what happens to their gurus, they always have a toll-free 800 number to call to get someone that knows what they're doing on the problem. If that person can't solve it, a good maintenance contract might even involve getting the vendor to fly an engineer out there to fix the problem. This is very much about making management feel good about getting the support they need to solve their problems.
The alternative is to spend an exceptional amount of money training a staff equivalent to the staff of the vendor to be just as smart and available as a vendor offering 24x7 support. It's not just about hiring two or three strategically-placed gurus.
Now, with that out of the way, OSS can still work in the enterprise, provided you approach the situation intelligently. Can your organization staff up a support group internally to support this application without requiring a maintenance contract with a vendor? (And can you keep them busy enough to make it cheaper in the long run?) Certain skillsets are pretty common nowadays, such as administration of Apache. It may be perfectly realistic to be able to staff up a small group to support common OSS applications in an enterprise. If someone leaves the company, it's realistic that they can be replaced or someone else trained to fill the vacancy, but you can never count on being able to hire a small army of "gurus" capable of adapting to any OSS application at the drop of a hat. This is very unrealistic (not to mention extremely expensive).
But not all OpenSource projects fit into this category. Frequently they'll be smaller projects that might be used plenty on the Internet, but either because there's a guru out there actually setting it up and administering it (that can adapt to just about anything), or because the author made it exceptionally easy for a novice to get it running. Neither of these options is acceptable in an enterprise setting! Your guru won't be there forever, and your army of novices won't have a clue how to fix a novice-friendly application when it breaks.
The bottom line is that you need to consider your company's true support expenses here: if an application needs 24x7 support, you either need to have a staff of people on-hand to guarantee support for this application (across your enterprise), at a significant expense, or there needs to be a vendor out there willing to assume 24x7 support for a fraction of that cost.
I work for a large software consultancy, and my full time job in the last few months has been converting Windows and *nix software to work on Linux for various companies. While our company has always offered these services, recently we have seen the number of "migrate to linux" type projects skyrocket. Every other project we get these days is centred around it. In a way, it's kind of annoying since I would like to keep my skills current on ALL platforms, but I've seen nothing but QT and Java on Linux for the last 4 months!
The article mentioned in the parent is a good one... I've used it successfully in several seminars on value proposition of open source software. It's generally been very well received.
As far as arguing with upper management, when I was working in cubeville, I never worried about it. I just implemented it the best way I knew how, and presented it as a completed solution.
Once the solution is in place, nobody ever seems to worry about it. Then at some point in the future, it's easy to point to it and say: "but we've *been* using open source all this time, and don't have problems with it".
I think that's still the most successful implementation strategy. It's the one Microsoft used for pushing Novell out of mid-sided businesses.
Personally, in your position, I'd build several possible scenarios...
That would be a minimum, the important thing is that every one of them has to achieve what the company needs. The costs will differ, the risks will differ, the long-term implications of things like scalability will differ and these will all play into the management viewpoint. They dont care how "good" the software is or isnt. All you can do is the risk analysis and the cost/benefit presentation, making them aware of precisely the levels of risk each solution exposes the company to and precisely how much it will cost to avoid those risks. Every software package is a risk, whether open source or not. Every piece of hardware is a risk. Lose your main production data server and how much business do you lose per hour whilst its down? How long will it take to get it back in each of your scenarios? How likely is the outage in the first place? Since every solution you present meets the same needs, does it matter which one they choose?
Now, my personal opinion based on experience in the past is that when the analysis is complete the case for open source in at least some of the application areas of a unix environment will be a complete no-brainer. As you work up the results, however, you might be surprised at some of the places it doesnt give an appreciable benefit. Remember that the time you spend scripting and configuring stuff is part of the cost, as is employee learning time. Dont leave anything out. Be absolutely straight presenting the best comparable info you can and dont try and slant it either way. If they make the wrong choice and it bites the company in the butt it then wont be your fault, even if the wrong choice was your recommendation too.
I had a
You'll be able to bitch on IRC for BSD help years after all the funding is cut and SCO sues the different BSD forks.
SCO is a linux problem, not a BSD problem. Berkeley settled with SCO a decade ago.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
In addition to other arguments made above, never lose site of what really motivates the decision makers. They are not techies, they are 'business people'.
Three key buzzwords for you to use relentlessly:
R.O.I.
R.O.I.
R.O.I.
When you keep hammering the topic, sooner or later, a key decision maker will figure out how to convert the IT budget slated for the MS tax into a nice fat bonus for himself and then *bingo* your company will become an OSS/FS haven!
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
Maybe she is 'right', but she's a bitch.
Anyone who uses TLA's like TCO for short ideas like labor costs is fucking stupid.
My advice?
Kill her.
The March 15th edition of CIO magazine had a front page article about Open Source: http://www.cio.com/archive/031503/opensource.html. My favorite quote, very applicapable to this situation:
"We will guarantee the same [service-level agreements] for Linux that we do for proprietary OSs," says Dan Frye, director of IBM's Linux Technology Center. "Response times, fix times, uptime--we'll sign all those same contracts for Linux."
That pretty much says it all: 24/7 support with contractual guaruntees for Linux. There are plenty of other places willing to do similar for other open source software. Best point though: if you don't like the vendor you first choose for that support, you can actually pick up and move to someone else WITHOUT changing your software too!
"Actually, I enjoyed this in the same vague, horrible way I enjoyed the A-Team" P. Opus
Sure - they've been doing Veritas support for free for Veritas for years - you'll find they've got the same approach to a lot of the common opensource stuff they bundle in as well (openSSH, OpenOffice, bash, tcsh, etc .. - heck you might even find that their employees were prime contributors to the code, but never made a big blue marketing stink about it ..)
I was once working for a leading financial information provider (>16,000 employees), and I was tasked with setting up a listserver, at minimal cost (read no expenditure beyond the cost of my own labour). I ended up opting for an open source SMTP-based listserver, which was far cheaper than the closest closed-source equivalent (free as in beer vs. over 11,000 pounds). I also used Mhonarc to provide a web interface to the message archive, with Perl bits bolted on to add functionality.
I had to put the listserver on the far side of the SMTP gateway, since the company was using some really fucked-up mail system. When I told one of the company software architects that SMTP played a role in the listserver functionality, he told me that SMTP was forbidden on the internal network. He then (very helpfully) pointed out that I should go ahead anyhow, since by the time the PHBs found out, the listserver would be up, running and proving its worth.
I left the company five years ago, but as far as I know the listserver still sees a great deal of use. The moral of this story is this: if the PHBs tell you to solve a problem, don't start evangelising about open source. Just implement the solution in open source, and after six months the software will have proven its worth. Hell, in my case I'm not even sure whether the PHBs realized the listserver was a) using SMTP, or b) using open-source software.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
People make decisions for their reasons, not for yours. They don't care that it will make your job easier, they don't care that it will run better, they don't care that it will save you time and frustration.
So find out what they do care about, and then sell it to them based on those points. Don't mention why *you* want it at all; talk all day about why *they* want it.
(Incidentally, you can copy and paste that response with almost no changes for any "How do I convince..." question.)
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
I've seen an argument that open source is only free is one's time is worthless. I work for a multi-national and we have similiar requirements of twenty-four hour worldwide support. From what I've seen in technology three is never a swiss-army knife solution despite what many people here on slashdot believe, open source is not always the best answer.
Nowadays, management has a very different spin on IT. Gone are the days where IT wrongly drove business and the CIO had the company by the privates. Management teams are now IT savvy, and no longer write blank cheques to IT based on IT's requirements.
The argument that, if it is broken we have the source and we can fix it is no argument at all. Unless you are an IT company, your core business is not the business of IT. Why would you pour resources into IT to develop a skillset in your company to maintain software? How does that improve profitability? It doesn't. The cost of having one expert to fix a handful of problems, will never be competitive against an organization who's business model revolves around maintaining their product.
Take a look at how commercial software is built and maintained. Direction is driven by customers and revenue. How is open source driven? I don't know, maybe someone can help me. Who manages the product life-cycle in open source?
I am not anti-open-source, nor anti-Microsoft. I believe that for your case, you should ask management for their requirements. If one of their answers is 24/7 world-wide vendor support. You just have to accept it and move on. Sometimes their answers are not technically driven. Remember you are probably working for a company built on capatilism. Again, accept it and move on. They sign your paycheques not the other way around.
-Many recipes are "open source." Why do people still eat out? You'd pay less than half, and have control over the source if you cook yourself!
The vast majority of software written is not written for the commercial marketplace. It's written for inhouse use.
Or embedded, or targetted at a specific industry. I've got *mumble* years of experience working on plenty of software that was sold to customers. It was written for specific target markets. It was never the sort of stuff that would fit in a shrink-wrapped box on a store shelf.
Anyone writing code that isn't targetted at desktop users (embedded, turnkey, server, etc.) who doesn't at least consider open source platforms is overlooking a possible area of cost savings.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Will someone please point to ANY example of a successful lawsuit against Microsoft (or IBM/Sun/HP for that matter) for producing faulty software that impacted someone's business???
The whole "gives us someone to blame" is a complete crock of manure. I used to write software for government apps... they always built a one year warranty into the product. Guess what we spent most of our time doing? Trying to prove a reported bug was actually a request for a new feature.
As far as contract support goes... those tend to be "time and material" peoples.... never seen a successful lawsuit there either...
There are plenty of companies which specialize in support for Linux and Open Source.
I mean really, you don't need to pay millions of dollars for support, though it is more difficult to find 24x7x365 support with 4 hour turnaround when you're talking $10,000/year instead of $250,000.
Then again, does your company really *need* that level of support? I would venture to say that they probably don't. If you build redundancy into your systems, you should be able to get by in most cases, albeit under heavier load. For 24x7x365 support, expect to spend $$$$.
According to your description, your employers have given you a clear, comprehensible and not unreasonable-sounding mandate: don't deploy any software that doesn't have 24-hour, world-wide support.
Why not, then, do your job by finding and implementing packages that fit their requirements, rather than wasting their time trying to shoehorn in unsupported crapware because you happen to think it's K-Rad?
As a rule, companies that have requirements like the ones you describe have them for very good reasons.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Consider this: Digital Equipment Corp. was once the #2 IT company in the world, with a huge software portfolio supported by an army of "world class" IT professionals. In the late 80's their products and support were awesome. Then it got ugly. By the time Compaq bought the remaining scraps, the "world class" software portfolio was sold off in bits and pieces. Where are those products now? Where is the support? If I had invested heavily in any DEC's software development tools, it would be a total write-off today. GNU is still there, isn't it?
When you buy a commercial software product, there is a real risk of failure, for all the reasons described above. When a manager makes a committment to a commercial software package, he or she can expect to be held accountable for what happens to that investment. If you start with open source products, the approval chain is generally short-circuited because the expenditure of $0 is with almost everyone's approval range. If the product fails to perform, you walk away from your investment of $0 and migrate to a commercial package. Of course, the people who sell commercial products are well aware of open source, and each has a reasonable migration path. Try calling Microsoft and tell them that you want some help in switching from Samba to Windows 2003 and watch them open the floodgates of support. On the other hand, if the OSS product performs well, you demonstrate the success to every level of management that will listen, calculate the ROI and deploy even more open source products in the future.
Now let's consider the risk the other way around. You buy Windows 2000, Microsoft IIS, and SQL Server because M$ has wonderful 24x7 commercial support. But Code Red, Code Blue, Nimda, Klez, and SQL Slammer come along and now your server is now owned by a 12-year-old who is renting it out as a spam gateway. The criticism for a technical debacle is bad enough, but then you get the CEO asking why it was necessary to spend big money AND face this nightmare when open source alternatives are proving to be somewhat more secure at a much lower cost. I doubt that my CEO would say such a thing, but open source is now getting coverage in Forbes and WSJ, so you never know. If you had installed Linux/Apache/MySQL and the same thing happened, at least you don't have to explain how the purchase price is now a total writeoff.
There are many people who use risk as their logic in support of closed source. Having seen more than a few defuct products and vendors, I say that risk really is the central issue, but that open source risk is more managable.
I ever so recently got a job for a company whose incomes relys heavily on Microsofties. Their big concern is that they wanted to support Microsoft as much as possible and I wanted to go towards an open source solution (specifically an LAMP architecture). I managed to get my way on everything but the server (still have to run Win2k) and am quite pleased with how much I was able to maneuver.
My best suggestion to you is do your research. Show those benchmarks. Show the community support (which is far better than 24 hr support because when you post to a news group, IRC channel or even a bulletin board, your solution will be found in a matter of minutes).
Also, show them the vast amounts of documentation freely available online (and with each product). Trying finding how to configure the intracies of IIS in comparison with Apache.
Also, look for product comparisons of software packages. For instance, MySQL vs. SQL Server; in recent benchmarks, MySQL was rated alongside Oracle 9i for speed and comes with it's own ODBC-to-ODBC bridge which SQL Server does not (and which can be purchased for $5400).
Make as strong a case as you can and gear it towards their pocketbook and level of tech experience.
And if that doesn't work, remind them that Code Red and Nimda took out 80,000 Windows machines; that's 80,000 machines that run proprietary code which is not cross platform compliant. Does ASP work on Unix, Linux, BSD or MAC? How about Visual Basic? IIS? You get my point. Cross platform compliancy is another good one because if they want to ever move to a different OS, they are screwed if they go with Microsoft.
The savings in cost, the community support, cross compliancy... what is there argument?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Your corporation will always have 24/7 access to tech support on open source solutions. All they need to do is "Ask Slashdot", and within an hour they'll get hundreds of insightful, informative, witty, or (regrettably) flamebait suggestions.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I've discovered that there is a time and a place for every battle. Sometimes it's better to let people figure it out for themselves. I've been down this road with companies that I've consulted for many times. They all follow the "hit-by-a-bus" strategy... if our admin gets hit by a bus, we need software that any other person can support if we need to bring them in. Sadly, there aren't many people out there actually worth their salt and too many of them only specialize in certain commercial apps.
:)
My strategy: Make the case to the management plain and simple. Open source software is constantly being improved and will [potentially] always be free (unless the author goes to the dark side...). Tell them they can save XXX dollars and get great features. If they still argue, say OK fine. Get quotes from all the major vendors of high-dollar commercial apps (i.e. Citrix Metaframe instead of VNC (yes there is a Unix version), commerical SSH (yes there are plenty) instead of OpenSSH, etc.) Compile all the costs, slap it on the CFO's desk and say "Ok I'm ready to implement all this just buy all that stuff." Then the CFO will scratch his head and say "Maybe this open-source stuff isn't such a bad idea after all."
Reminds me of a very similar battle I went through wtih a client some time back. The CEO *insisted* on M$ ISA Server (becasue people with "MCSE" after their names are a dime-a-dozen. Trust me, I know, I have one as well, only because my employer paid me to go get it) I told him that it was a waste of money. He didn't believe me. So I set up two servers -- one with ISA Server and one with Linux and IP Tables. He quickly saw the light when I dropped the $2400 quote on his desk to buy the license for ISA when the demo expired, and had no such quote for the other server.
Sun Tzu.
What?! And have yourself replaced by a monkey! Are you insane? :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
"management doesn't want to install software that does not have 24 hour"
;)
Tell them for about $40 a month, they can buy you a cellphone and make you their 24hr on call person. And of course since you'll be salaried, you won't get over time for those 2am calls. They'll like that.
I did not see anything about demos, installs or Gnome skins outside of your flames. Nor was there any good reason to flame free software as a "summer project".
Your points about presenting a whole solution are useful when you need to replace a whole system in a lethargic micormanaged work environment. All that "Oracle, Sybase, HP, Compaq, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, SAP, etc ... certifications" blah blah is so much dated marketroid bable with good bad and out of business mixed up. Wake up boss, HP is Compaq, Microsoft is worthless, Sun is good and IBM uses Linux. Well, OK, You've got a point about selling a "solution" in such an environement. It's negligence to not do your homework about the bottom line anywhere.
At the same time, it's a good idea to talk to people you trust about what free software is all about. It is important that management understands that free software is simply a co-operative community of software writers and users. They should know that such communities have always created the software that some companies tried to comercialize in a closed source way in the 1980s. The closed source experiment is just about out of gas, becasue the free software community has ignored it to create viable alternatives. Corporate managers understand co-operative research as well as they understand bottom line issues. Free software is not such a great leap at reasonable companies and most people are tired of being jerked around by comercial software pimps.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Buddy, you REALLY need to keep this to yourself.
You don't want to come off sounding like a wounded pig now, do you ?
Besides, it seems like you ex-employer had a problem with the f***wit stuff by your own admission.
A few hints on how to manage your manager - for the next time you get into this situation.
Your manager is there to help you succeed. If your manager does not think that, then you've got the wrong manager and you need to get out quick smart.
That argument only works assuming you have people in your company who actually have the skill to play with the source code. It seems that the longer I'm in this field, the more apparent it becomes that there are only a small number of people who actually know what's going on when they look at code, and maybe a smaller number who have actually have the skill to modify it to their needs.
Also, if you're talking to your manager about being "bent over" and using the term "BS", you're not in the most professional of atmospheres and might consider getting out.
You haven't dealt with many "tech" managers, have you?
In my entire career (roughly a decade doing primarily firmware engineering with an assortment of "normal" coding as well) , I have had exactly two managers with a clue.
One I consider really decent, he knew what I did, and more importantly, he knew what he didn't know and wouldn't challenge me on decisions about things he didn't know.
The other "knew C", and for the most part stayed out of my way and let me do my job. Incidentally, for any management-types reading this, you should aspire to meet this description - At least know the basics of what the people you "lead" do, and if you can't literally do their job for them, just leave them the hell alone. Give 'em a project and go back to your cube for a week.
All the rest (I'd say over a dozen) believed that their pathetic little MBA meant they knew more about how to do my job than I did.
Put simply, PHBs really do exist, and count as the majority (in my experience) of managers.
Now, I don't mean to say they serve no purpose - I don't claim to understand the business world, so somebody better know "step 2" of code -> ??? -> profit. But when accountants give engineers crap about purely tech-oriented decisions, they need to ask themselves "do I want the job done, or do I want to prove my cluelessness to people who already consider me of dubious value to the ''team''?"
Incidentally, regarding tech support, I have found it wanting for any real usefulness, other than a false sense of accountability for the PHBs. At my previous job, we had a rather large tech support contract with a company that provided a particular embedded OS to us, and when something went wrong, guess who ended up solving the problem? WE provided THEM more bugfixes than they provided us. No kidding or hyperbole involved here. They would always respond with "we'll look into it", and of course since we needed the code working "yesterday", we'd have to start working on their bugs on our own. On two occasions that I can remember, we had to send an engineer to their HQ to explain their own major architectural flaws to them so they wouldn't continue sending us "fixes" that re-broke what we'd already worked around. Sad.
Which means that it would be a good idea for them to make part or all of those apps open source. If the company derives its advantages from running the tools, not selling them, they might as well give them away in hopes that someone else will improve them in a way that saves the company some development time.
Of course, the results will probably be scripts and libraries, rather than full applications, because the full applications are generally very company-specific.
This sounds like great grounds for web conferencing companies like WebEx, GotoMyPC, etc. to sue Microsoft for Sherman Anti-trust Act tying violations. Particularly since Microsoft purchased one of their competitors, PlaceWare recently.
Triple damages, mmm.
--LP, who doesn't mind MS software actually, but *hates* the EULAs coming from that lawyer's-son Gates.
Your management has legitimate concerns, but these can be addressed with some open source packages, if the project is sufficiently mature and well-supported. This is where I see you making a common mistake: you speak of open source software as if all open source projects are the same.
For some of the very well-known open source projects -- such as Apache, much of what constitutes Linux, sendmail, Perl -- the documentation is excellent, the online resources are extensive and up-to-date, there are many opportunities for simple customization, and above all, there are full-time consultants and consulting firms who know the stuff very well and can be hired to help. In fact, if the latter is true, then your management can get exactly what they're looking for: full-time support.
Many other open source projects are obviously someone's part-time diversion, and it shows. There are many missing features and a few bugs, and no one who can get around to fixing them. The options for configuration and customization are limited. The documentation was done as an afterthought, it has whole critical chapters saying nothing more than "TBD", and it was apparently never proofread by a native speaker of English. (Sorry to have to add that last one, but unfortunately it's an all too common problem.) This is the stuff your management wants to stay away from, and they have good reason.
You mentioned two specific services you need: VNC and SSH. So why don't you research the quality of the available open source solutions? Evaluate them with respect to project maturity, online resources, quality of the documentation, and especially, find out if you can hire someone to provide support. I personally don't know what you can get, but if you're lucky, you can present your management with a professional solution that will satisfy their needs. And if you can't find that, then you shouldn't be going with the open source stuff anyway -- then your bosses may have saved you from a lot of heartache.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
If you base the argument on that, you are fighting a battle you can't win.
Your battle should be about choosing the best tools for the job.
Yes, the fact that a tool is open is a plus... but seriously..
The reason many of us would rather use linux over solaris is NOT because of the cost.. it's because linux is more flexible and has more tools readily available. IF linux cost the same amount, we would still choose it.
I don't get the feeling my post was read (and yes, I have about 25 years experience with NASA, USAF contracts, telecom, Intel, web services, secure networks, etc ranging from programming to project management and CIO).
You are correct: no one "got fired" for buying Microsoft just like no one got fired for buying IBM in the 70s and 80s. However, IBM backed their product up big time (and lawsuits were less common then anyway). I've worked in Microsoft development shops (partners'R'us) at multiple levels and MS support was generally useless. Often we were explaining to them how their software was working (or didn't work).
My point was that the "accountability" excuse is a crock... there is no *vendor* accountability in the legal or monetary sense in our current environment. There is no one to sue if proprietary software fails.
You are also incorrect: you get fired if your solution doesn't work -- not on the basis of the components being Microsoft, Sun, HP, or Open Source.
It will be interesting to see if the Korean lawsuits start a trend toward software accountability...
Last install VNC ans ssh on solaris. Don't tell them. First look at the sun cd full of extra's. If its there then its supported by Sun and its no big deal.
Also look at there website and make downloads for solaris there. If they question the software tell them its from SUN.
They invested alot of money in hardware and bussiness has no sense in sunken costs or bad investements.
If arm twisting was used just to ditch Windows then by all means keep you mouth quiet. Someone likely betted his reputation and his job on Sun.
Solaris is a good OS. Expensive but good and is a Unix just like Linux or FreeBSD.
Running open source software on SUN will let Linux or FreeBSD later on after they get used to running it.
http://saveie6.com/
--you seem to be asking how to become a salesman when you are a technician by trade. It's not your expertise to do "sales".. You know what tools and products you need to accomplish your IT tasks. You then assemble the list that fits the criteria that you know will *work*, with the included contacts to the shops that actually sell the 24/7 support. You can make the initial contact, seek bids and some additional information, narrow your list to the best possible contacts, then introduce these people to the people in your shop who will be making the decisions. Your boss gets to be "the boss",make the decisions, he's happy, the service contract guys are happy-everyone wants the work, you are happy, you get the products you want and that back up service from when the problem or you are out of the loop for one reason or another. Everyone is a winner! It's up to THOSE shops sales staff to "sell" YOUR bosses on their service, initially based on your analysis and recommendations. They are way more suited to the task, that's their job, and if you are a good IT tech, you will know what you want, what is the best for your corp, and will be able to sort through the market speak in the first contacts. In a specialised industry, use the appropriate specialists.
Most small organizations tend to have small IT budgets, and thus might benefit from open source software. However, this support issue works against them as well, as they would tend not to have a budget for developing/debugging applications, or developing and implementing the necessary development and testing procedures to support this.
Red Hat's primary business is support, unlike MS which regards its primary business as writing code. The biggest difference between commercial open source support and proprietary support is that there is *more* support for open source software. Why? Because open source code is supportable by more than just the original vendor. You want support? You can hire the original coder or a third party. You can choose to debug the code yourself, add features, or change features. You have options.
What options do you have with proprietary software? Well, you can guess at what's causing the problem and change configurations. If the problem is an actual crash or something, you can reboot, reinstall the offending program, reinstall the OS. If none of that works, you can call the vendor (who will start by having you follow those three steps, along with applying patches, blame the hardware, etc.). The vendor may or may not be able to help you. Further, it is entirely up to them whether they give you real support or not (for example, if behavior is considered to be a feature, you cannot make a software vendor change the behavior). If they choose not, then there is no recourse for you (other than switching software).
A university where I worked considered switching to one of those MS license all your software from us and we'll give you a really great deal. As part of that, they considered moving the yellow page servers to the MS product. The deal was sold, they were ready to start. They asked MS to make a tool that would convert a flat text file generated from the information stored in the previous software's format into the MS format and MS refused. They had a nice point and click interface, and they expected the university to manually retype 60 *thousand* accounts with it. An overnight batch job would have become a multi-month project. Yellow pages info now resides on OpenVMS boxes with a custom written interface that took a couple of weeks to design.