Slashdot Mirror
Is Fear Reducing the Publicity for Open Source?
sebFlyte writes "Are companies deliberately keeping quiet about moves to open source because they are afraid of the reactions of proprietary vendors they still have relationships with? ZDNet raises and tries to answer this question in a two-part special report, 'Open source behind closed doors'. It comes to the conclusion that, in all probability, companies are keeping quiet to avoid reprisals of one sort or another. One part of the fear of publicizing migrations is nicely summed up in the second part by Tristan Nitot of Mozilla Europe: 'Guys are really shy -- it's the Munich Linux thing. They start talking about it and suddenly Ballmer comes in and twists your arm until you cry.'"
Lets see you have a new idea.
There is some risk in using it, it might not work, might upset your current suppliers or customers.
You decide to try it. If you don't tell anyone you have no risk of upsetting your customers or suppliers.
If it works you get the benefis before your customers know what's happening. If it doesn't work maybe your customers will make the same mistake.
I can't think of a compelling reason to publicise deployment of opensource technology, except to the shareholders if they want details of strategy.
FUD is the _main source_ of publicity for open source.
Would you have even known Linux existed if you hadn't heard all this screaming from MS saying "WINDOWS IS BETTER THAN ALL THOSE FREE OPEN SOURCE OSES THAT RUN 80% OF THE INTERNET, NYAH NYAH!"?
Here's a little secret kiddo: lots and lots of suppliers are like that. All of the suppliers that we use give us large volume discounts. If they start losing some of our business, they'll try to keep us, but they'll also jack up their prices. Loyalty is rewarded in every aspect of business. Just because this is new to you doesn't mean it's new or at all unusual.
They don't understand it and are afraid of things they don't understand.So there is little incentive to inform them. We only really need the managers when we need their approval to buy something. So they only ever hear about things that costs money and gets a distorted view of things.
TCAP-Abort
It may also be ignorance. Let's say a company whose workforce is accostumed to windows does tech support for some hardware products. One of their clients phone, they have a problem. During the phonecall the client mentions he has linux installed on a partition. Bingo, the tech support guy genuinely think that the problem is an interference or a misconfiguration because of the presence of "that other os".
:)
Once I offered to backup an old win98 machine with a linux livecd and an usb stick because the system was clogged, and I didn't trust myself to install more drivers on it. People instead were thinking the opposite, with running linux as the risky choice. D'oh!
Sometimes it works the other way. I phoned my ISP cause "my internet was broken"
Tech support starts talking about configuration, on windows. I cut short: "I am using linux and tested both my installations and one of OSX. My ethernet hub blinking lights says that my network card works, too".
"So it's the modem or the line" (both their business, and of course it was a line problem).
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
And why is it you're not validating user input? Bad data should never have a chance to get to the database in the first place.
I disagree with the implication that the application layer is the only layer responsable for data intgrety.
Maintaining a constant database is as important as maintaining a secure network.
You wouldn't simply install a firewall on your network, ignoring all other security measures and saying "but it's the firewalls job to do that..."
The same applies to data integrity. Both the app layer and the data layer should do their own validation.
their internal tech moves because nobody really gives a damn. It would be the height of arrogance for a company to assume that the world cares whether it moves to open source or any other tech for that matter. Most companies aren't in the business of announcing to the world what their internal tech moves are.
I don't know what internal tech McDonalds uses, and don't care. McDonalds knows that I don't care, and therefore doesn't waste time bothering to make irrelevant declarations to the world regarding their internal tech.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
There is another explanation. I worked for an expert systems company when it was "the next big thing". There were very few reports in the press about companies developing expert systems, though people in the field knew a lot was being done.
The major reason was that the possibility of getting a competitive advantage by producing something that nobody else had.
The same may be true here but in a different way - you just removed a large amount of your cost base, but you don't want your competitors to know about it because they might start doing the same thing.
Please don't label me as a troll. I understand the benefits of OSS as much as anyone.
Honestly, I think much of the problem comes from over-hyping OSS. It should be obvious that the usefulness of OSS is directly related to the quality of the software, but unfortunately there's a tendency to lump all open software together. Witness how many people respond to "There's no good OSS equivalent of Photoshop" with "Use the GIMP!" when in reality there's no comparison, even with the Photoshop GUI hacks for The GIMP.
Numerous times I've looked at open source clones of software, only to dismiss them because they're written by bored students with little software engineering experience. I'd hate to become attached to something that the author could drop when he gets a job or girlfriend or new game system. You run much less risk when there's a company behind it. Sure, I *could* learn the code and take over it myself, but that's unrealistic. You can't just pick up a 50,000+ line program and understand it. (In many cases looking at the code would be enough to make me avoid that program.)
Bottom line: Some OSS is good, some is crap. J"OSS" isn't any kind of magic term.
The whole "convicted of abusing their monopoly position" is entirely meaningless. I wish that you lemmings would quit repeating that
Translation: "I can't actually refute this based on facts, so I'll just insult you all for bringing it up, and then try to make it look like they're victims."
Two wrong don't make a right. I know it's fashionable to ignore ethics in American business but that does not mean the consumers are not allowed to complain about sleazy businesses or point out their slimy behavior.
MS is amongst the top of the sleaziest corporations. YOu can bitch and moan all you want about how people should not be allowed to say that but it's futile. You are not going to be able to silence people who have a bone to pick with a corporation who is working so hard to destory open source and calling people who use and write open source software communists and anti-american.
What is good for the goose and all that. Why is it OK for Bill Gates to call me a communist just because I like linux but not OK for me to call him a criminal because he (his company) was tried and convicted despite an appeal?
evil is as evil does