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.'"

Comments

More likely...

[intmainvoid]

More likely what's happening is the IT department sees a need for X, draws up a budget for X with the company's current platform, and gets the budget rejected. So they just do it anyway with the open source solution, present it as a working solution and off you go.

And of course, when it comes to doing a big deal, companies can always try and get a discount by offering to be a case study for the vendor. So their adoption of the vendor's technology gets some press. When a company adopts an open source solution, there's never going to be the same PR push behind it. You are always going to hear more about things that someone can sell than you are about things you can just download for free.

For Microsoft it is pretty much no loose.

[LWATCDR]

If you have problems with a new version of Windows it really isn't your fault I mean what choice do you have but to stick with Windows since it is that standard. Microsoft will fix it. It is a great system you get to lump all the blame on Microsoft because everyone knows how bad they are.
If you try and migrate to Linux, BSD, or Open Office and you have issues then your to blame for leaving Microsoft.
Migrating from one system to another is never trouble free. There will be probably be some fun driver issues with Vista and goodness knows what else. Going to Linux is also not going to be simple for a company. Learning Linux is not trivial and it is not perfect. I happen to think that Linux is great. We have almost no problems with our Linux boxes. We also have very few problems with the only Windows Server we have left. We would like to migrate entirely to Linux for our servers and probably will at some point but I am sure it will not be "simple".

Really ?

[karvind]

I just searched for earlier slashdot stories:

Oracle Continues Warming Up to Open Source

Intel Begins Support for Debian

IBM Turns to Open Source Development

IBM And Sony Form Linux Alliance

Linux Tablet to be Released in Two Days

There are only few of the many stories. Does it sound if companies are keeping mum about open source adoption ?

**YES**

[tomstdenis]

Look at the manual for the game "Champions of Norrath". See the BSAFE logo in it?

Now run strings on the binary [on the DVD] and compare it to LibTomCrypt v0.62 [if you can find a copy, heck I don't even have a copy, I do have a copy of v0.14 which has the strings].

Point is, they used LibTomCrypt to write their SSL library but they put a RSA BSAFE logo in the manual. :-)

Tom

True story.

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1996, I was working at a Fortune 500 company, and we were planning to migrate many of our systems from Big Blue to Microsoft. I was in charge of choosing the best C++ tool, and after some meetings with programmers I chose Microsoft Visual C++. We had a conference call with some Microsoft sales people one day, and while there were only 2-3 of us speaking with them, the move to Microsoft was a really big deal in the company, and a lot of people were opposed to it, so there were several big wigs in the room just listening in. Microsoft got on the line, and they immediately started shouting. They asked me questions and then cut me off before I could answer them, they swore at us, and they said that if we didn't choose their product that they were going to go to our managers and show them how daft we were, etc. We were buying the product! After a couple minutes of this, we just sat in stunned silence. It was my meeting, so I said "Alright, I think we're done here." and hung up. I was completely flustered and terrified, and my hands were shaking. We all filed out of the room, and I tried not to look at anyone in the eye. A year later, I was writing Java code.

Re:Of course FUD works

[spacefight]

Parent is so true. Debugging a friends PHP/MySQL code in order to check why his PASSWORD() function for a simple user login does not work anymore on the productive host just, to find out that MySQL cuts of data instead of returning a big fat warning, is rather annoying. Oh and the fact that MySQL moved the PASSWORD() function to OLD_PASSWORD() and introduced another hash function in PASSWORD() with one of the latest releases in the 4.n version family is another thing to walk away.

Re:Nope.

[kesuki]

I would. Because a 'security' patch from my then dialup ISP broke my windows networking based filesharing between my desktop and laptop PC (connected via 10 base T) I spent months in frustration trying to get files to copy between my computers, but then i read about this thing called 'linux' and bought this book on it with slackware.. well slackware and me didn't get along, so searched on the internet, and viola, i heard of this thing called 'FreeBSD' well, the installer was so slick and nifty (to me, at that time) compared to linux, and it had all these handbooks i could use to set up and configure ppp to auto dial, use compression, etc etc.. i got consistantly better dialup results than i ever had with windows, usenet binaries were downloading almost 3 times faster (because of the compression that i had set up in the configuration) and it was all golden, I never dialed out from a windows or bothered to try from linux again, ever. that freebsd box (a lowly 486, with external 56k modem) gave me almost 7 years of use as a dialout box... and when i went to cable modem, I used freebsd (albeit on a k6-2 based system) as my firewall, and even though windows had a zillion problems and issues through those years, my windows experience was delightful and problem free the whole time. All because i had heard of this thing called 'open source' because windows had so many problems for me.

all because of a security patch from my isp, that turned off a feature of windows that i was using on a daily basis even though it had gaping vulnerabilities.

yup, i didn't learn about open source because of FUD, it was because windows was broken. all this spyware crap that are causing people to abandom computer in the trash should be causing a dramatic rise in open source adoption too, because the 'easiest' way to secure a windows pc is to take it off the internet, and use an open source pc as your 'internet pc' or even to go so far as to use a CD rom bootable linux distro 'internet' and to use 'windows' for everything else.

We do this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Writing as an AC for obvious reasons.

We're moving a lot of things to Linux and open source, not because of any political agenda but because we're trying to get the best tool for the job, and when it comes to science, a lot of the best tools are Unix/Linux-based.

Being a private company on a fierce market we keep our mouths shut about this for obvious reasons, as I'm sure all of our competitors do too.

That might be true in government

[HangingChad]

In government, at almost any level, if you try an open source implementation it's very wise just to keep quiet about it. Then when the reaction comes you can inform them their system has been running on an OSS platform for the last six months without a hitch. If MSFT gets wind of it they'll be calling legislators up and down the chain reminding them how much money proprietary software brings them. And if there's the slightest little problem the NBMers will seize on that to discredit the entire project.

My business customers don't seem to give a crap. If it works, they'll use it. MSFT can whine all they want and it'll get them nowhere. On the other hand if MSFT offers them a compelling deal they're not going to have any more loyalty to OSS.

Ballmer is engaged in an endless game of whack-a-mole. And the moles are popping up faster than even the mighty MSFT can keep pace with. The fact that Ballmer has to waste his time to personally strong-arm organizations is the highest compliment he can pay to those of you involved in OSS projects. Not only can you change the world for the better, you can get under Ballmer's skin and make him burn some avgas in that expensive plane he flies around in. Hehe. Bonus.

Why should users boast about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

My company, a big financial institution (one of the most recognizable names in the world), has Open Source all around the place.

Red Hat servers (growing by the month and threatening both Windows an UNIX, read Solaris).
Open SSH.
Perl.
Apache.
500+ Linux desktops (for a call center).
and in appliances as well (filers, firewalls, and other more esoteric products based in OSS).

but our work is not to boast (heck, we are forbidden to do so, my ass would be busted if I would disclose who I am talking about), it is to deliver solutions, and from that point of view we are completely agnostic.

We are looking at single sign on solutions for example, and there is no chance in hell for us to use OSS, it is simply too complicated to implement and administer. But if there was something out there it would be checked, no question about it.

Once a solution is in place nobody is going to go and be cocky about it, OSS does not have a marketing team and it is not our role to get the word out.

If Red Hat wants, they can (and should IMHO) boast about getting such a big foothold, but as others have mentioned, companies are not very keen to let know the competition what they are using and the hackers what is being deployed.

So for the time being you will have to do with ACs like me, but to all the OSS supporters I can say this: you are making big inroads in enterprise class software, people are seriously questioning why we should have to put up with MS's forced upgrade cycles and propietary formats. Even our Windows Sys Admins are questioning the wisdom to develop mostly for IE internally.

Commercial OSS is a lot about shutting up.

[Qbertino]

Running your business on OSS or making money of OSS is about shutting up about it. How would I look if I'd say I've underpriced my competitors by 50% for that corporate website because it runs of an OSS CMS? It's the remaining 50% we make money on. And finance our active support and development of OSS. The competitors make even a larger amount of money (if they'd sell) but they can bullshit about their efforts and technology all the way because it's closed source.
When you do OSS on the other hand, you market yourself more than the product. That's why OSS isn't talked about that often.

There are partners we have who couldn't care less if the framework we're using is being built as OSS and available under a different name at sf.net - but they do want us not to advertise that to their competitors. Quite logical.

Be it that that extremly powerfull framework at that famous software copmany costs 15000$ dollars. It doesn't matter as long as only a few know that the very same thing is available as OSS. And even those who do will shut up about it. :-)

OSS business isn't about talking about things, it's about knowing things. And talking usually doesn't cut it anyway, because people who need the advantage of OSS technologies explained often are to dumb to understand that explaination. I've learned that more than once. Might aswell just wait until it sinks in and gain business momentum along the way.