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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.'"
is FUD working ?. /.
yep...its leading to articles like this on
When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea
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.
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.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
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!"?
You live in fear of the 100% markup that you will pay if you go against MS (for all Windows based software, not just MS's). MS has a long history of penalizing those that do not do exactly what MS wants. Yes, MS will offer 80 % off of this years prices to keep you. But they expect high prices next year, and they expect that you will not even toy with OSS anymore. Simply read what Dell had to say at the MS monopoly trial.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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".
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Well... MySQL *is* a toy system. Yes, Access is even worse, and it's not like MySQL doesn't have its uses; but any database that will silently alter data you're inserting into a table if it doesn't fit the specified constraints instead of returning an error is unusable for serious work.
If you want a good database, why not look into PostgreSQL?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
They start talking about it and suddenly Ballmer comes in and twists your arm until you cry.
Better that than a monkey dance!
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
I bet in part it is due to some admins sneakily switching over the companies network/web/whatever server over and not telling the boss because they don't need to know and it saves hassle
Unhuh. 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.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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 ?
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
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Open source software gives user companies a competitive advantage over companies that are tied into massive licence fees.
Of course they aren't going to tell anyone!
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
Perhaps they don't want their competitors to know that they too can have the exact same solutions for free....
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
`It's free, it can't be as good as the product that costs ${large_amount_of_cash}`
Ubuntu has gone some way to changing that because people have ordered CDs and tried it (just because they're free (beer)) and realised that really, freebies aren't all that bad. But what about the vast majority of people who haven't even heard of linux, or openoffice, or any of the other free(speech) applications?
And then there is the problem of education. Throughout the whole of my education, the institutions were wedded to windows, you weren't able to use a linux live CD, that would be a bannable offence, and just forget being able to work on documents at home if you didn't have windows. The MSDNAA is just another snare to get universities using microsoft products and to try and gain loyalty with students. Still there is the perception that cheap = crap. Just how far does it extend? And how many of the kids in school right now are going to grow up thinking microsoft is the only, or best, choice?
I'll let the GNU foundation take it from here : Free Software in education~HTP~ Hug that tux
Sure, blame the programmer. In the meanwhile, the systems that run MySQL will continue to silently fail due to bugs, and distrupt your data, while those who run better database systems will catch the bug and fix it at an earlier stage.
If this is true that is. I saw something in vTigerCRM where if I store a long website URL into an account, it will just become shortened without any warning. So I'm inclined to believe this is true. That is *Very*, *Very*, *Seriously* foobar, IMHO.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
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.
Not sure if this is about FUD or not, but let's look at what's obvious on Slashdot-world:
Company or other entity announces or otherwise speaks of moving to an OSS solution. Several things typically happen at once:
1. Microsoft reads it and rushes over to respond in some way by
a. offering lower prices
b. making some sort of threat (BSA audit or something)
2. People criticise the company
a. by saying they are just doing this for attention and/or get a better price from MS
b. by saying they are stupid from moving away from the 'standard' Microsoft
So yeah, if you want your OSS migration to be successful, talk about it AFTER the fact if you don't want the hassle as described above.
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
I don't know...
:-)
:-)
Balmer comes in and begins to twist my arm, it would give me damned good reason to kick his ass from here to the very edge of the curb in the front parking lot... and then I'd tell him to never ever show his sorry-assed hiny up here ever again.
I don't no **** from nobody!
Especially him.
I can tolerate the monkey dance simply because I can turn it off or get up and leave.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
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.
It has nothing to do with validating the input from the user. The problem is with the database altering data that may be completely valid, thus potentially invalidating it!
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
An IT company can take the risk, they understand what is going on, and often so do their customers.
Now take a non IT company, and its a big risk and they often do stay quiet.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And communists always do things in secret.
There was a CNET interview with Bill Gates earlier this year in which he suggests:
There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.
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.
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.
This is the mentality of alot of IT managers and fear stems from two simple words "Commercial Support". The reality is though, that many of the largest software companies are raising their stakes in open source technology and many of their big customers are starting to realise the savings. IBM for example dumped its own webserver a few years back and now invests millions in open-source projects. By simple expanding the base functionality, they are able to quickly develop commercial products, such as their Eclipse-based development tools. In a few years time the world will wonder what we did before OSS.
Lucky you, last time I called comcast after they found out I was using linux all the stupid bitch would do was YELL we don't support linux over and over. All I was trying to find out is if there was an outage.
---------- Open Source is capitalism applied to IP.
There is just this unwritten, unspoken objective that we all know...
When the time is right, we are all going to drop MS at the same time....
The quite about it is all about prepration for that time.
But it won't be called the boston tea party, nor "the great software flap"
It's be something like "the great quiet private digital dump-n-flush"
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.
Take, for example, a scheduling concern. There is a student, Bob, who needs to take classes A and B. Classes A and B are only offered every few years, so he has to take them when they are offered. Now, the kicker is class A and class B are offered at the same time, 'because they are in different departments. But hey, the student wants to take them both, and has show ability to do so. The student gets permission from both professers to take the classes, one day at class A, one day at class B. Now what? The system is set up to only take one class per time slot. But this student has two. And, you know, the programmer will realize ahead of time that there may be conflicts in scheduals, right? Right?
Sig
Media coverage of computers - particularly magazines that focus on tech - has always been biased to the point of printing outright lies to suck up to big advertisers. Remember the old "Upgrading costs more than new computers" myth Ziff-Davis publications perpetuated for years? Or all those post-bubble cover stories about how CA's new CEO had turned the company around with great new products and huge new customer accounts, when that was clearly not the case, and the company was just cooking the books?
Computing media is some of the worst crap on earth - and anyone who puts much faith in them as good sources of information is a moron.
They've been complaining about the Billy-as-Borg icon for years. Let's get rid of it...and replace it with Billy-as-the-Godfather. Really, they aren't Borg anymore, they've been busted down to "common thugs"...still fearsome, but no longer insurmountable. The fact that they have to resort to such tactics proves this.
You're absolutely right!
I need to change my comment threshold.
Thanks for the tip!
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.
It isn't anyone's business what software a particular company chooses to use, be it Open Source or Commercial. For public offices, I can see it as having some importance, but people are making way too much noise about the use of commercial software.
The only metric that matters is whether or not a particular piece of software gets the job done with the least amount of problems.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
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.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Big bussinesses have legal constraints to control change in Production systems.
Especially onerous is the situation in the Financial Industry. I kid you not, but I have seen foreign machines detected and isolated in a matter of minutes in properly administered networks.
That does not mean these bussinesses do not use OSS solutions. Heck, they take full advantage of it, but they do so under a controlled process that minimizes risks.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Reminds me of when I moved into a new apartment a while back. I had my DSL line moved over from my previous place, but I was getting tons of sync problems. I called to have them turn on interleaving, but of course first line tech support had to go through their standard scripts before they'd pass me onto someone who knew what they were talking about.
Tech Support: "Are you using a router?"
Me: "I have a gateway server..."
Tech Support: "What brand is it?"
Me: "Umm, it's a computer."
Tech Support: "Does it say D-Link or Linksys or something on it?"
Me: "No... it's a computer that I've configured to do NAPT, DNS, DHCP and stuff like that."
Tech Support: "So it's not a little box about 8 inches long?"
Me: "No... it's a full-sized computer."
Tech Support: "OK... *longish pause* What operating system are you using?"
Me: "The machine connected to the DSL bridge is FreeBSD."
Tech Support: "Umm, I mean what version of Windows."
Me: "..."
Tech Support: "Like, Windows 98 or XP?"
Me: "It's not Windows at all, it's FreeBSD... it's a different kind of operating system."
I don't really blame the person I was talking to... most of the first-line support staff are people who are barely computer literate and only manage to do their jobs by reading the support scripts. I found it more amusing (though a waste of time) than anything else.
I've been through one software audit ... we were squeaky clean, but it took about 4 hours of my time. Multiply that by the 25,000+ employees of that company, at their fully loaded pay rate and it was DAMNED EXPENSIVE to come up squeaky-clean.
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.
Of course it's never the fault of the programmer. From the description of PASSWORD() from the MySQL docs:
"Calculates and returns a password string from the plaintext password str, or NULL if the argument was NULL. This is the function that is used for encrypting MySQL passwords for storage in the Password column of the user grant table.
Note: The PASSWORD() function is used by the authentication system in MySQL Server; you should not use it in your own applications. For that purpose, use MD5() or SHA1() instead. Also see RFC 2195 for more information about handling passwords and authentication securely in your applications."
This has been in the docs for years, long before 4.1 (the version in which the internal hash algorithm was updated) was released. The possibility for application breakage from this change was also fully documented in the upgrade release notes. In fact, it's mentioned in the first real step. As if that wasn't enough, you actually have to want to use the new password algorithm. If after you upgrade the grants table isn't manually altered to support the new hash length, the PASSWORD() function works exactly as it did in versions 4.0 and earlier.
Why would companies ever allow someone to audit their systems? Sounds crazy that they'd agree to sign a contract like that.
Just don't force me to drink any of that funny KoolAid is all I ask, thank you.
-=[ place
Unhuh. 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.
Jesus H... Here it is 2005, and people still say stuff like this.
First of all, the fundamental purpose of the DBMS is data integrity. If you're doing data integrity in your app, you are doing the DBMS' job. Of course, you are welcomed to *repeat* some of the constraints in your app, since "modern" databases have shitty exception handling, but that's a separate issue.
Second, whatever constraints you have in your DB define your data model. If your DB allows blank user names, then that's part of your data model. You better be able to handle it in your app, and not assume that your validation code ever ran. Because your app is not a DBMS.. it's not the most general layer for accessing the data.
Third: data management has a solid theory behind it. I don't think your app does. Putting validation in your app just means you're even less likely to see future DBMS products that use that information for optimizing queries, for instance.
Fourth: are you ready to go and update all your apps every time the constraints change? How about apps that you don't have any control over (like, say, the "mysql" command line program??). (Aside: it makes me chuckle when greenhorn programmers claim that spreading arbitrary constraints over all their apps is more "agile" than putting it in the DBMS).
Fifth: If you DBMS doesn't support this arguably *correct* methodology, STOP USING IT. Don't make excuses for it. If your DBMS doesn't let you declare *arbitrary* constraints, it's not a true DBMS. It's like a calculator with a missing division key. Good for some tasks, but what's the point when you can make it general with no loss of performance or functionality?
Application-centric data management should've died in the 60's, when it was popular. Let's let it die now, at least.. please.
that is what setting an override bit is for. if you want the system to be able to store and output "impossible" values for a type of stored data allow for override. don't just stuff it into the system or set the system to allow all "impossible" data
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
So these days, I just greet their service tech at the door, accept the package, say I'll install it just fine, thanks, and shut the door before he gets too nosey.
And the manager stories are even less surprising. Me, handing in my first edition of the company newsletter I got stuck doing: Manager: "Looks great! How'd you do these graphics?" "I used Gimp's foo-filter and layered the..." "You WHAT!?!?!" "Er...I worked on it all night in Photoshop." "Oh, that's what I thought you said. And an excellent example of Photoshop's superiority it is, too!"
Linux on the desktop is at least as good as Windows 95 in all areas, and much better in some.
This considering only core OS utilities, not the whole bunch of software you get with most distros.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
"Just because this is new to you doesn't mean it's new or at all unusual."
Rude Dude.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
And I'll get dat wascawwy penguin! hahahahaha!
Personally i think people just dont want to change. If a system works well enough for the present its logical to assume that it will work for the future. I mean why use open source if a proprietary solution works well enough.
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Clearly you haven't seen the final episode of Star Trek: Voyager. All we need are transphasic torpedoes (or whatever the hell they were) and a neurally-accessed Janeway hologram, and all our Microsoft problems will be solved.
Economically speaking (I'm a linguist, not an economist, damnit!), this relates to things like scarcity and COGS (cost of goods sold). The direct expenses in selling software come from the expectations of the consumer: flashy box, manuals, media. The bulk of the expenses in producing software come from time: paying people to make things (code, packaging, marketing). In the case of downloadable software, the only realy direct expense in distribution is bandwidth.
In the ham sandwich case, for example, the price is driven by the relative scarcity of the item. There is only one ham sandwich, and you can only sell it to one interested party, before you as the salesperson no longer have the sandwich and have to prepare anothher. Each incidence of an item sold increases the COGS numbers in a pretty linear fashion; for software, what expense there is comes in the form of labor. Gold code can be reproduced and distributed for far under the ham-sandwich-type model.
And furthermore, bullshit to grandparent's "you wouldn't take free stuff". Ever been to a college campus or a radio station remote broadcast? People will do freaking anything to get a free t-shirt or a can of Coke.
One of your premises is flawed.
A typical FOSS project is something like a medeval cathedral, built by small donations of labor and skill given by large numbers of contributors over a long time. Some of the individuals might do it for ego satisfaction, but most contribute because the work will increase their saleable skills or because they need a particular tool and extending a FOSS project like POV-Ray, Blender, GCC, or Apache is the best way to get it.
However, unlike a cathedral that starts to weather as soon as the cornerstone is laid, FOSS is immune to entropy. It only gets better and better over time, as more people make small contributions. Also, the code a contributor adds to a FOSS project is going to be debugged and refined by the supporting community in a way that no individual programmer could ever manage on his own.
In short, you cannot legitimately talk about a FOSS project without talking about its support community. It is this community's interaction with the software that adds the value to the FOSS project.
FOSS isn't a zero-sum game. A FOSS project is a community effort that creates new wealth out of nothing, where each contribution is of negligible cost to the contributor. There is nothing comparable in the commercial software world. Twenty hours of coding (or debugging, or writing user docs) for a FOSS project is qualitatively not comparable to the purchase cost of commercial software. The first is an investment in a community wealth generator; the second is an expenditure.
Second, I firmly believe in application servers, and keeping issues from hitting the database until they need to do so. Yes, the database should be the guardian of last resort, but then again I have ONE database. I have LOTS of application servers, and it's easier to fan out and add another cheap app server than significantly upgrade the database hardware.
Third, the higher up the food chain you catch an error, the more likely it is you can return a meaningful error to the user. "Please enter a email address" is just a little easier to understand than "insert failed due to bad constraint".
Fourth, databases have remained largely static in terms of feature sets over the past few years, while application server capabilities have grown by leaps and bounds. I'd rather debug an application or service than a stored procedure, and I'd prefer [when possible] to have the service act as the sole gateway to the database.
Fifth, I catch errors on the server, even though I have javascript error checking enabled. Why? Because it may not have run. Similarly, I check for a good set of error problems (empty fields, etc.) on the app server, even though the db WILL do them again should the information pass muster. Why? So I don't waste the time of my most constrained asset when I already know the data is bad or incomplete.
Chuckle all you want, but I thought all of those mainframe sp database-is-master-of-the-world types died in the '70s. Now it's just another layer in the cake.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
There is a huge difference between giving a volume discount, and an "exclusive supplier discount". The first is standard practice. The second is not, and is often illegal (as well as always unethical) if you are in a monopoly position. You demonstrate either ignorance or malice by mixing the two up.
Also, "the other kids are doing it" wasn't a good excuse in kindergarden, and still isnt a good excuse in the world of grown up ethics.
Actually, FUD works well for free software, but in another way than you imply. FUD used to mean something, Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. In particular, it refered to the practice of IBM to discourage competition, back in their monopoly days. "Sure, you could by it from our competitors for half the price. But will they be around tomorrow? And where will you get maintainance then? With IBM, you *known* we will be there for the long run."
The problem with FUD is that it is the true. The average life expectancy for a proprietary vendor that goes up against the market leader is very low.
But this works to the advantage of free software is the same. "Sure, you can buy a solution from a proprietary vendor. It may even have a lower TCO than our product today, But what will the price be tomorrow? Will they even be around tomorrow? Even if they are still around, will you be their focus? Or will they concentrate on the latest shining thing in the busniness world? If so, you may end up with a dead end product, which you can't change, and can't hire someone else to maintain. Not so with us. With our solution based on free software, you can always choose another vendor, should we fail to deliver satisfying performance. And even if we go down, our engineers will still exists, and they (like everybody else) will have the right to modify and distribute the software. So there will always be someone, and control of this ressource will be in your hands, not in the hands of another company."
You scare me.
The more established companies will probably have a mix of FOSS and Proprietary software and can allways be easily coerced / bullied by certain vendors especially if they use proprietary software in their infrastructure.
We use FOSS ( Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, PHP, MySQL, ... ) because it allows us to develop many mini-projects at near zero cost and if one or two start to earn money, we can detach them from our "incubator" and convert them into self-contained businesses when the time is right. ( One of our mini-projects Rare List Rare Book Community is almost at that stage.)
Now multiply that by the thousands of companies who (thanks to FOSS) are now able to fund dozens of projects and you start to see why the big vendors are so shit scared. We (and all the others) are just too small and numerous for them to target en-mass. Like millions of ants nibbling away at your market, you may stomp on a few but there are thousands more in the pipeline.
If that was not scary enough for those vendors, quite a few of those FOSS "ants" could grow large enough to bite your legs off - Google, Yahoo anyone !!
Peter Blue - Technologist, Entrepreneur & Project developer
Art Makers Just an excuse to show photos of naked women !!
Here's the problem: --People just somehow trust stuff that is on the shelf and costs something. --People are not used to accepting free stuff and see it's relevance in their enviroment as being directly deployable. --Windows is a disease and sysadmins are bunch of retards who just install the Open Source OS and then stop because they have to continue downloading their movies/video's/music/chat , the activity which benifits MS so well The mindset has been set in retarded_state=force mode and it HAS got to change!
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
I think you left something out. Try this...
SELECT * FROM forum WHERE ForumID='@ForumID';
Don't forget the single ' around @ForumID. Remember VB2005 was written to work with MS products the best. I've been using MySQL for years and the only problem I've had is geting VS to work with it WHEN I used VS. We changed to IBM WebSphere and Java for development and will NEVER go back. The big reason we changed. MS only supporting it own. IBM's tools work just as good with their competiors stuff as their own like a development platform should.Hope this helps.
IBM just works with everything and you will find what made other products appear to be broken in VS 2005 doesn't happen in WebSphere. It just works!
Yes IBM would like to sell you their product but if you are using something else that IS "Open Standard Compliant" then it works with their products, and they are happy to work with you to make it work with the "Other Guys" stuff. Their development tools work with the other guys platforms.
Try that with MS and watch the screaming, cussing, threats and FUD start to fly. Try using their development tools with the other guys platform and watch it all break or watch yourself jump through hoops of real fire. Call tech support and they blame the problem on the other guys platform. Of course they will be happy to tell you how wonderful it all works IF you use MS!
MS is like Ford using 13 1/2" wheels that only Firestone makes the tires for. So if you are going to drive a Ford you MUST use Firestone tires to go down the road. IBM on the other hand builds their car with 14" rims that anyone's tires will fit on.
Isn't that the way things are suppose to work? This works well in all other fields of work. Why not IT? Do we know how to spell "User Lock IN"?
From TFA : Companies may also choose to keep a low profile about projects to avoid a time-consuming sales visit from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft, according to Aaron Seigo, who works as a consultant with projects deploying the desktop environment KDE.
"I've seen it happen first hand," says Seigo. "Microsoft sees it as a lost sale, so you'll get a phone call and they'll try to send in one of their regional sales people. He'll ask 'why are you running Linux? How many machines are you running?' and so on. From a sales intelligence perspective it makes sense, but most companies find that invasive."
Won't take no for an answer
It can be difficult to avoid such a visit, according to Seigo. "They will keep calling. Microsoft usually has very good sales people so they will be persistent -- they won't take the first 'no' for an answer," he says.
At last, I've found a use for that retarded moron son of the Boss, who we keep in the stationary cupboard ensuring that the paperclips are all stored in the correct orientation. We give him the job title "Senior Vice President for Co-ordination of Communications with Microsoft", put a sign to that effect on the door to the stationary cupboard, give him a phone without outgoing calls capabilty, give his telephone number and job title to Microsoft, and then lock the Microsoft visitor in the cupboard with him.
As long as no-one who actually works at work talks to the SVPCCM (this is the cunning bit - that's why I specified the Boss's moron son), we can have the morale boost of being nasty to both MS and the Moron Son (another MS!, it's an emergent property. I didn't plan that. I feel the touch of the Noodly Appendage - this must be the One True Solution.), while getting on with doing our real work without disturbance.
Could we sell tickets? I think so! More fun than pulling the wings off flies, and much more morally defensible.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
any database that will silently alter data you're inserting into a table if it doesn't fit the specified constraints instead of returning an error is unusable for serious work.
This has been fixed for nearly a year:
Added STRICT_TRANS_TABLES, STRICT_ALL_TABLES, NO_ZERO_IN_DATE, NO_ZERO_DATE, ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO, and TRADITIONAL SQL modes. The TRADITIONAL mode is shorthand for all the preceding modes. When using mode TRADITIONAL, MySQL generates an error if you try to insert a wrong value in a column. It does not adjust the value to the closest possible legal value.
(MySQL changelog from December 04)
If you want to complain about MySQL's inadequacies, please find a current inadequacy, not an out-of-date one.
The first is an investment in a community wealth generator; the second is an expenditure.
I disagree that it's a "community wealth generator". Nobody who supports OSS ever addresses the fact that paid programming jobs are being lost to OSS projects. Proprietary software generates hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue for the companies and the employees that make and maintain it. OSS generates a few hundred million, if that much.
It's the same as if a wealthy person opened up a plumbing company for fun (which is essentially what OSS is... wealthy people doing it for fun). Assume that this new plumbing company did plumbing work for free. There are most definitely going to be unemployed or at least underemployed plumbers in that same are simply due to the lost business. There's really no way around this... OSS destroys *much* more wealth than it creates. So sure, you may get some neat-o app for free, but don't forget the guy who's trying to make a living and support his family (and our taxes) by programming.
No. you're forgetting that a lot of free/libre software is not free/beer. It's not just free/libre that takes customers away, it's free/beer software too. As for your comment that free/beer is a bad thing, you can't possibly suggest that it's a bad thing that people are donating their time to these projects. Yes, people have to make a living, but that doesn't mean people should be stopped from doing things for free. Steve Ballmer tried to pull the `my family has to eat` routine too, and it isn't working. Free/beer software is done not to wreck other people but to help people who don't want to shell out for expensive software. End of the day, if your product isn't sufficiently better than a free/beer one then it isn't worth paying for. You pay for software because it's better, and if it isn't then you make it better so that people will buy it. If you don't like the way things work, go over to communist china.
~HTP~ Hug that tux
Balderdash.
First, find a proper example that uses intangible goods or services and so is reasonably similar to software development. Then we'll have the beginnings of a basis for discussion. I'll give you a hint: FOSS is something like a convention of english teachers sharing their best practices with each other and developing a set of recommended lesson plans.
Second, stop with the nitwit unbacked assertion that FOSS is generated only by a few wealthy people as a hobby. Anyone who is willing to spend a few minutes looking at the development forums at OOo, Blender, POV-Ray, Firefox, etc, will quickly realize that a great number of people contribute to these projects, and most of them express concerns that are of distinctly middle class or poor student origin. FOSS isn't like the America Cup races. And since its development process is completely open, anyone can look at the email trail of any FOSS project and realize that the overwhelming majority of participants are just ordinary blokes.