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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.'"
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.
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
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 ?
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
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.
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.
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.
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