Looking Back at Open Source in 2005

bhmit1 writes "BusinessWeek is reporting on the open source progress in 2005. Their conclusion: "in 2005, the software movement finally gained traction in Corporate America and saw a new influx of VC cash." Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?"

Comments

It's about time

[jrmcferren]

With open source software businesses will be able to save money. Needless to say these cost savings will be passed on to the consumer.

Re:It's about time

[gromitcode]

needless to say those same conversion costs, retraining costs and all associiated increases in support costs will also be passed on to the consumer.

Re:It's about time

[Bert64]

Training costs are a one-off, and exist because people are trained by repetition, and can't deal with something slightly different..
Training costs will exist wether you convert to opensource or not, when you upgrade your proprietary software there will also be retraining costs associated.

Support costs may increase temporarily whenever anything new is introduced, and will settle down once people get used to it. This goes for proprietary software and even hardware too.

External support costs are likely to decrease, since companies will have to compete with each other to provide OSS support, whereas a proprietary vendor pretty much has a monopoly on support of their own products..

Conversion costs will also occur in any case under oss or proprietary software, when the upgrade cycle occurs every few years..

Future conversion/upgrade costs are likely to be much lower, since opensource software typically adheres to standards and is easy to replace with other standards compliant software.

Open source doesn't force you to upgrade, if you have an external support-provider who is willing to continue supporting a 10 year old version of linux you've no reason to replace it unless you WANT to. On the other hand, support vendors for proprietary software can't provide you any fixes without the original vendor's help.

To give some insight, i provided a few NAT/Email boxes to a few local businesses in 1997.. These boxes run redhat 4.x and typically sat on a pstn dialup when first installed.. These companies pay every month, and i patch the systems against any security flaws if necessary, and update them to handle new types of network connection (dsl etc).. I also add/remove users etc, if requested..
These boxes just provide a nat gateway, and email services so users behind the gateway can read their mail.. Aside from a couple of hardware failures (no real issue since everything is backed up) nothing has gone wrong with these machines, and they're still patched up and secure.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

With open source software businesses will be able to save money. Needless to say these cost savings will be passed on to the consumer.

+5 Funny

Re:It's about time

[robgamble]

Is that like how every govenmental budget cut reduces my taxes?

Re:It's about time

[Hatta]

Needless to say these cost savings will be passed on to the consumer.

Since when have cost savings ever been passed on to the consumer? In reality, they're passed on to the CEO as a bonus, and maybe to the stock holders.

Re:It's about time

[bigpicture]

That's not really the way business works. Any achieved cost efficiency is usually used to be more market competitive, if they are in a competitive market, or to add to the profit margin. It is never really directly passed on to the customer, but used for some business advantage. The customer may only see an indirect cost savings.

huh

[dajobi]

Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?

Old way of business = profit. New way of business = ???

Seriously that doesn't make sense. Surely Red Hat's profitability indicates that they have a handle on the new way of doing business.

Re:huh

[parasonic]

Old way of business = profit. New way of business = ???

New way of business...
1. Steal/Take other company's idea
2. Develop free version of it
3. ?????
4. Profit!

Re:huh

[bhmit1]

You're thinking about the business model of Red Hat itself, which is a good one. I was referring to the business model of the large corporations who seem to be saying "open source is great, where do we buy it from?" Support is a great argument to pay someone else, but that choice frequently backfires. Support organizations make their money by hiring cheap labor and postpone resolving the problem until the customer frequently does it themselves, or blames someone else for the problem. I've seen it happen so often, that I don't understand why managers think support provides a valuable benefit for the cost.

So the better business model for larger organizations would have a stronger IT organization that has enough capacity to understand the applications they are implementing and provide support internally.

For smaller organizations, I think they are better served by getting a local resource that they can call for problems and that performs a checkup a few times a year just like that organization would do with legal and accounting services.

And for the record, I don't think we've crossed the threshold yet, but it's interesting to see what the business types are watching.

Re:huh

[Directrix1]

I'm suing you because you stole my:
1. Step 1
2. Step 2
3. ?????
4. Profit! ... template idea. Seriously, thought processes can and do evolve simultaneously given similar environments. And communal usage of an idea almost always only helps the industry progress.

Re:huh

[radarjd]

For smaller organizations, I think they are better served by getting a local resource that they can call for problems and that performs a checkup a few times a year just like that organization would do with legal and accounting services.

We have not, as you said, reached that point yet. I work for a "smaller" organization, and we have a terrible time finding support for OSS applications, even when we pay for it. No one local (and we're in a city of 1,000,000+) has even as much expertise as we do, and it's terribly frustrating to call someone for support and find out that their knowledge ends about the same time yours does.

The larger, national, support providers are our only option. Even were there local support providers, I do not necessary agree that would be a per se better solution. We use legal help from all over the country, depending on what we need and who's best for the job. Our accounting is done in house and locally, but many businesses of even small-medium size are using national accounting firms. It's a matter of efficiency and accountability -- those national firms can provide the services we need as cheaply / quickly / effectively as possible. They also are large enough that if there is a problem, they can bring extensive additional resources to bear.

There's further a generalized business efficiency argument in favor of using a specialized outside source: we should do our business, and hire someone else whose expert at providing the support. There's an overhead associated with having an IT department who can support any and all applications. If the business uses a relatively small number of applications, the benefit of a knowledgeable IT department is overwhealmingly positive. If, however, the business uses a wide variety of applications, it seems better for the IT department and the business that IT support the core, and an outside support group handles the esoteric, but important, 95% of the applications that get used only 5% of the time.

Re:huh

[sydb]

No one local (and we're in a city of 1,000,000+) has even as much expertise as we do, and it's terribly frustrating to call someone for support and find out that their knowledge ends about the same time yours does.

Knowledge ends? It's open source. You have the code. If you don't know C (or perl or whatever), find someone who does. There is no such thing as knowledge "ending" with open source, you are limited only by your own ability to read and learn. Certainly, if I was paying for support for open source software, I would expect there to be someone with this ability when the first level runs out of "knowledge". I mean, what if you need a new feature? A proprietary software house will accept feature requests and might code them up. You need this same ability with open source, and the bonus is, you are not at the whim of the software house, because you just need to find someone who can read and write code and understand the problem domain.

Computer programming and robotics should be compulsory on school syllabuses, like Maths, English and real domestic science (electrics, plumbing, plastering, finance).

Re:huh

[Planesdragon]

There is no such thing as knowledge "ending" with open source, you are limited only by your own ability to read and learn.

That would be adding to one's knowledge. Until one does the work to do that, one's knowledge has ended.

Re:huh

[sydb]

That's quite right, but the difference between open source and proprietary code is that it's not actually possible to do the work to learn a proprietary code base, because you can't see it. Also, anyone I would call a decent human being doesn't give up on something when their knowledge "ends", they do the learning, because otherwise how can their knowledge ever grow?

Re:huh

[hey!]

So the better business model for larger organizations would have a stronger IT organization that has enough capacity to understand the applications they are implementing and provide support internally.

Oh, I'm all for stronger IT departments.

But even so, the logic is inescapable: if every nearly user spends several man weeks figuring out how to do some common things like get function A to work with function B, it makes sense to outsource this, in the form of getting documentation written, streamlining the administration process and in some cases automating it.

The reason every Linux review has to start with installation is that they have to say to every IT guy who started messing with Linux back in the mid-90s is to say to every person who dabbled in Linux back in the 90s and got stymied by getting X set up, "We get it. You have other things that are more important that you need to spend your time on."

Let's face it, there's never enough money to provide the kind of IT service our clients want. They want to pay as little as possible. And the prices of commercial software licenses are nothing when you look at the cost of running even a mediocre team. The whole argument that open source is about free-as-in-beer has no credibility with IT professionals nor should it. What should make them sit up and pay attention is the idea of better software (in the long run) and a better business model (from the customer's standpoint), a more sustainable business model.

On those occasions I use CPAN, it seems almost miraculous to me. The speed, simplicity, convenience, and the richness of what is offered is immeasurably beyond anything in the proprietary software world, and probably always will be. It will probably never be possible to achieve that while enforcing endless arbitrary license restrictions.

This year...

[Mathiasdm]

Ah, this definitely was the year of desktop Linux and the death of *BSD, the year in which I welcome Linus, our new KDE-loving overlord... Imagine a beowulf cluster of KDE-loving Linuses!

Re:This year...

[GPHlefou]

KDE sucks, I mean the environment is really awful with huge buttons as if everyone is blind. People should really use Gnome or Mac OS X to see a real desktop :)

Re:This year...

[Mathiasdm]

To be honest, I prefer Gnome as well...

*ducks from Linus' flaming sword of... well, flaming*

Re:This year...

[Edzor]

pah! try fluxbox

Re:This year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pagans...everyone who is anyone knows that the One True Desktop is - Blackbox!?

or perhaps just Xterm ;-)

Re:This year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not until it gets proper support for UTF-8 locales. I'll stick with Xfce4. Lighter than GNOME, but just as easy on the eyes.

Re:Really occurred?

[dajobi]

Office suites are a bad idea. MS Office is proof of that; it's the best product in its category, but it still really really sucks.

Be happy, not excited

[SilverspurG]

Industry estimates show some $400 million was invested in open-source startups in 2005

All $400 million? That's enough to buy Bill Gates' lunch, maybe, if he's eating light that day.

The market is still dubious about open source and for good reason. The big players, the ones pushing around 400 billion dollars, still control the legal avenues and we've seen that the legal avenues are being used in many ways to hedge out the OSS players. If $400 million in VC was invested in OSS startups then it really was venture capital in the truest sense of the term.

I'm happy to see OSS getting a foot in the door but I'm not going to break out the champagne and glasses until we see some real reform on both the business and political fronts.

Re:Be happy, not excited

[log2.0]

400 mil in US terms is almost half a billion. Sure, in perspective it isnt that much but that money was spent on the "start ups", not all of OSS. I think you need to put things into perspective.

2005 saw overall growth in OSS. It isnt going to overtake the world, but it is a step in the right direction.

Re:Be happy, not excited

[rhsanborn]

400 million is almost half a billion in non-US terms too...

Re:Be happy, not excited

[DrSkwid]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

10^12

The original meaning, established in the 15th century, was "a million of a million" (1,000,000^2, hence the name billion), or 10^12 = 1 000 000 000 000. This system, known in French as the échelle longue ("long scale"), was formerly used in the United Kingdom and is used in most countries where English is not the primary language. 10^12 is referred to as a trillion in the "short scale" system .

10^9

In the late 17th century a change was made in the way of writing large numbers. Numbers had been separated into groups of six digits, but at this time the modern grouping of three digits came into use. As a result, a minority of Italian and French scientists began using the word "billion" to mean 10^9 (one thousand million, or 1 000 000 000), and correspondingly redefined trillion and higher numbers to mean powers of one thousand rather than one million. This is known in French as the échelle courte ("short scale") and is now officially used by English-speaking countries, as well as Brazil, Puerto Rico, Turkey and Greece.

Re:Be happy, not excited

[nath_de]

No, it's not. In most countries, a billion is a million millions, not a thousand like in the US.

Re:Be happy, not excited

[amhmd]

400 million is almost half a billion in non-US terms too...

Well, not in British terms, where a billion is one million million (10^12).

Re:Be happy, not excited

[jelle]

Bill Gates is worth, what, 40Billion? 400 Million is still a lot then: I hope your net worth is better than 100 lunches...

Re:Be happy, not excited

[greenrd]

That's not correct. We Brits use the "thousand million" definition now as well - have done for many years. It would have been too confusing to have kept a separate incompatible definition of a number word like that.

Re:Be happy, not excited

[octopus72]

Here in Europe we still use, properly, 10^12.

Re:Be happy, not excited

[DrSkwid]

sadly you are only half right. The UK switched to a billion meaning 1000,000,000 which I was annoyed about. I don't remember the referendum on that one. Saves confusion when watching US tv I suppose.

Support is King

[JumpingBull]

IBM learned long ago that ongoing support generates a constant revenue stream.

That lesson was not lost on Novell, Redhat and I believe Ubuntu is following the same path

I think that we will see the application services and support companies running up the revenue stream. However, it takes talented people to seed this activity; one with a proven track record. I have been told that a VC looks briefly at the business plan, just to see it is thorough, knowing full well that as soon as the business opens it's doors, that plan will change as the prime movers identify the hot market needs.

So the quality of the people in the enterprise, and their successes is what gathers the most attention from the VC. It is the people that will make or break the business.

Re:Support is King

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally speaking, your business plan theory is true.

The get the basics of the business, look at what you've done, what you plan on doing then actually read up on your management structure.

You could be a company that markets dog poo to the homeless. If your management structure is right, a lot of VC's will just jump on.

Another big thing most people don't think about is the good'ol'boy system that the VC industry has going. If you know someone and get a referral, you're REALLY ahead of the pack. If you don't know someone, then you're more than likely going to get an offer along with 50 other groups to make a 2 minute speach about why you think you should get the money.

Re:Support is King

[mrjatsun]

Yeah right. IBM has opensourced a whole bunch of their products (DB2, lotus notes, rational, websphere). Nor do they use lock in strategies in their software or services ;-).

With the $1 billion dollars they supposedly invested in Linux development a year or two ago, they could have funded RedHat for ~ 7 years..

IBM is not the good guy. IMO, they are the #2 bad guy. They just spend tons of $$ on marketing to make them sound good.B ut when you look through the fluff they throw out there, very little of their money is spent on helping open source S/W.

Disclaimer, I work at Sun. But I have had my opinion of IBM since long before that.

MRJ

Re:Support is King

[TheBogie]

IBM learned long ago that ongoing support generates a constant revenue stream.

Yes, but IBM makes its support money by installing crappy software and then charging $325/hr for support (see this story http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240 ). Is this a catch-22 for open source software: if their software is good (bug-free) then the support money won't materialize; but if the software is bad every one will run back to Windows.

Re:Support is King

[Blakey Rat]

No crap. Even their off-the-shelf software is terrible.

The reason IBM is making tons of support on Lotus Notes is because *normal* email clients don't require support at all. (Note: I know Exchange servers need support, I'm talking about clients.) The stock reply to any gripe about Lotus Notes' crappy featureset or bugs is "your users need more training." Hmm, where do you get training for Notes? Well, IBM offers consultants for it...

Needless to say, I think what IBM is doing is wrong. The real shame is that they have such a strong sales department that they can still sell Notes to companies that should, by this point, know better.

Companies want someone to yell at!

[ErichTheRed]

Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?

The reason why open source vendors who act more like "real" companies do well is because corporate IT absolutely demands that they have someone to complain to when everything goes to hell. Imagine you're the CIO of a 25,000 person company who depends on its IT systems to make money. I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up. Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??

Companies like Red Hat enforce standards in an open source world that really doesn't have very many. They sell RHEL with the promise that you'll get tech support as long as you use their packages and software. That's a compelling argument. One thing I've been impressed with is commercial vendors' ability to call in massive amounts of help when a real emergency occurs. Red Hat, Novell, etc. are capable of that. Even if you have a support agreement with the makers of fooPackage, which happens to be the crucial link in your business process, can they guarantee that they'll work with you as long as it takes to solve a problem. Worse yet, let's say it's a multi-level problem between fooPackage, barPackage and blahPackage. Now you've got "dualing vendors" on your hands all saying "it's not our problem." Not that that doesn't happen in the commercial world, but a commercial OS vendor (Sun, Microsoft, IBM, etc.) is helpful in mediating those fights.

The Red Hats and the Novells are going to be the ones who finally get a Linux desktop on the market. That's because they'll pick one office suite, tweak the hell out of it, and make it a standard akin to MS Office. Companies want to know that their training dollars aren't going to be wasted. Most users learn one software package to do their jobs, memorize the commands, and will not readily learn anything new. That's what the Linux desktop is up against.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[dwandy]

Worse yet, let's say it's a multi-level problem between fooPackage, barPackage and blahPackage. Now you've got "dualing vendors" on your hands all saying "it's not our problem." Not that that doesn't happen in the commercial world, but a commercial OS vendor (Sun, Microsoft, IBM, etc.) is helpful in mediating those fights.

I'm not going to say that people don't use this as an argument against F/OSS, but it doesn't hold water. The Big Boys will use it's-not-us-it's-them when two bits don't work together, and they'll use it w/o blinking. The real downside when you're not in OSS land is that while they are arguing over who's going to fix it and who's paying who's bill and what support is covered your system may be down and there's f*all you can do about it. Contrast w/ OSS where if you're unhappy with the support levels and the two competing interests arguing over who's fault it is, you can toss them both and bring in someone to look at the source code... I'm not going to say this is an ideal solution, merely that all things being equal this option exists in OSS and simply doesn't exist if you don't have the source code... If anything, the dualing vendors argument only works against closed-source providers.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[Ironsides]

The reason why open source vendors who act more like "real" companies do well is because corporate IT absolutely demands that they have someone to complain to when everything goes to hell. Imagine you're the CIO of a 25,000 person company who depends on its IT systems to make money. I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up. Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??

Absolutely true. The last place I worked at was willing to buy products at 10x the price, so long as they had garunteed vendor support. Never underestimate how valuable a support contract is when your last parity drive has just failed on your raid and you have no spares left in the building.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right Erich, but they can yell at me for 80 an hour any day. You guys too, and there's a shortage of us. As far as foo vs bar goes, that's the exact reason I switched away from commercial to FOSS 5 years ago, you just have tp RTFM (or more often the appropriate newsgroup), if anything the problem is more difficult with proprietry stuff. Make hay while the sun shines gentlemen and ladies.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[dwandy]

Absolutely true. The last place I worked at was willing to buy products at 10x the price, so long as they had garunteed vendor support. Never underestimate how valuable a support contract is when your last parity drive has just failed on your raid and you have no spares left in the building

Fire the CIO.
Ok ok, I don't know the details and maybe it made sense in your specific instance, but for hardware I wouldn't pay 10x for the same thing; just buy 5x the number of required drives, swap your own drives and you'll still be ahead of the game... let's face it: this stuff will be obsolete long before you can't buy more drives.
I'm not sure how this would translate to software ... but I've maintained before that this 'having someone to blame' bit is just a sign of weak IT/management. So if you do a cost analysis and determine that the license fees are significant, and the risk assessment shows that there is strong probability (based on existing installations) that the proposed solution set will work then there is abolutely no reason to not strongly consider NOT paying those license fees, which decreases expenses and increases profits and gets you a raise/promoted/more-stocks/increases-stock- value/whatever...
Example: I think just about every internet provider runs some amount of OSS: Apache is probably the most common web-server. So, if you're starting a new provider service, would you discount Apache simply because there's no one to yell at? By buying proprietary software you'd be putting your company at a disadvantage before even opening the doors... turn that around and by adopting OSS before your competition does you can gain an advantage over them.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[richlv]

we just recently had a "situation" with a big, well known commercial vendor and their "enterprise" system.

the application supports only ancient operating system. and an unpatched version of it. nobody knows wether there will be a new version that would support something else.

then, without a warning, a new beta version is released. nobody knows wether this version will support a newer version of chosen operating system. support is silent.

public download is available. file, sized 1.5gb and containing "multiplatform" in the name. when finally downloaded, turns out, it contains only a version for a single platform. support does not respond to questions about versions/platforms supported (it is in beta already, remember).

and this is for a bloody PAYING CUSTOMER.

oh, installation of the software takes some 7 manual steps, each including a lot of obscure prompts and chances to screw something up. from 8 installations at the education lab _none_ is able to finish on the supported platform, there are no error messages. almost each install stalls at a unique point. the best was a finished installation that was unaccessible for unknown reason. of course, software is closed source, so good luck figuring out what is wrong.

screw big vendors. we have had similar experience with most of them - and problems are either solved inhouse, or we find ways to avoid them.

I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up.

well, from my experience that is the only thing you can trust (of course, by designing systems both from technical and personnel viewpoint very carefuly). unless you can make or break their business, big vendors don't give a shit about your problems even if you are a paying customer.

now, it is somewhat different with all these linux vendors, i assume - you get a support (and, at least at this state, they are interested in solving problems fast and nice) and if the support is unable/unwilling to help you in required time, you can tap into internal resources or look for help elsewhere. i believe that should be a requirement for any serious information system.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[marcosdumay]

"I think you'd be foolish to trust that the crew of experts you hired is going to stick around, and be able to solve any problem that comes up. Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??"

I call that bullshit! The only thing that "die" is hardware, and you shouldn't be dependent of any specific hardware. Software doesn't simply "die" (unless you are using that very secure OS that that very competent company sells), you shouldn't have any software emergency (problems on projects, otherwise, are expected).

But if you pay bellow market salaries, and exploits your crew of experts to the point of exaustion (guess what) you really shouldn't trust them (even more if you HR dept is full of morons), so you are more than excused from spending fortunes on support.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[Ironsides]

Ok, I guess I should clarify a little, the 10x is a bit of an exageration, but not by much, with some of the service contracts in the hardware. Some of the places are 20 miles from nowhere. A three hour drive to the airport would not be unreasonable and all of these places were scatered throughout the country (in every state). Some of the Alaskan sites would require a chartered flight to take you there as there are no regular flights. So we are talking some very remote places.

As for Apache, that's one example that doesn't require much support. Lets consider database servers that aren't loading up or an ordering system that just crashed and the fixes require tweaking some obscure configuration file that only the coders ever heard of or editing the registry. There are some very interesting things that can happen to computers and redundancy doesn't always solve the problem. Especially in places where space or power consumption/disipation is at a premium. Datacenters count every watt for both power bills and cooling. While the place I worked at wasn't a datacenter, the power bills were easily over $10k/month and the cooling system for the equipment dubed as the heating system.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[ErichTheRed]

I hope that wasn't with a top-tier support contract they could offer you. If it was, then I see why you can't stand big vendors. Some are really bad. HP is a good example...they don't seem to know what products they produce from day to day.

Believe me, I've been in your shoes trying to get Oracle, BEA, RedHat and HP to play nicely together.

As a counterpoint, think of this scenario...
1. CEO reads airline magazine article about open source, tells CIO to get right on it. Also stipulates that only "free" versions of products (i.e. Fedora vs. RHEL) be used. When warned about the insanity factor for this decision, CEO rebuffs CIO and says to get trained staff.
2. CIO realizes he doesn't have OSS expertise in house, and either trains his existing staff or brings in a crazk squad of experts.
3. After many fits and starts, System X is running in production and documented.
4. 20 of the 25 members of the crack squad quit for a better job offer.
5. A year later, System X fails spectacularly. CEO calls CIO and says the downtime clock is ticking at $1M+ a minute.
6. Turns out the documentation the crack squad wrote on all their code changes was incomplete or left out the "little hacks" that make the system work.
7. Call up RedHat. No support for Fedora.
8. Call up Apache. No support without a contract.
9. Call up YetAnotherCoolSharedLibrary.h coder in some other country. Sorry, it's free software, can't help you.

Your choices at that point are to hire consultants and write checks bigger than support contracts would cost, or to find the crack squad members again.

Your argument's valid because big vendors really do suck, but the alternative could possibly be worse.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[richlv]

I hope that wasn't with a top-tier support contract they could offer you.

that was a subcontractor who was dealing with them, and i am not even sure what support options were available for those products. but they supposedly were official distributors, who have to work with the company a lot, and their response when we asked "wtf ? why aren't they telling you supported platforms for beta stage software ?" was "oh, that's the way things are around here..."

they were used to being fscked over even being the ones to make the impression, to sell the software.

now, your scenario had at least two things that point to oversights when developing and managing system (though i understand they are not uncommon, to say the least...) - and that's why i mentioned that the system should be developed carefully.

4. 20 of the 25 members of the crack squad quit for a better job offer.

unless they quit at the same day (which means something is screwed up in the company pretty much anyway), persons responsible should be able to cope with personnel leaving.

6. Turns out the documentation the crack squad wrote on all their code changes was incomplete or left out the "little hacks" that make the system work.

if you don't trust them, find somebody with very little experience in given system (or do it yourself) and tell them to _exactly_ follow the instructions for setting the system up from the scratch. if this can be done without a problem, then at least most important things should be documented.
now, this has been stressed a lot - never create systems that can not be managed by somebody else. even if you have extreme loyalty and highest wages in the world, "accidents happen" ;>
everybody plans hw replacements/failovers to a great degree of detail, but human factor which should be considered the most risky one is forgotten oh-so-often (and i am being guilty here, too).

the thing is, in this scenario system has been running without a glich since most of the team mysteriously left - that must be a good thing ;). and if it fails so catastrophically, what guarantees do you have that vendor will fix it in a timely fashion, if at all ?

ok, let's phrase this a little differently - screw most big vendors :)
if you have a previous experience or a company is known for being able to help their customers before they go out of business - go for it.

Re:Companies want someone to yell at!

[bit01]

Absolutely true. The last place I worked at was willing to buy products at 10x the price, so long as they had garunteed vendor support. Never underestimate how valuable a support contract is when your last parity drive has just failed on your raid and you have no spares left in the building.

For the companies I've worked for I've been the client side coordinator of hundreds of different software support contracts of one sort or another, plus a few hardware support contracts. I've been on the vendor side of a few software support contracts also.

It's been my consistent real world experience that while hardware support contracts can be worthwhile in mission critical environments, annual software support contracts are an almost complete waste of time and money. Really. They provide no real world guarantees, nothing. I don't care how the contract is written, it's just too easy for the vendor to obey the letter but not the spirit of the contract.

For software you're much better off getting third party support on an hourly basis. Much cheaper, faster, more efficient and objective, even if you have to fly them in and pay extortionate rates. They also think more laterally and can solve problems with third party solutions more readily.

---

Keep your options open!

Re:this sounds like an excellent idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's good to set goals for yourself, but this seems a little impractical. If we assume Slashdot has a hundreds of thousands of readers in many countries, time constraints alone could prevent you from realising this. And how are you going to cover your travel costs? Or do you expect each and every one of us to come to you? Have you thought about age restrictions? And the fact that very probably not everyone would consent to this? You could very well find yourself arrested before you even manage 10% of us. I really don't wish to spoil your fun but I think your idea deserves some more careful thought and planning before it can be feasible. Good luck!

open source profitability

[BadassJesus]

samzenpus managed to put together words:

"Corporate America" "profitability" "way of business" "influx of cash"

with

"Open Source"

Wow! I've never seen them together before. Nice touch!

Re:open source profitability

[mrbriguy]

When it starts to mention "differentiation," "sustainable competitive advantage," and "industry factors" then open source will really be "in business!"

Issues with Open Source

[Exter-C]

Its a pain that I cannot recommend Linux as an operating system into many of our customers corporate environments simply because the vendor support is still not there. Here is a classic example of issues that I have faced with Linux over the last year. Recommending a customer to go with Linux would have required them to use GFS to keep it supported by Redhat, however there is no Veritas or Legato backup agent for GFS at this point in time which means they would have had issues backing up the file systems or having a system that would have been completely un supported. So we ended up recommending Solaris 10 with Veritas Cluster Server which we knew we could backup using the Legato or Veritas backup software and remain fully supported. The real issue is not that we cant support the product in house but its who does management call when things break which from my experience does not happen too often in a well designed and implemented solution. For linux to really be accepted on a broad scale enterprise offering it must have

- Fully supported file systems with fully supported backup agents for each system.
- Vender interoperability. Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 and Enterprise Linux 4. Some commercial applications will not work properly on 4 but will on 3 because of the compiler/libraries they had used to build the code.

As an open source advocate and someone who believes in the principals of open source things have come a very long way over the last year, but the real linch pins still remain and will remain for some time.

Re:Issues with Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Recommending a customer to go with Linux would have required them to use GFS to keep it supported by Redhat, however there is no Veritas or Legato backup agent for GFS at this point in time which means they would have had issues backing up the file systems or having a system that would have been completely un supported.

Excuse me sir, but this is an issue with Legato and Symantec (Veritas), not with Red Hat, Linux or Open Source. Legato and Symantec both claim to support Linux, but obviusly this support leaves a lot to be desired.

It amuses me that when this (broken third party apps) happens in Windows, user's don't call Redmond but the vendor of the broken app.

In conclussion, talk with your preferred backup software vendor, and if they are not helpful, look for an open source solution. Maybe Red Hat can give you some hints.

Re:Issues with Open Source

[cerberusss]

In September, RedHat brought out a press release saying GFS is now supported by Oracle, EMC and NetApp. I bet that Legato or Veritas backup support will follow next year.

However, that's too late for your current client.

Re:Issues with Open Source

[Exter-C]

The problem is with open source from the management view of things. It may not be something that you agree with but when you take a very simplistic view of things.. "it works with Solaris, It works with HPUX, it works with windows.. Linux must be the problem".

Unfortunatly its all about comparisons of products that people are familure with and know work. Once there are working products in those segments enterprise will have very little to moan about.

Re:Issues with Open Source

[spyowl]

Vender interoperability. Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 and Enterprise Linux 4. Some commercial applications will not work properly on 4 but will on 3 because of the compiler/libraries they had used to build the code.

What? Likewise, many closed source proprietary software vendors will support their packages on Windows 2000 but not on Windows 2003. So, guess what - many businesses are running a mixture of Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers for this reason alone. When the next version of the Windows server OS comes out, many vendors will hold out their support for it until months and sometimes years later. Your argument makes no sense; and it suffers from the same fault as many other posts with the "ahh, I know what's wrong with open source - it's XYZ" while the case of that XYZ is the same, if not worse, with the proprietary OSes.

Re:Issues with Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, we had several scanners that were bought by a PHB. Turns out the software works with Win95, 98, etc. but not NT. Guess what we use in our enterprise? Yep, lots of scanners that don't work with WinNT.

So, do I call the scanner company, which clearly stated on the box which versions of windows it worked with (but the PHB just understands 'works with windows'). Or do I call M$ since obviously something in NT isn't there that is in the other versions, or it is something that works differently in NT.

Oh wait, M$ will simply tell the PHB to upgrade (at a discount price of several hundreds of thousands of dollars...)

What a racket...and legal too!

Re:Issues with Open Source

[sad_]

Recommending a customer to go with Linux would have required them to use GFS to keep it supported by Redhat, however there is no Veritas or Legato backup agent for GFS at this point in time which means they would have had issues backing up the file systems or having a system that would have been completely un supported.

don't you see this is the problem with closed source software, imagine nbu being oss, a agent would have been available a long time ago, because a lot of people want/need this! ofcourse, veritas is in no rush to develop this agent, they rather sell thier own solution and get even more money. i agree though, that in a lot of cases closed software is holding back linux, in a lot of cases the vendors can not keep up with newer versions of oss, it looks like a weakness for us, but it really shows how weak they are in reacting to the market. (btw, this game goes for almost every new released os, hp software will take a while to support new stuff from sun, veritas is always late with hpux support etc etc)

Open Source Innovation

[obender]

Is open source just a substitute for the lack of innovation in closed source software? All these applications that are open source are in fact stuff we all know how to implement, it's just a matter of time and effort. We have an operating system, a database, an office suite nothing really new, they were bound to get open sourced. It's quite amazing that these type of applications are still making money in their closed source incarnation after all this years.

But what about new stuff? Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning? And even worse: will we notice?

I do admit that open source projects have features that commercial projects never bothered to implement (image dumps from video files in VideoLan comes to mind) but I struggle to find something completely new.

Re:Open Source Innovation

[Bert64]

I've not seen anything in the closed source world which can match Xdmx lately.. I believe SGI used to do something similar, but only with certain apps..

Re:Open Source Innovation

[Simon Brooke]

Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning?

• Freenet
• The World Wide Web: both the Web server...
• ... and of course the Web Browser, too.
• Up to the moment, there's Wiki
• And if you go back far enough in history, there's that computerised psychoanalyst that's generally not used exceptby middle aged computer scientists. I can't remember it's name, but it has a built in editor, too.

So nothing very significant, no.

Re:Open Source Innovation

[Hast]

But what about new stuff? Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning? And even worse: will we notice?

Bittorrent? Of course, that was preceeded by the arguably superior (and also OSS) SwarmCast which never caught on. Otherwise I'd say that there is quite a bit of research which is done in an OSS manner... but most people never hear of this. (Eg someone got excited about the innovating idea of running physics simulations on a GPU on ArsForums. This has been done for years on GPGPU, with plenty of OSS programs.)

Generally I'd say that there isn't much innovation in CSS neither.

In my opinion the big bonus with OSS compared to CSS is that most innovations are not really new. Taking something old and making it better is more common, and in some ways more useful. And naturally this is quite a bit easier with OSS than with CSS.

Re:Open Source Innovation

[marcosdumay]

Ok, you are a troll. But I'll answer anyway.

"But what about new stuff?"

What about the internet, is it enogth? If not, take a look at Sourceforge or the Debian repository, you'll see plenty of new stuff there. But if you are expecting open source to magicaly create hard IA or something like that, it won't.

"And even worse: will we notice?"

It semms that you won't.

"I do admit that open source projects have features that commercial projects never bothered to implement (image dumps from video files in VideoLan comes to mind) but I struggle to find something completely new."

Would you mind to tell what you mean on a coherent way?

Re:Open Source Innovation

[mysticgoat]

Is open source just a substitute for the lack of innovation in closed source software?...

1. Apache: Open from the beginning; innovative at the core in its method of extensibility
2. POV-ray: Open from the beginning; innovative from the beginning (one of the first ray tracers and consistently one of the best for single CPU work)
3. Firefox: completely rebuilt as open source; innovative in its methods of extensibility (consider its XULishness)
4. Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc: all without doubt innovative languages; all FOSS from day one
5. Linux: taking a teaching model of Unix and using it as a guide to build a kernel that can actually do real world work? That was innovative. The way code contributions are managed? That is something that has never been done before.
6. ...

I grow tired of this exercise and I wonder if it is pointless.

I suppose one can say that SpaceShip One was not innovative since the Chinese have documented prior art going back hundreds of years. It seems that discussions about innovation in FOSS are pointless right now, because too many of those who are pushing for these discussions are surreptitiously using "innovation" as a label for a particular way of looking at a product, and not as something that is intrinsic to that product.

If "innovation" is in the eye of the beholder, then it is a useless measure of the quality of any software. It becomes no better than "total cost of ownership", which is also demonstrably a matter of perception rather than a useful objective measure.

Re:Open Source Innovation

[OpenServe]

Is open source just a substitute for the lack of innovation in closed source software?

That's an awful broad statement. There is constant innovation in both open and closed source software. In some cases, yes, stagnation of closed software has been a breeding ground for open alternatives.

All these applications that are open source are in fact stuff we all know how to implement, it's just a matter of time and effort. We have an operating system, a database, an office suite nothing really new, they were bound to get open sourced.

It begs this question: Why are we trying to compete in the areas where innovation has already dried up? Today, few people are excited about new office suites, regardless of the source. Furthermore, MS already has an unshakable monopoly in yesterday's desktop-centric computing paradigm. But who cares?! The proper catalyst for change is radical innovation away from the status quo. (ie. data-centric, web-enabled, platform-neutral architecture)

It's quite amazing that these type of applications are still making money in their closed source incarnation after all this years.

It's not that amazing -- they're simply more polished than the Free alternatives. In the absence of a remarkably better alternative, most people just stick with what they are comfortable with. (and have already paid for) Also, there's an enormous amount of 3rd party business software that relies upon Windows and Office. Like I said, the desktop battle was lost years ago.. you might even say as far back as the death of OS/2. But again, why worry? The desktop is not the future anyhow.

But what about new stuff? Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning? And even worse: will we notice?

It's already happening! Right now, the largest and most important battle of innovation is between Java and the .NET platform. (In case you somehow haven't noticed, .NET is a replacement for the entire "legacy" Windows platform, from the ground up..) Both Java and .NET are vying for position in the post-desktop era. (data-centric/service-oriented architecture) Open Source from the beginning? Yes, on the Java side. The most relevant, most innovative Java technologies are all Open Source today. Unfortunately, many people have become distracted by alternative technologies that won't matter when the dust settles. The OSS community needs to get behind Java en-masse to stay on the cutting edge and compete effectively with .NET / Vista. Don't get me wrong.. Ruby and Python have their place, but they are accessories to the larger, dominant platforms that will drive the majority of future computing.

Re:this sounds like an excellent idea

[ringbarer]

Perhaps a more efficient means would be for the grandparent to fuck a select few 'root nodes' in the ass. At which point, these recipients, still dribbling with gelatinous manslop, can spread out further and fuck others in the ass on the grandparents behalf. The new receivers will then fuck others, also in the ass. (I believe the grandparent makes that clear). In essence we have the beginnings of a global pyramid of spontaneous homosexuality, with our friend the grandparent as the instigator of this sodomite orgy.

Embrace this Open Source Opportunity.

(It makes a fuckload more sense than free iPods!)

Re:Really occurred?

[Anonymous Coward]

Office suites are a bad idea. MS Office is proof of that; it's the best product in its category, but it still really really sucks.

I hate comparisons like this. They are so useless. It's like saying the Babylonians were the best mathematicians in their day, but they were really, really stupid. Or the Germans were the best physicists in their day, but they were really, really bad at physics.

You can gain no insight whatsoever with such a statement.

Best of 2005: Penguins hacked Microsoft Lobbyevent

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the greatest events around open source in 2005 was for me the penguin-hack of a microsoft lobbyevent in the parliament of berlin. very funny and with lots of pictures: Microsoft in Parliament.

What is the "old way of doing business"

[IntelliAdmin]

I belive that it always has been the goal of a corporation to make a profit. That did change during the dot-com-boom, but we see where that lead us!

let's ask MS

[alchemistkevin]

let's see what MS has to say about this !>!

Re:let's ask MS

[n00tz]

"I'm going to bury that Open Source, I've done it before, I'll do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Open Source."

:throws chair:

Re:Really occurred?

[linuxphile]

Open-xchange and Hula are both promissing. I would say that the Open-xchange version supported by Novell/SuSE is everybit as good as MS Exchange. Have you tried it?

My Impression

[Anonymous Coward]

I think open source did very well. We've seen some enhancements to KDE and Gnome, and even VI. I think UNIX as a whole has surpassed all obsticles that we couldn't have foreseen coming and I only hope things will get better. I have converted many over from the dark side to Linux/UNIX operating systems. I am also doing my part by contributing to a few open source programs in my free time. The movement is only growing stronger and will eventually overcome corporations producing closed source software because we as a community do not have to answer to shareholders. We do not have to meet unreasonable deadlines, we are developing for other users and we tend to get it right the first time. I look forward to contributing more code to various open source projects in 2006. If fact, it is one of my New Year resolutions :)

Re:My Impression

[Hiro Antagonist]

I can't say much for KDE or Gnome, having not used them for awhile, but I was a WindowMaker guy up until very recently; after trying out OS X, I switched, and I doubt that I'm ever going to go back, at least as far as my desktop is concerned. Servers are, of course, another matter -- Debian and FreeBSD where appropriate, all the way.

Unix needs to come out of the dark ages of X; if there is one thing crippling Unix desktop deployment, it's that POS of a windowing system. No standardized look-and-feel, can't even support on-the-fly resolution swapping, and honestly, font rendering on Linux sucks. I didn't even know what I was missing until I move to an OS where I can still use OSS apps (vi, LaTeX, etc.), but have things like drag-and-drop work as expected.

Personally, what I'd like to see in the next few years is an Aqua/Quartz-ish GUI for Linux/BSD. One that separates application interface logic and presentation; apps deal with abstract concepts (toolbar, button, canvas, textbox, etc.), and be able to talk to an interface library, which is a plug-in to the windowing system, that handles the actual drawing-of-the-interface. Since this library is pluggable, it can be swapped out, so you can have your GUI look like whatever the hell you want it to, and have that look-and-feel maintained with some degree of consistency across apps. Ditto for window management, desktop management, and the like, but there needs to be an integrated framework that ties all of this together, rather than the billion-different-toolkits currently employed.

C'mon, let's give Apple and Microsoft a run for their UI money! *grin*

Re:My Impression

[Burz]

I generally agree about X11, although on the specific point of switching resolutions I believe Xorg supports that. It's setting up the master configuration that sucks.

You might be interested in a prior thread about this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171888&cid=143 13930

Re:My Impression

[Hiro Antagonist]

It only supports res switching on a connected monitor. The problem with this is that, if you're a laptop user, that only one display is 'connected' when X starts up, so switching from the internal display to the external display doesn't work without losing X.

Even Windows gets this right.

Re:My Impression

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I hate X as much as the next guy, but I think some of your complaints are invalid, or at least miss some of the facts.

1) Can't switch resolution on the fly: yes you can, using randr (in KDE, launch the KRandRTray program and you can switch resolution and frequency from a right click menu in the system tray -- that's pretty damn easy, if you ask me).
2) Toolkits are inflexible: yes and no. It's true that a program written from GTK can't use Qt widgets and vice versa. But, these toolkits are fully themeable, so you can make them look like the widgets belonging to other toolkits. There are some new projects like Rudi that will try to make it possible for apps using one toolkit to use features of another.

Re:My Impression

[mattyrobinson69]

i stopped reading here

> can't even support on-the-fly resolution swapping

because my monitor must be getting closer/further away when i press control-alt-(minus/plus), or when i use krandrtray all the time at work (webdeveloper - need to test different resolutions)

One word:

[Dystopian Rebel]

Ubuntu.

Re:One word:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, Ubuntu is very cool. I'm a business applications developer in a Windows/.NET shop. I make my money on Windows and for that reason alone I probably won't stray too far away from it... but......

I also spend my own time learning about OSS and Linux. I have installed probably a dozen distros over the last few years on my personal systems, mostly to play around and get conversant. My opinion is that Ubuntu has the best usability of all the distributions I tried, including most of the biggies like Redhat/Fedora, Mandrake and various Knoppix derivatives. With Ubuntu the hardware detection, menu structure and labeling, the package updater, the font sizes, built-in utilities, everything is very very friendly. (Confession: I have not tried Linspire; last I heard you had to pay for it which defeats the purpose when there are highly stable and usable alternatives)

For those interested in dabbling in the Linux world, I think Ubuntu is the first thing they should see.

Well, maybe a better plan is to show them applications like Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Audacity and GIMP on Windows. *Then* take them to a nicely done Linux box (like Ubuntu) and let them see those apps in Linux. It will be a pleasant surprise to most users how soft the barriers have become to Linux desktop adoption.

Free Software!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source doesn't mean squat if the software is not Free. Where would so called "open source" software be today if everyone was not Free to use it how they see fit. The vast majority of Slashdot users love and use Free software, but everyone refers to it as "open source". Acknowledge your freedom before it gets taken away from you. Free sofware is available to everyone. "open source" is a development model and is increasingly becoming big business.

Keep smiling knuckle heads. For if the community does not recognize that Freedom is the most successful tool for so called "open source" software. It will not last and will become just another business.

Old Way?

[buddha42]

Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?"

What the hell does this mean? Are you saying the "new" way of doing business means not achieving profitability?

Re:Old Way?

[bhmit1]

What the hell does this mean? Are you saying the "new" way of doing business means not achieving profitability?

It means that corporate america seems to be saying "open source is great, where do we buy it" instead of considering how to adjust their business to better utilize OSS. They seem to be jumping on the latest buzzword or trend without really understanding the value. And the boom of Red Hat seems to be indicating that people are buying OSS rather than buying into the OSS concept. Phrasing it to avoid "shouldn't Red Hat want to make a profit" confusion would have taken a few more brain cells working than I had before the morning sugar rush, sorry.

Good year for Open Source...

[ursabear]

I think it was a very good year for Open Source software.

In 2005, my work projects benefited highly from open source libraries. My testing software would have been very time-consuming to write without open source software. In general, it has saved me quite a bit of time and aggravation.

In addition, each time I proposed open source as a means of supplying something I needed to use, I didn't need to justify it to the project management types - they understand the power and the value now...

Perhaps a sea change is occurring that makes it a little more understandable (to corporate types) that the volunteer work of a few benefits the many.

A big thanks to those who have burned the midnight oil just to provide software for the rest of the world!

Sign of succes I guess

[SmallFurryCreature]

Red Hat is now apparently one of the good old boys. Mmmm, well ehm, that is good isn't it? Better then if it would be considered as a bunch of commie hippies. While I like commies and hippies they are usually not that popular in coorperate america.

Red Hat perhaps shows that you can make money from Opensource software. IBM already knows this. You give the software away for free. Then charge them their first born for support. Business never changes. Buy cheap sell dear. Nothing is cheaper then opensource, and nothing is more expensive then IBM tech support. Well MS support if you think downtime expenses should be charged to support costs.

Re:Really occurred?

[water-and-sewer]

Yeah, rocket scientist: that explains Microsoft Office's really weak sales. For your information I take a look around every computer store I go into to see what kind of boxed software is selling. In the Washington DC Best Buys there used to be a single copy of StarOffice for sale and now there isn't. They don't even bother to sell it any more. Meanwhile, Microsoft Office enjoys the star location in the center of the laptop shelves on a big "recommended purchase" stand.

Say what you like about office suites, the folks in Redmond are making big bucks off of them.

Call

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooner or later, something high-profile will die. Who do you call??

Ghostbusters! <cue music>

Re:Really occurred?

[sstern]

I keep beating the drum about this. There's no reasonable way to do a mail merge *to email* in Oo. It's just a couple of clicks in Word. Evolution is not as good as Outlook. I would love to go Linux on the desktop (and have done so at home), but I cannot see bringing it into the office as the default setup.

prior art

[tepples]

I'm suing you because you stole my ... template idea

Not if I can show prior art.

Flamebait? You've had too much crack today!

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is not flamebait. Go back and keep sucking on your crack rocks, moderator.

But what about Nethack?

[zindorsky]

No year without a new release of Nethack can be considered a good year for Open Source.

$400 million = 8,000 jobs

[pieterh]

Assuming a salary cost of $50k, we're talking about eight thousand open source programmers. OK, a chunk of this money is going to overheads. Say 5,000 open source programmers.

That is not a lot in the global IT business, but when you consider that in order to be paid to develop open source you usually need to be a *lot* better than an average programmer, and when you consider that such programmers are significantly more productive (10 times or more) than average programmers, we're talking about a large slice of the best of software development.

The open source model is seriously more efficient than the closed source one, also as regards the internal costs of developing technology. Compare the size and cost of the Firefox team to the Microsoft MSIE team (when it was in serious development).

I know, because my business has done both, and it's always been the open source that comes out best and cheapest.

We also found our first main corporate sponsor for large-scale (for us) open source development at the end of 2004, and in my experience, there are real and viable open source business models, mainly based on the fact that most closed-source products and vendors are really quite mediocre. Provide a comparable product, and better service, which is easier to do if the product is open source, and you can earn decent money.

Well, you can come back to my comment in six months' time when we release the product we're being paid to build, and when we start to build a business out of supporting it!

Learn something new every day

[CrazedWalrus]

Color me surprised. I had no idea. This is a prime example of why I read this site. Sometimes it seems like it's not difficulty finding information -- it's a matter of even knowing to look for it. Can't know what you don't know sort of thing.

The real value of Teh Intarweb.

2005? Who cares about 2005?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why worry about 2005 when 2006 is clearly going to be:

"The Year of the Linux Desktop" !!!

(If not, then definitely 2007...)

Re:One word: Ubuntu

[sweetnjguy29]

I agree. I think that the biggest advance in open source software was the streamlining of Debian into Ubuntu. Its simplicity, ease of use, and the fact that it just works out of the box makes it a winner. Any idiot, including myself or my company's IT staff could install it.

Same as last year

[Kismet]

"in 2005, the software movement finally gained traction in Corporate America and saw a new influx of VC cash."

It seems like I read very similar claims made in 2004.

Re:Really occurred?

[Kjella]

"Office suites are a bad idea. MS Office is proof of that; it's the best product in its category, but it still really really sucks."

I hate comparisons like this. They are so useless. It's like saying the Babylonians were the best mathematicians in their day, but they were really, really stupid.

Well, not really. It's like saying "Yes, this dual Gefore 7800 GTX 512 SLI overclocked and watercooled is the fastest you can get, but you still can't get photorealistic renders in real-time and that really really sucks."

In marketing they'd call that an unfulfilled desire, a "market pull" (as opposed to creating a new desire people didn't know they had until they saw your product). Saying "I think it could be done much better than what is the current state of the art" is not useless. The opposite would be "This software already does everything I need in an excellent way." Big difference.

Then again, it doesn't really help unless someone can find a better way. Customer wishes often go from unrealistic (really obscure features) to egosentric (I want it custom-tailored to fit me, despite that making it worse for all others) to psychic (I expect this program to know what I'm trying to do, even if I'm completely inept at describing that to the program).

Re:Really occurred?

[sickofthisshit]

Perhaps Microsoft, as many retail suppliers do, pays or rewards the retailer for good product placement?

Now, if you said Best Buy has trouble keeping MS Office in stock, while StarOffice ends up in the $2 bargain clearance bin, that says something about consumer demand.

2005 was a great year for open source

[gnuguru]

It saw Microsoft's bloated slothful SBS replaced in it's thousands by swift lean *nix and bsd boxen, which are easy to administer, and easy to update.

Not one of our clients are going to "upgrade" to another Microsoft server platform. Not one. After years of exploits, lock in, and "useless feature which leads to a format", even the most dedicated Microsoft fans are jaded.

It saw USB support on all major distro's, plaug in a camera, and be greeted by an import photo wizard.

Plug in an external drive, and start filling it up. Plug in almost anything USB and just start using it. Thanks kernal gurus, you just made the garden variety user want to use Linux.

Happy new year to Apache, QMail, Sendmail, Bind, DJBDNS, Xorg, Firefox, and Bram Cohen.

All the best for the next year!!

Re:2005 was a great year for open source

[(-hrair-)]

*wipes away tear*

Yes, it was most definitely a great year for open source. I believe more people will start using it now than ever before! Onward and upward! Long live, Firefox and Thunderbird! Now we've begun to invade that territory where the Gates had been shut before. Now sites will have to start changing their page so Firefox can see them well too. Oh, I can hardly wait...

(-hrair-)

Re:Really occurred?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.. Screw groupware. (speaking in general, not of the Novell product.. I am including Exchange)

This is crap that was designed when Microsoft and most people beleived that TCP/IP was bloated and the Internet was a fad.

PCs had to file sharing capacity, no serving capacity, no cpu, no ram, and everything was run around on big 'servers' that had all the capacity and were outragiously expensive.

That's why Exchange and such has all this document handling features and whatnot that almost nobody uses. It is designed as "the one big answer to all your office issues".

Which is crap. Monolithic programs are crap. Exchange is crap, and everybody knows it, and anybody that uses it will have a hard time getting away from it because they molded their company around Exchange instead of making exchange work for them.

The only sane way to get away from it for many people is to find a replacement.

Linux doesn't have replacements. It has alternatives.

Beleive it or not many large companies don't use Exchange, don't want Exchange, and wouldn't be able to use it. Not using Exchange is not putting them at a competative disadvantage and it's not costing them any more then anything else. There are plenty of ways to do what you want without it.

Remember:
MS != GOD
and
Exchange != your salvation

Same thing goes with Linux and any of the software there.

Anyways.

If you want a alternative with Outlook and Kontact support for your KDE desktop as well as web-based interfaces and probably lots of other stuff take a look at Kolab.
http://www.kolab.org/

It's suppose to be pretty nice.

Re:this sounds like an excellent idea

[Rinkhals]

Mr. Ballmer? Is that you?

Re:Really occurred?

[pfleming]

I keep beating the drum about this. There's no reasonable way to do a mail merge *to email* in Oo. It's just a couple of clicks in Word. Evolution is not as good as Outlook. I would love to go Linux on the desktop (and have done so at home), but I cannot see bringing it into the office as the default setup.

So you want to be able to send a .doc by email and OO.org won't let you? Boo Hoo. Email should be text anyway. It's the "desire" to have interactive/pretty email that brings the internet to a crawl because your cubicle mate sent you email titled "I love you".
Or is it that you need to send email to a whole bunch of people and can't figure out how to write it using an email client?

Re:Really occurred?

[sstern]

No, sending a .doc by email is easy and works just as well with OO as Outlook. Just us the client's file -> attach menu.

I want to be able to do mail merge:

    Dear > >, etc.

OO does a nice job of this if the output goes to a file or a printer, It does a miserable job if the output is to be piped out to email. With Word, all one needs is a MAPI mail client. For OO, it appears it requires JavaMail. However, you'll find that after installing JavaMail, you keep going down an endless chain of dependencies that fail to reach a resolution.