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Dealing with Corporate FUD About Linux?
Lumpy asks: "After this morning's IT conference call, Linux was once again attacked here in the company by the upper management as 'a threat' to our company security. With articles, like the recent one from Information Week, fueling the Upper management with outdated information and half truths, how does an IT professional defend his position and educate upper managers to take those articles with a tiny grain of salt and trust their experts? Should we as professionals expect to be attacked for our decisions, even though Linux has prooven itself (time and time again), for over 5 years in our company? How do you deal with all of the baseless claims, that your superiors may read in the mainstream media?"
Be honest and matter-of-fact about it. Tell them the truth and hope that they are smart enough to realize how this will help the company.
You can say impressive things without lying. For instance, you can say (if it happens to be true): "I trust Linux for my home computer and all my important files." That alone means alot. Or you can say "if I were asked to place a $1000 bet on a computer OS that would run without getting infected with viruses or crashing for a whole year (while connected to the net!) I would place the bet on Linux instead of Windows."
Or, you can point out other projects/companies. For instance, according to top500.org, in 2005, 390 of the top 500 super-computers were using Linux. That means that 78% of super-computers run Linux. For instance, the world's most powerful computer is IBM Blue Gene, and it uses Linux for its I/O nodes (more info here). Also, Google's gigantic, powerful, and distributed search engine runs using over 60,000 Linux machines (more info here, here, and on Google's Research page). The fact that big, complicated, and highly successful operations use Linux shows what it can do. In the case of Google, it shows that they trust it to deliver the security they need.
You can urge them to get a second opinion. For instance, tell them to look over Secunia's report on Windows XP compared to Ubuntu 5.10.
Ultimately, however, all you can do is provide them with an honest assessment of Linux' strengths and weaknesses, and point out in what ways the media reports are wrong. If they respect your opinion, then they'll make the right choice. If they refuse to listen to reason, then there is nothing you can do. People who are more interested in media sound-bites than expert discussion are essentially impossible to convince of anything they don't already believe. Don't waste your time, and don't buy company stock.
Fight the FUD with benefits to the company for switching to linux. Here is a nice list of 25 reasons to use linux in your organization from the linux information project. They also have a list of success stories with links for companies that successfully switched to linux.