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 With articles, like the recent one from Information Week, fueling the Upper management with outdated information and half truths, how does an IT professional defend his position and educate upper managers to take those articles with a tiny grain of salt and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?"

Comments

Re:my advice

[Captain Sarcastic]

That's pretty much what I tried. The down side is when the boss asks, "OK, so if it's free, how do the people who build the distro make money?"

This isn't quite as pointy-haired as it might sound. With some of the monkeyshines that went on during the dot-com craze, with various companies bragging about their respective cash burn rates, many managers want to have an idea that the company who is providing the software will be around in X number of years.

Of course, another approach is to point out that, "Well, you know, MS-DOS worked just fine, and nobody had complained about the 80-by-25 character cell screen... so how come we aren't still using it? Because [at this point you will want to sigh - DON'T!] Windows 3.1 did things well that MS-DOS was only marginally capable of doing."

Of course, depending on the manager, they might look at you funny when you mention "MS-DOS", but bear up...

You ARE the linux expert.

[Spy der Mann]

The so-called analysts are NOT. Plus, there's the SELinux distribution promoted by the NSA, and it's as secure as Fort Knox. (well that's what you can say. And certainly your boss can't contradict the NSA, can he? ;-) )

Define "free".

[jd]

Local phone calls are free, but AT&T and Bell aren't exactly poor.

Google is "free" to use as a search engine, but any company that can "report revenue of $1.919 billion" for a single quarter can probably afford to pay the staff. I wouldn't advise asking your CEO when he last made almost two billion in a four month timespan, though.

Linux is "free" (as in price) if you get no assurance and minimal support. If, on the other hand, you want EAL4-rated Linux (certified for commercially-sensitive and confidential information for Government use in Europe and the US) with 24-hour support, fine-tuning of hardware and software, etc, then you pay a bit more. Same software, different parameters.

I'd argue that there are examples even the dimmest PHB can understand - some have been around long enough to just be accepted, others are so stinking rich that the arguments self-evidently don't hold.