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Advocating Linux / OSS to Management.
An anonymous reader writes "I'm the Senior Developer at a fairly large agency, we're currently a 100% LAMP shop, but I've heard a reliable report through the grapevine that the management a few levels above our office wants to standardize our region on MS .NET. As I'm sure most of you can appreciate, to do such a thing would be... counterproductive, and I could really do with a hand conveying this to a manager whose only real knowledge of Linux is "if it's so good, why would you give it away for free"?"
Because the authors are hippies. ;)
or:
Because they make bucketloads from support. Kinda like razors and razorblades.
Have you used proprietary software before such as Calyx Point? We asked them if they had a feature in their application before we migrated from a Linux fileserver to a Win2k3 fileserver/Point Data Server, and they said Yes they do. Turns out, that feature was a bug, because it got "fixed" at the next (mandatory, due to updating laws) upgrade.
One upgrade, I reported (scratch that, I had to explain it to the call center guy) 3 bugs in their software. I have waited for support for over an hour before I hung up. In fact, the last couple times I've called, I've had to hang up before a person answers. Last couple emails I've sent have gone unanswered.
You know who's fucked? Me. You think I can convince them to switch apps? Haha haha ha. ha.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I suggest you print out Microsoft' EULA from things such as Windows, Office, Visual Studio and the .NET Framework, highlight the paragraph stating you can't do anything to Microsoft if use of their product results in damage to your company, hardware, finances, etc. then leave it on their desk along with a cost of migrating from your LAMP environment to Windows Server/.NET
:P
People think that because you pay for it you get support or compensation when it goes wrong but you don't. You cannot do anything, when you agree to that EULA you agree that it isn't a perfect solution, it may screw up and your business might lose billions because of it. If that happens tough luck, you c^Hshould have bought Enterprise Edition and had a clustered solution
Saying that I don't hate MS. For some thing Windows is fine and I am happy to use it just as I am happy to use Linux or Solaris or AIX.
At the end of the day if the company you work for wants to change to MS that is up to them, if you feel it is a bad move for the company explain why. If they still switch to MS you can always find another job if you hate it that much. Their are plenty of FOSS based companies around.
I wish I could mod this one up, but since I already made two comments prior...
There's a lot of differences to consider when considering MS and OSS. I think among the differences that I think is the most significant is the local company's intelligence required. With Microsoft's software, the batteries (brains) come included. With OSS implementations, the people putting it together need more collecting intelligence and understanding of what they are doing.
The consequences that befall afterward, however, are quite well illustrated in history... worms and other malware spreading wildly because of default configurations and all that. (This is not limited to Microsoft... put an idiot behind the wheel of a Linux box and it'll suffer too!)
It's not that people are smarter when they use Linux, it's that smarter people who see things as they really are choose Linux.
I work in a more political environment, so the "let's switch over to MS so consulting firm XYZ can have some tax dollars, too!" rings through the halls fairly often (believe it or not, GOP or DFL are both equally willing to toss people's money to their buddies every chance they get). However, since it usually moves at the speed of politics, it almost never fully comes true. The price tag is either too high, or the solution is too impractical - even if we start down that road, we never finish (oh, you bet the consulting firm still makes out like a bandit).
Moving to Microsoft takes a big decision, and a big investment. A lot of things tend to go wrong along the way. The LAMP option meanwhile can sit on a back burner until either the MS solution doesn't live up to it's hype, or the cost of ownership starts to impact your business and you start looking at other options.
LAMP can also be a great integrator. We use Apache in places as a reverse-proxy for various IIS servers running proprietary commercial software. While the IIS server is still vulnerable to attack on port 80, all other attack vectors on that platform are cut off. The Apache web server in the front also allows for central (and extremely customizable) logging and better error reporting & handling.
There are ways to keep LAMP in the MS shop, and generally when the money counters DO realize the difference in the cost of ownership, LAMP (in one fassion or another) tends to succeed in the long run.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
Having people to "hold accountable" (which they never are) is more important to my company than having something that actually works.
There's something to that observation. If management spends millions on Microsoft products and something stops working, there's the convenience of blaming Microsoft. Strangely, that appears to work. There's no accountability assigned to the people suggesting they spend millions on products that require near constant tweaking to keep working right. Or that a less expensive and more reliable solution was overlooked.
I'm a hired gun so I'll use whatever the customer wants. It all pays the same whether I'm setting up a LAMP server or 2003. I do make certain to present both alternatives, so when the costs of the Microsoft environment balloon out control I can point back to the fact that they made the choice.
They just never seem to learn. Once in a while the light bulb comes on. I have one small office customer replacing his laptops and workstations with Macs. Not all at once, just as the machines are due for replacement. Many of those office workers would have been fine on Ubuntu, but he just wasn't ready to go that far yet. Another mid-size customer lost their Windows-or-die admin and want to talk about replacing the 20 seats in their call center workstations with Linux. That's pretty much a slam dunk since the call center apps are all web-enabled.
Some signs of progress. :)
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
In a big company, you don't have a choice. When it comes to FUD versus real information, FUD will always win, no matter what. It's how big companies work. They don't ask, "How much could this make our company better" to make decisions, they ask, "How much could it cost me if it screws up?" Why do you think FUD is such an essential strategy in Microsoft's marketing campaign?
So what I'm saying is that the choice comes down to either fighting fire with fire or being stuck using .NET software. I hate that big companies work that way, but that's what where we are. (Of course, you can try to change your corporate culture, but that will likely end up with you being miserable, or worse, fired.) I'm not being facetious when I say that each person out there will have to make their own choice as to how badly they want something that works and what they can live with themselves for doing.
One thing you didn't mention, is exactly what your LAMP stack is used for. Is it solely to run internal systems or does your agency make a living selling software and services? The answer to this question may have a large bearing on what your management is considering.
I work for an organization that sells software and services. I oversee the review of requests to use any F/OSS in the organization prior to the request going to legal for approval.
From the company's perspective, using F/OSS tools for day to day work, as developer boxes, etc. is just fine, but when F/OSS components are being requested that will be incorporated into the actual product, then legal gets concerned.
Because of the GPL distribution requirement, our legal staff does not permit GPL licensed components to be used in applications. We have some allowances for BSD, Apache and in some cases LGPL, because they do not mandate source code distribution, which for competitive reasons we do not wish to do.
So, we'll run on Linux servers (or AIX or Solaris as appropriate, best tool for the job), we'll use F/OSS databases (MySQL, Postgres and also SqlServer, Oracle and DB2 as needed), but we're very careful with developed products.
Since you don't give any details about what your shop does with the LAMP stack, I would be willing to give management the benefit of the doubt that they actually have reasons for why they want to move, and not all of them are driven by Microsoft sales agents.
I would take the time to understand what the reasoning is from either finance or legal or whoever is pushing this before trying to argue the point. Think of it as a typical debugging exercise: first you identify the cause, then you plan the fix.
2. By making it as Free as possible you lower the entry barrier to a vast international body of security researchers and software developers to both audit and improve the codebase of software they are dependent on.
You're mistaking my stand.
I'm not pro-Microsoft. I'm pro-do-your-job.
ALL the points you made are valid, and between you and me, I'd rather use Linux.
In fact I use Linux exclusively at home. It IS better, and I should know: they used to call me Mr. Windows. I've developed device drivers for every version of Windows from 3.1 on up to Windows 2000, also services and regular GUI apps. I'm a master of Win32 programming.
Up until a few years ago, I was TOTALLY ignorant of Linux, but then I noticed a trend; as time went by, Microsoft was trying more and more to limit information about their internal implementation of just about everything while becoming more and more restrictive with their licensing.
At the same time I was growing more and more curious (maybe nostalgic) for clean, lean code and designs in software. This naturally brought me towards Linux more and more.
As things stand now, It's essentially over: Microsoft will eventually be supplanted everywhere by Linux. It is inevitable, the snowball is rolling down a hill and getting larger by the day, and for good reason.
Even so, there are still mis-steps to be made along the way.
So my argument is not that MS is superior (heavens no!) but rather that until you are asked for a solution, you should not try to give one. It is useless.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I am upper management, and I advocate OSS whenever possible.
As a manager, I'm interested in two things - cost and productivity. If I can use a piece of software and get the job done faster and cheaper, I'll use it. End of story.
There are no other variables.
Now, as a technology geek - I have two 24" monitors on my desktop (running XP) and a 17" laptop (running SUSE) with me all the time - I want to use OSS because it is cool and because I despise Microsoft's business model. However, that philosophy will not fly with executives. They simply want to know how I'm going to save money and get stuff done faster. They don't give a sh-- about Linux vs. Microsoft.
One other thing. I personally have a $7M budget for FY 2007/2008. About $1.5M of that is for software services and supplies and another $2M is for hardware. That means the majority of my "expenses" are for personnel. Again, executive management wants to know how to make things cheaper / faster / better. If I need to spend more on personnel to get an incremental savings in software, it ain't gonna look good.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
You make the claim that we all "know" a move from LAMP to .NET would be "counterproductive." Why would we automatically know that? We have no insight into your organization's business needs and technology offerings. Perhaps it's your blind allegiance to platform, and the lack of depth to your argument that makes your business so quickly dismissive of you. If making the move truly is as bad as you say, then you should have justifiable business reasons for it. You should
.NET platform. The easiest thing in the world to do is pout and blame everything on the PHBs. Are they planning to integrate your home-built software with other third-party packages (such as accounting or CRM software)? Are they looking to expand your technology beyond a web platform? (since we have no insight, I'm throwing some pretty raw speculation out there) If you have an understanding of why the higher-ups feel a platform migration is a worthwhile venture, you can attempt to find areas where your current platform does or can fill those same needs.
.NET migration, it needs to be done by GOOD developers who care about their craft. Outsource a project like this and you end up with poorly-designed, tightly-bound software. It will be .NET applications written as if they were scripting languages.
1. Understand why your management feels the need to move to a
2. Understand why you think there is nothing wrong with staying on your current platform. Don't forget, effort is a key piece here. Such a big platform migration will not be done easily or quickly -- I would say that's at LEAST a 1-year project for your team. So that's an entire year where the organization is focused on the basis of its technology and not on moving the business forward. If management thinks the magic wand is a bunch of cheap programmers from India, they're in for a huge disappointment. If you're going to get the most of a
It's painfully easy to say "we do it better now." It's a little more difficult to explain why. If you feel strongly about the topic, come up with a reasoned argument. If you can't do that, perhaps your position is not so strong after all, and you get what you deserve.
Your LAMP shop is probably filled with dedicated and hardworking professionals. That's great.
.NET. Your company will have to pay upfront in the hopes that they can get rid of the expensive people (like yourself) and reap the rewards down the road with cheap labor and systems. You and I know that this strategy will fail, but your senior management doesn't. They've been duped.
That being said, executive-level management don't care. They want to commoditize your department but they've been told by a management consultant that your operation is too complex to outsource at this time.
So, step zero is to standardize your operation on
It's time for you to revisit your resume and seek employment with a company that understands and respects talented IT professionals. Your current executives want to replace you. You should replace them by leaving.
Management types like *business* reasons. So here is what I tell people.
.Net is desired, it may be better to focus on Mono instead. Mono is compatible in most cases with .Net (and will run even some Microsoft .Net tools like WIX), and it is fully cross-platform unlike .Net. If you write Mono code, you will be able to run it on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux, but if you write .Net code, you may not.
:-)
The fundamnetal difference between open source software and Linux is not whether people pay but rather who pays for what when. Microsoft pays developers to build software and absorbs all of the costs themselves. They then charge license fees to recoup those costs and make a profit. Open Source software costs money at the development stage too, but only the people or businesses that need those changes enough to pay for them must do so. Consequently the difference is that open source software spreads the cost of development around up front on an on-demand basis, while Microsoft charges in arrears and must control certain aspects of the use of that software to make money.
As a result, moving to Microsoft software would require:
1) paying license fees
2) paying someone to track software licenses
3) a move from a solid, peer-reviewed codebase where users and developers actually talk to eachother to one where marketing runs everything.
4) scrapping all existing code and building everything from scratch.
5) The loss of a large measure of control over your own existing infrastructure.
Furthermore, Microsoft tech support is pretty much worthless these days.
Additional points the management should consider if there are concerns about Linux:
1) IBM is far larger than Microsoft and is putting substantial development effort into Linux. Linux is no longer the hobbiest operating system and there are a lot of people working on making it work well on high-end hardware.
2) If
If they are not convinced, take a look at my web page and call the sales number
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This is a false comparison
I agree with your post, but I was responding to the parent. I'm just saying that the someone to sue argument doesn't hold up, because proprietary software built on Linux will be well supported or not, just as proprietary software built on Windows will be (or not). The suing of the OS company will never go over well, because they will ask about hardware, configuration, network layout, ISP, electrical ratings, etc.
The point of "free" software is not "free of cost" its "free market".
Right, unless you're poor (like outside the US poor), which I agree that in our context does not apply. I just thought it worth mentioning.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Solar energy is free and keeps the earth warm. Wind energy is free.
Linux is not free as such. Linux is a product shared between enterprises and universities who pays for the people developing it. And then there are lot of hobbyists who do it for something, which can be anything from getting street credit among peers to using at as references to get real jobs. I think everybody in the Open Source movement gets something out of it in one way or another.
Microsoft on the other hand just has salary slaves that not once has delivered what promised, or if the have delivered, then normally with a delay of 3-5 years. Where is WinFS ? Promised for Windows 2000, then 2003, then Windows Longhorn, and now postponed yet again. It has been hyped so much for 10+ years, yet never reached any level of useability. This is what you get from a marketing controlled company.
Open Source on the other hand implements what one or another user/partner needs, when they need it. In my old job, we used a lot of OSS, and when we were missing features, or I found bugs, then I contributed it back to the project. The result was, that the next release has my features, somebody else would use them, and continue develop and debug them, and basicly take over responsibility for it.
Now I work in a company that loves Microsoft, and MS is our best friend. But most of their products are not enterprise scalable or enterprise quality. We can do nothing to fix this. We can contact our TAM, and hope MS will fix this. One time we had one of the MS developers flown in to on-site to debug his code for 1+ week. This was in a strategic MS product for enterprises, but did not scale to companies our size. And we are a small company with 5000 Windows desktops.
MS also not provides an enterprise size fileserver. NTFS sucks so bad. If a server crashes with many small files on a 1TB volume, then it takes many hours to get back online. Diskchecking is just unacceptable slow compared to standard journaled filesystem. Apple's HFS+ Journalled is way better, so is EXT3, Reiser FS and most other filesystems not from MS.
MS is some of the worst you can pay for. If management wants to pay, buy from a small supplier, then they will take ownership of bugs, and fix them within few days. A company like MS normally will not.
ah, that's full of bs, sure, managers are evil, only after money and blah, blah, blah... i am from germany and i am currently working on my doctor degree, in business, here in the usa, and i am paying for my studies by myself, as i did for my bachelor in business and for master in business, by running a web development/marketing company, writing a lot of code by myself. where did i learn to write code? i learned it by myself, no need for a degree in cs... why could i do that? because i enjoy doing it... why did i study business? because it broadens my horizon, something that obviously didn't happen to you yet... what's my platform of choice? well, currently i am sitting on a mac, before that it was linux, and yes, i am aware that darwin is kind of linux, and no, i didn't switch because i think good stuff needs to be expensive, i switched because i enjoy working on a mac. so why do buisness managers tend to go for windows? because 90% of computer users do, because thats all they know, because microsoft spends money for marketing, not for development. come out of your box and forget this bs about evil managers, life is a little bit more complex...