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"?"

Comments

Derogatory people

[br14n420]

I think your social skills are one of the major limiting factors here.

If I was your management, and I saw the remarks you've made, I would make sure you were no longer at the company in a matter of days.

Why?

You run to /. to make derogatory remarks about the people who were nice enough to let you work for them. And for what? A snarky little vent on the front page? Not very creative with our use of time, are we?

If you don't like where the shop is going technology-wise, then there's plenty of other shops that have exactly what you are looking for.

Don't be fooled, it's buggy.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's still a prevalent image of Linux and other open source software out there as just hobbyist software. "

Complete with "professional" problems.

"Even when I point out companies that offer paid support--people to be held accountable for making sure the software works--they still chant the "hold accountable" mantra. Those companies aren't big enough, they may go out of business any minute now, blah blah blah."

Hmmm. That reminds me. Where is LinuxLabs?

"I don't know what to suggest. Another trait of large companies is that they won't do something until everyone else in the world is doing it. Once a company reaches a certain size, there's no longer a culture of trying new things and trying to separate yourself from the competition; it becomes an unrelenting strive for mediocrity."

It's called being risk aversive. Funny how it happens to those who have the most to lose.

"Right now, everyone else is moving to .NET, so that's probably where you'll end up, regardless of what is best for your company. About the only chance you have is to put together a pretty Powerpoint presentation showing that switching to .NET will cost a billion dollars. "

Is that how we convince people to use OSS? By out-FUDing Microsoft?

Re:Don't be fooled, it's buggy.

[gregorio]

it's that smarter people who see things as they really are choose Linux.

Seriously? I've never seen a truly smart person choosing Linux. Most "Linux as lifestyle"-choosing people are, in fact, very dumb, yet they're self-appointed "geniuses". Sure, some smart people might use Linux for some tasks, but choosing it, like "it's either Windows or Linux for me, my friend", never. Only ignorant zealots talk about being "Microsoft-free".

Choosing Linux has nothing to do with being smart. It's just a product. Truly smart people run away from all this neo-comunist ideology bullshit and end up choosing Linux when it's a good option and Windows when it's a good option.

Re:What is your software used for?

[petrus4]

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.

Yep. Sound economic logic; something which the GPL zealots are sadly rather short of.