Slashdot Mirror
A Public Funded "Microsoft Shop?"
An anonymous reader writes "I work at a public hospital in the computer / technical department and (amongst others) was recently outraged by an email that was sent around our department: '(XXXX) District Health Board — Information Services is strategically a Microsoft shop and when talking to staff / customers we are to support this strategy. I no longer want to see comments promoting other Operating Systems.' We have also been told to remove Firefox found on anyone's computer unless they have specific authorisation from management to have it installed under special circumstances. Now, I could somewhat understand this if I was working in a company that sold and promoted the use of Microsoft software for financial gain, but I work in the publicly / government funded health system. Several of the IT big-wigs at the DHB are seemingly blindly pro-Microsoft and seem all too quick to shrug off other, perhaps more efficient alternatives. As a taxpayer, I want nothing more than to see our health systems improve and run more efficiently. I am not foolish enough to say all our problems would be solved overnight by changing away from Microsoft's infrastructure, but I am convinced that if we took less than half the money we spend on licensing Microsoft's software alone and invested that in training users for an open source system, we would be far better off in the long run. I would very much like to hear Slashdot's ideas / opinions on this 'Strategic Direction' and the silencing of our technical opinions."
He just wants us to have more sick people so he can heal them with his glowing palms.
It's entirely possible that your hospital signed a deal with Microsoft...by exclusively using their products, they would get a discount.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time...
Living With a Nerd
Adoption stories and influences :-)
by eldavojohn (898314)"Every so often I see an adoption story about so-and-so taking up some open source solution and sometimes I think 'Wow, French government? Now it's really going to take off. This is it. It's time.' And then I wait. And wait. Are these stories at all positive for the project? I mean, you would think with states and governments using Ubuntu or Red Hat that it would catch on like wildfire if the savings are there so why isn't that happening? I know Microsoft sends out a lot of Wormtongues to stick in the ears of important people. Do you plan on targeting governments in a similar manner? Does/will Canonical work on making a presence in things like the EU Commissions where we've seen corporations collecting members in their pockets?"
Matt: No, we have no plans to turn Wormtongue. We do, however, have aspirations to play Frodo.
Ultimately, governments (good ones, anyway) are established to reflect the voice of their citizens. At Canonical, we believe that real, lasting change happens from the bottom up, as citizens within government and IT and those served by it clamor for change. We try to help this along by working with government organizations, including open source-friendly lobbying groups, to promote free markets and expanded choice through free and open-source software, but I personally believe that individuals will make the difference.
Change can be expensive, whether in terms of cost or bother, and so as individuals or organizations we generally try to avoid it. But people are now starting to feel enough pain - be it software costs, inefficient use of hardware, viruses and other malware, etc. - that Linux and open-source software, generally, are getting plenty of attention. The cure, in other words, now outweighs the effort of applying it. Yes, Microsoft will do its part to thwart this progress,but even so I've seen broad and ever-increasing government adoption of open source. It's just that most of it doesn't get reported.
Don't lose heart and, in particular, don't lose "voice." We're being heard. The worst thing we could do is to slacken our pace now.
Basically seems to be the answer I constantly get. "No, we're not sinking to that level. If we had that money there are a lot more productive things to spend it on."
And they're basically right. People should use open source because they choose it. Not because someone told them to. When the change comes from within and is organic, then it stays and prospers and grows.
I would not recommend that you make this suggestion to your boss unless your job is one resembling Chief of IT at your job. A public hospital really isn't a great place to experiment with open source. If you feel a need to be vocal about this just wait until IE becomes a pain due to a virus or zero day exploit and suggest Firefox as a slightly safer alternative. If you want to discuss other operating systems, you're probably best off looking for other parts of your city's public works that use Linux and asking your IT guys why your counterparts found it so successful. Or point out that if it's good enough for the DoD to use, surely it's good enough for a public hospital. I don't know what kind of scheduling and patient programs you guys are running that might only work in Microsoft. Yes, MS Exchange is a problem without a great complete open source replacement. I don't know your details. But the last thing open source needs is "John Smith died because MS Exchange stopped working on his doctor's computer. The culprit?
My work here is dung.
Look, I'm not much of a MS fan either, but I just don't see what it is you really want.
for a new job.
This is the sort of thing that should be raised with your senator or congressman. Assuming they're not in the pocket of MS already. People need to get governments round to the idea that open source is good for them. In Europe we're a bit more keen to run with such strategies and I would imagine someone ending up fired for that sort of email.
jaymz
If the hospital is tax payer funded, then you have every right as a taxpayer to take this memo to the board.
I would suggest that you gather a number of like minded taxpayers (and voters) and make a visit to the board to explain your stance.
You might want to do some research and find that your IT director got a free beer (golf trip) out of this. Fodder for the meeting.
machinator omnis sine licentia
Let the public know. I doubt many of the citizens would take a side, but you could be putting pressure on the IT directors to justify why they spend so much money.
Of course, they might contact Microsoft, who would bring out their own "independent" (read: Microsoft-funded) studies that show that, in the long run, Microsoft is cheaper than open source.
But perhaps in this time of economic trouble, a friendly journalist might take your side and decide they want to screw with the government for wasting taxpayer $$.
Good luck.
"Sometimes the truth is stupid." - Lawrence, creator of Prime Intellect
also have reason to prevent scope creep to contain support costs. Firefox may well be easier to support than IE, but IE alone will be easier to support than IE+FF.
Nullius in verba
It's entirely possible they have a good (depending on viewpoint) reason for this beyond your implication of shilling for MS.
FUD.
Sorry Mr. Ballmer...
I find myself in similar situations every day, where I see a lot of inefficient and wasteful decisions and policies.
The thing is, you have to choose your battles. Ask yourself a brutally realistic question: Do you think you can make a difference? Is there any chance at all that you could change someone's mind about this?
The bad news is, probably not. And if you're not willing to work hard for it, you're really better off just sucking it up and going along with it, no matter how brainless the edicts are. Play it safe, keep your job, don't make waves.
The good news is, if you are willing to pitch this battle, if you are willing to work hard, putting together the necessary information and documentation in such a way to actually demonstrate to the powers-that-be that there is a Better Way, possibly even volunteering to take on a huge chunk of the work yourself, and do your damned best to ensure that your bosses look really good in the process, that you can not only get what you want, but you can look really good in a highly visible way in the process. That's how to get promoted into places where you're not just fighting these battles, but actually making the decisions.
Or you may get fired because someone can't handle you disagreeing with them, no matter how stupid they're being. That's the gamble, the risk versus reward. I can't tell you which path to take, because I don't know all of the politics of your particular situation, but I hope it all turns out well, no matter which road you go down.
User Training is often not a viable option -- time spent there means business lost, and many public sector services have statutory or lawful time requirements. Understand that it is very frequently not a simple cash conversion formula - and even the blindingly pro-Microsoft have probably examined at the very least the cost structure involved in other options. Similarly, browser choice (although flat out removal is pretty harsh) can have to do with internal web-app support. Frankly, many of our less technical users do not recognize the difference in browsers, or understand how to validate using their AD credentials using browsers other than IE. You should temper your judgment with the recognition that there is at least the possibility that more is going on.
I am concerned that anyone in public sector is expressing a preference at all. Theoretically you should not endorse any product, free, open source, or paid.
Information Services is strategically a public service that should use the most effective and efficient tool for the job! Comments championing a specific commercial vendor when alternatives should (in the public interest) be considered will be taken as an indication of gross incompetence and indication the commenter is resigning from public service.
>> I would very much like to hear Slashdot's ideas / opinions on this 'Strategic Direction' and the silencing of our technical opinions."
Let see, this is slashdot.
What do we have here:
Bossy overlords
Bossy overlords against Free Software
Bossy overlords against Free Software and Pro Microsoft
Bossy overlords against Free Software, Pro Microsoft, and wasting public funds
Bossy overlords against Free Software, Pro Microsoft, and wasting public funds
The underdog who wants to challenge the Bossy overlords against Free Software, Pro Microsoft, and wasting public funds
The underdog who wants to challenge the Bossy overlords against Free Software, Pro Microsoft, and wasting public funds, and censoring the underdog
Multiple choice opinions:
1. "Just do your job!"
2. "We hate Microsoft!"
3. "You da Man!"
4. "Profit!"
I'm going to respond under the assumption that you aren't a troll. I can see where you are coming from, but Linux's interface and general functionality isn't bad...it's just complicated. If you get someone running a Linux infrastructure that knows what they are doing, it will be as good if not better than Windows. The problem is finding someone who knows what they are doing.
Then again, that's a problem in general with IT...
Living With a Nerd
In large scale companies or departments - everyone using the wrong thing is more efficient that everyone using a different thing. Standard operating environments can suck ... but in the end save money.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
Yes it would cost less in the long run, but in the short to medium term they'll be running around like headless chickens outside their comfort zone (sorry for the mixed metaphors).
For right now: If these guys are 'strategically' a Microsoft shop, then there's little you can do at your pay grade. Suck it up or leave.
And as much as I hate being tied to IE, I (putting my IT manager hat on) can see why I wouldn't want an unsupported browser on my network. And Mozilla doesn't make it easy to deploy Firefox across an enterprise (no group policy, no MSI -- I know about 3rd party tools but those don't really count)
And who knows, maybe your bosses are the nasty types who see the fact that IE performs poorly on modern websites as a 'feature'.
Go somewhere random
The command line is a fine interface, and if you're not a jackass, it's much quicker than hunting through any set of menus.
It seems to be a clear case of management by magazine, or management influenced by some free launch event. Make proper recommendations. Respectfully document your objections while providing alternatives. Then, in a few years, when the company is facing public scrutiny for being a financial failure, someone will come across your correspondance and you'll have the unique satisfaction of being able to say "I told 'em so."
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Free/Open software is fine, and I won't argue the point that it's short-sighted for an IT shop to stick their head in the MS sand, but there are other, very good reasons for wanting to promote a unified network/front, especially when dealing with users. Ease of management is of course the biggie, but in general, you don't want users trying to install every piece of software their brother-in-law tells them about. If you say, "Oh yeah, throw Firefox on, whatever", then they're may assume you have the same cavalier attitude towards, say, Limewire, or AntiSpyware 2010.
If you want your company to explore/promote Free/Open software, then this needs to be done from within, with the support of management, in a controlled manner. Not by telling users they should just install Ubuntu on their laptop over the weekend.
A few years ago my department was an "IBM shop". The managers dismissed any other technology (Sun, Linux, HP) because IBM was our strategy.
It was miserable. We ended up buying anything IBM branded. We paid millions for Tivoli, pSeries, IBM branded storage, IBM everything. In hindsight it cost a lot for not a lot of return. In fact, going with the biggest vendor means that you pay the most because they have no reason to work with you. It was this arrogance on the part of IBM that made us look at other technologies.
The idiot managers and decision makers that actually say anything like "we are a ----- shop" are pawns of that vendor's sales people.
These sorts of folks should be reported to the Ethics department. Blind adherence to a vendor probably even violates some laws. At the very least it's financially irresponsible to align completely with a single vendor. At the worst it's an ethics or violation of duty.
The silence was paid for. Microsoft probably gave them a really great deal, in exchange for going exclusively MS. MS does it for visibility. I don't think it's stifling anything. Major IT decisions about an organization are made at the top, not by the users. That's the way things work the best. The same person or people who made the MS decision, are the same ones who would undo it, as well. So, who exactly are you trying to convince? If you don't like the policy, apply for the VP IT job. I'd also like to point out that at this point, you have little to no information on which to think that going all MS is a BAD idea. Perhaps it's a very good thing for your organization, financially, or otherwise. You don't sound like you're in a position to know any of the decision making points for this organization, in fact. Why does everybody who can use a mouse think that they're qualified to offer their opinion on large IT infrastructure decisions?
I don't respond to AC's.
You're speaking of "efficiency". I assume you're speaking of FireFox as an example. But there's is nothing more efficient about an IT organization supporting more than one tool for the same purpose, based on the preference of a user (or an admin). If you can lay out how a company or IT organization would improve efficiency by supporting FireFox, along side IE (because you MUST support IE since many 3rd party apps use the IE engine embedded), I'd love to see it. I might even elect you to office.
Licensing costs are a cost, but are one of the smallest costs of running an organization. A Windows license costs, what, $80/person? What would training them for Linux cost? In two-four years, what does training their replacement cost? How much more do you pay for competent *nix admins?
For desktop users, the cost of Windows is insignificant compared to the costs of human beings and the costs of switching, or even testing to see if switching makes sense, is often a waste of money.
Even if Linux is "good enough" for their work, it's not worth switching.
Firefox is a stranger case. I can think of technical reasons an organization might not choose to support it, (minority overall, the union of IE exploits and Firefox exploits is greater than IE exploits alone, doesn't support group policy) but it seems odd to have it as a policy.
IMO, this is a case of "shut the fuck up, you've talked this to death, we've made a decision, now get to work"
it is funny you say that... Efficiency.
Open Source is great and it has its place in the world, but if you are looking for an efficient work place where IT only has one set tools to maintain and support, then mixing your OS's, software, browsers, etc., it not the way to go.
I work at Government Lab and I am in charge of a number of Enterprise Level systems. While Mac and Linux are used exclusively in my personal life and home business, Windows is what is used at the office. Not because of my love for Microsoft, but because we can globally control the desktops, the applications used on the desktops, who has access to the systems, etc. It makes our lives easier and we are more efficient at our jobs. Need all 2000 desktops patched? Fire up SMS and have it installed tonight. Need to yank access for a terminated employee? Disable their account in AD and their access to the Domain and email are now gone. Is it perfect? HELL NO! But it is a lot easier than when we had to support the minority systems of 5 flavors of Linux and 3 Mac OS's along side the Windows desktops.
An email like that probably didn't come about spontaneously.
"I no longer want to see comments promoting other Operating Systems". Sounds like somebody wouldn't shut up. I would suspect that some open-source fans in the organization just couldn't let it go when their pet project's architects chose Microsoft products for delivery.
There's a fine line between promoting and being a big old pain in the ass.
First you should figure out if for some odd reason running MS is mission critical (like "we absolutely must have MS Office"). Second, crunch the numbers and figure out just how much they could save by switching. If you're as right as you think you are, it will be a large number. Don't just give them a number though - figure out some health-care equipment or service that costs that much money. Then get some big-wigs in a room and tell them you're going to give them that health-care equipment/service for FREE. Or some such other audacious strategy.
It usually boils down to money and politics.
Somebody somewhere in the upper mgmt area must be getting some kind of kickback or pat on the back, for being so pro-Microsoft (despite the cost of licensing fees).
The selfishness of upper mgmt is leading to division - hence your situation. They are not concerned about the best interests of everybody involved here; just themselves.
Sad situation. But we all know money talks, so maybe you can show to the right person(s) how much extra money the pro-microsoft stance is really costing them (TCO) and they may change their tune. Perhaps putting it in terms of their vested interests, such as, "with all the money we will be saving on open source, maybe we can all get a raise!" would be more effective.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Approach this from an ethics point of view. While I've never worked in the public sector, my understanding is that they have much stricter policies and laws governing conflicts of interest, fair bidding practices, vendor selection, etc.
In private businesses, I've heard people come out and say they prefer one product over another based upon the receipt of stock options from their favorite vendor. But its my understanding that in a public entity this could lead to jail.
Have gnu, will travel.
If you are in Washington state/King County, then you bow to Microsoft's every whim. I have worked at companies that had close relationships with Microsoft and had similar emails and conversations happen when Steve Ballmer came through and saw Linux books on my shelf.
As a state/county/city, it's appalling when we could save millions when our state is in debt but we bend over vackwards for a company that incorporates in Nevada to avoid paying state taxes. Some would say the people they employ more than makes up for it but they do there best to keep everyone as temporary employees and rotate them out every 6 months to also avoid paying benefits.
If you are in any other state, call up your local news agencies, phone Oprah, call newspapers and phone a REPUBLICAN cogressman (they will make noise right now because they are not in power).
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
There are those who want to get their pay without working -- even if this mean sabotaging their employer or, worse, sabotaging and doing it while betraying the public (whom they should serve).
This is particularly vicious because, in promoting formats like OOXML instead of the more interoperable ODF, they turned really into M$ shops -- in the sense they now obey M$... kinda like hatching eggs for another species. It's not just a matter of this or that OS, it's a problem of lack of control.
In such a scenario, either high management has been taken over -- or middle has been, rendering the high part insulated.
Politicians allowing all that are in for later persecution when an opposing party enters office.
IMHO those at high positions who accept private interference in government are unfit for new positions in future elections. Let's vote them out of history.
Im sick and tired of this. It replicates along the whole industry and spans countries, crosses the barrier between private and public sectors: some IT managers, the more blindly promicrosoft the more likely, are on the take.
INVESTIGATE NOW.
NO SIG
"John Smith died because MS Exchange stopped working on his doctor's computer. The culprit? <evil voice>Open Source Software!</evil voice>"
Really? My God! That's terrible!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
As an IT Director (who came up through a 17 year career as an IT support person), I'm increasingly frustrated by IT admins who just don't see the big picture.
Using the Firefox example:
YES, it is absolutely true that Firefox is superior to IE on a user-by-user basis, in 90% of the cases.
YES, most exploits are written to take advantage of IE (or, rather, its various bloat that accumulates).
NO, the corporate management tools for Firefox are in no way comparable to what is commercially available to IE.
Without question, a *current* version of IE which is *properly patched* is superior (security-wise) to a 6 month old, unpatched version of Firefox.
I'm able to control my IE deployments down to a microscopic level, all from a single scree (and tied in to many of my other deployed applications). I'm not able to do that with Firefox. I'll gut it out and take my chances with the IE that I can control (including to blackhole communications at a moments notice if there's a problem), rather than Firefox which I cannot.
The first 8 years of my life were spend as a CAD systems admin (Unix systems). I run Squid. I love open source. But don't even begin to tell me that because you're looking at "what browser is superior for Joe's computer" that you can plan a corporate infrastructure.
And hacking into the registry isn't complicated? Trying to sort through the bizarre and dizzying array of options, often thrown in the most obtuse places, in the Exchange System Manager isn't?
Computers are complex things. A good IT guy shouldn't have his ass chained to any one system. Only lazy or inept IT people get cold shivers at seeing a text login.
I'm not going to say anything in particular about this situation. Obviously management controls the show, and if they're pro-Microsoft, you've got two choices, do what you're told or get another job. But in general, anyone who thinks Microsoft's offerings are really that much easier than *nix must have horseshoes up his ass.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I see this all the time as I do consulting. I've never heard/seen proof anyone has a contractual relationship.
Way back in the 80's there was a saying: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM"
It's a similar idea. As a CTO or IT Director, unless you want to spend all your days doing analysis on each type of software you might need, you need to come up with rules on selection and support.
And no one is ever going to get fired for sticking with MS products by default.
The problem with this, of course, is that MS doesn't have best of breed products in many cases.
Some things they do work pretty well (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, Office).
While other MS technologies suck (Frontpage, Visual SourceSafe, Visual Studio, Zune, Windows Mobile).
If you are forced to use the sucky technology simply because someone wants to stick with their overly simple rule, you can fight it, but it's going to be an uphill battle.
You're better off picking one or two battles and trying to win those. Then wait for your CTO or IT Director gets replaced, 'cause they probably don't know what they are doing.
(By the way, this is my opinion. Feel free to express your opinion, but simply telling me my opinion is wrong doesn't add anything to the conversation.)
The staff probably has stocks in or other perks from MS.
I first dumped Microsoft's browser when other browsers better handled obnoxious and broken websites.
This choice was later validated when I noticed coworkers losing days of productivity to browse-by malware infestations from seemingly legitimate professional websites.
This isn't just about Linux, but everyone one of Microsoft's competitors in any area that Microsoft might choose to throw their weight around in.
Attempting to turn this into a "Linux is hard whine" is a highly dishonest attempt at distraction.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There is nothing "experimental" about open source in hospitals. There are several HIS and hospital management open source solutions that are quite good, throw in some open office in the mix and you have a very cheaply run hospital.
NO SIG
I am with Linus on this one
Linus is right
The man makes sense
He is absolutely correct on this one
Do your job. Do it well. Advance. Get into a position of influence and authority. Change the policies.
:)
This isn't a war worth waging. You have to ask yourself if this is something worth losing your job over because that is what is possible if you stir things up. Sure, they may not fire you for "recommending non-Microsoft software" but, if you piss off and annoy enough people (or just the wrong person), they'll find a reason to let you go ("not being a team player", for example).
There are things worth stirring the pot over but this just isn't one of them. I agree with your general stance - government agencies being locked into Microsoft strikes me as a very bad idea - but it's not worth the fight. Just do your job and do it well, get promoted into a position of influence, and try to change policy when you're in a position to do so. Until then, pick your battles.
And, if you knew me, you'd find it hysterical that _I_ am suggesting not starting a fight over something...
It's about liability, again.
Is your company based in Marriottsville, MD, by chance? If so, I used to work for your CIO. He's on the take.
Don't worry, he'll be gone in a few years. That's his MO.
Comments like this (FTFA): " I no longer want to see comments promoting other Operating Systems" trigger my orneriness response.
It's a hospital, not a software store. What operating system the employees chose to advocate has nothing to do with the operation of the place. If I worked there, I think I'd be likely to start carrying my lunch in one of these: http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=123
and my coffee cup would be one of these: http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=203
I worked at a private healthcare institution where Microsoft was the de-facto standard on all machines. Some of the software that was mission critical would only work with Microsoft software (i.e. IE 6 or Windows XP). Even when Microsoft issued upgrades (IE 7, Vista, etc.) they couldn't upgrade those programs until the third party vendor updated their software. They allow Firefox (and all the IT staff encourages it for everything that will work with it), and some of the IT staff even have Macs.
When it comes to maintaining the systems, however, they want to get a relatively uniform installation. Lots of the same machine, with the same software, so that it's easy to manage when the doctors/nurses/receptionists call in with "I can't do X."
There's a reason to have everything standardized, and there's a reason for that standard to be based on Microsoft products, but there's no reason that no other products be considered. This shop uses the best tools for the job, which often have MS dependencies. But sometimes it's perl scripts and grep.
In your case, I would make some noise saying "if I find a better, cheaper alternative, is it still taboo to consider non-MS software?"
Draft up a cool, collected, reasonable and complete summary of what open source software that you would like to see implemented and WHY you think it should be implemented. You think firefox is a better solution? Then put it in and say why. Start with small, minor, easy and most importantly good solutions (When I say good, I mean one that has very little if any chance for difficulty...). Firefox is a good example, because it's typically a drop in replacement, will be fast, and has little if any downsides. Switching the email backbone from Exchange to an OS alternative is not a good first step. Write this document, including any projected cost savings, and send it to the manager/director. Include in the beginning of the email a blurb about basically "I know you said you don't want to here about open source. I am just writing this so that I can clear my conscience about making proper recomendations. This will be the last input from me unless I am specifically asked"... Send it in. If they do nothing, your conscience is clean since you did everything that was in your power to get the situation turned towards open source. If they do something, then you win... The bottom line is they get to make the decisions. DON'T go around their backs, or they will just get pissed off at you and fire you (or worse). DON'T try to belittle their experience (Don't go around screaming that "MS Sucks". Instead pick and choose your battles, and show that the MS product is good, but this one is better!). And most importantly don't overstep your own role... If you're a developer, start by asking for open source tools that will help make you personally more productive (and leave it there for a while). If you're a sys-admin, start with tools that'll make you more productive, and show tools that will make your life easier and better (Such as the switch from IE to FF saving on the security front). If you're a help desk worker, keep your ideas to your self...
Play the high road, and don't play the "But Microsoft sucks in comparison" card. It won't work. MS is big for a reason (And business guys tend to value company size over product quality anyway)... Make them make the decisions...
There's an old saying. You can never go wrong, as long as you went with IBM. Back in the 70's and 80's (when my Father was telling me stories about AT&T), if you had a project to do and used IBM, and if failed, well that's just tough luck (It was seen that if IBM couldn't do it, it couldn't be done). If you used an unknown, and it failed, the weight for the failure falls on you. That's likely the mentality here (Substitute MS for IBM). They know that there may be better alternatives, but they are just playing CYA... Sure it'll cost more money, but they can "justify" the extra money as reason enough...
Just my $0.02
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
> Now, I could somewhat understand this if I was working in a company that
> sold and promoted the use of Microsoft software for financial gain...
Sounds rather like you do (the question is, whose financial gain?)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If you go to your CIO saying "if we took less than half the money we spend on licensing Microsoft's software alone and invested that in training users for an open source system, we would be far better off in the long run" you will be ignored. Rip and replace never goes as smoothly as the pamphlets promise. Fine one application with measurable improvements over your existing system and make an ROI case for that one small change. Earn the credibility by being sympathetic to your CIO or IT Director's objectives.
I say name them.
Call them out on it. Let the taxpayers know that their money is being wasted.
How about an anonymous "letter to the editor" of your local newspaper?
Windows is not the answer.
Windows is the question.
The answer is "NO."
The organization wants a standard and it is expensive to carry multiple standards. If you don't like the decision, you are always free to find other employment.
Like most others we are dragged into the politicized software industry, but we are not the ones that caused this politicization. MS & Co are responsible for this, while you buy their products, they buy your political leaders.
M$ has DOS emulation.
Their they're doing there hair.
Run. :-)
As a taxpayer, I want nothing more than to see our health systems improve and run more efficiently.
The OP is not working for the "DHB" as a taxpayer. He is not even a a decision maker in the IT department of the DHB. If he does not like the situation, he can publicize it (and probably get a yawn from most everyone). His technical opinion is to be expressed to his boss, but it is the boss' technical opinion that matters.
Like so many people, the OP has forgotten that a business is a voluntary dictatorship. The boss' set the business' direction and if the employee doesn't like it, the employee can voice his objections to the boss and possibly be fired or the employee can quit.
Once the OP is no longer an employee, he is free to pursue his desires as a taxpayer, but will probably meet with much the same level of success.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Doctors and Nurses are not Computer Nerds! Get a clue until Linux has a GUI worth a crap and drops so much dependency on the command line it will always be a Geeks OS.
Shut up and conform. You don't need to create a bigger support nightmare for the IT dept.
We pay your bills, if you don't like it --- LEAVE.
- The Management.
There are legitimate technical and economic reasons to be a monolithic shop.
There are legitimate technical and economic reasons to be a heterogeneous shop.
Sometimes these decisions are made for reasons other than what is in the best interest of the company or its stakeholders.
For good or bad, those decisions are above your pay grade. I recommend either biting the bullet or resigning and then putting on your taxpayer hat, and taking it up with the elected official who is in charge of the hospital or who appoints those in charge of the hospital. If it turns out there is good reason for their decision you will have given up your job for nothing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They've probably heard, ad nauseum, from bitchy admins go on and on and on about how "Microsoft sucks and we want to move to Linux."
It's entirely possible that they got tired of hearing the bitching and decided to just head it off at the pass by saying "we're a Microsoft shop, period." If you don't agree with the decision, make a case for switching over, complete with cost analysis. If you complain without offering a viable solution, you're just part of the problem. Another alternative is to work someplace else. Yet another alternative is to accept the decision, become more of a team player and add Microsoft certifications to your repertoire.
Hey, check out what happens when I search and replace.
Interesting, huh? The arguments are exactly the same, no matter which side you take.
As a front-lines IT grunt, it's your job to implement policy. It isn't your job to mouth off about it throughout the company outside your management chain to try and get it changed. That would be insubordination.
Feel more than welcome to complain internally within your group. But when talking to customers (end customers, and the other, non-IT staff in the organization) it is reasonable to expect you, employee (in your capacity as such), not to publicly disparage the policies of your employer. It's not professional, and I'm pretty sure it's sufficient grounds to fire you unless you are protected from such by some other arrangement (civil service laws, union, etc.)
You can talk to whatever legislative body pays the bills and ask them to encourage open source, you can talk to the media as a private citizen, you can do a lot of things. But you can't necessarily do those things at work, and you can't do them in your capacity as an employee. This goes for any employer.
SirWired
...find another job. You are unaware if MS has made large donations to the hospital or other factors that may be involved. Either way, it's not your call and if you don't like the restrictions find a job that you do like.
As others said public hospitals are very conservative and not the typical place to experiment with open source. Besides it it is a public not for profit hospital, Microsoft's non-profit licensing is very cheap to the point that it might as well be free.
Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ? That sounds preposterous to me. If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers without a windows. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that windows is more than just Office ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this. Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft. Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not possible. I think you need to re-examine your assumptions.
Interesting comparison you make:
>> The command line is a fine interface, and if you're not a jackass, it's much quicker than hunting through any set of menus.
However, you're comparing someone that has memorized all the command line commands, syntaxes, and switches to someone that has no idea where in the menus each option is. "hunting" through the menus isn't necessary if you have even a basic understanding of their layout. However, without a thorough understanding of the command line, there's no hope in hell of being able to use it at ALL.
Don't get me wrong - I love the command line... but your statement is not even close to being realistic.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
I think you should quit your job and go OpenSource!!
> Microsoft is cheaper.
M$ is only cheaper when your Freedom is worth nothing.
(It's also cheaper if you don't care about money, so everything is free.)
s/microsoft/union amd it only reads a little bit strangely. A few more minor tweaks and it's the same situation. I'm actually not picking on unions here... too much. Rather, I'm picking on any powerful organization that exerts political power over elected officials. This kind of union influence is so entrenched that a lot of us don't even think about it. Microsoft is newer, so it's getting more attention.
I work at a public hospital in the computer / technical department and (amongst others) was recently outraged by an email that was sent around our department: '(XXXX) District Health Board -- Information Services is strategically a union shop and when talking to staff / customers we are to support this strategy. I no longer want to see comments promoting other Operating Systems.' We have also been told to remove Firefox found on anyone's computer unless they have specific authorisation from management to have it installed under special circumstances. Now, I could somewhat understand this if I was working in a company that sold and promoted the use of union software for financial gain, but I work in the publicly / government funded health system. Several of the IT big-wigs at the DHB are seemingly blindly pro-union and seem all too quick to shrug off other, perhaps more efficient alternatives. As a taxpayer, I want nothing more than to see our health systems improve and run more efficiently. I am not foolish enough to say all our problems would be solved overnight by changing away from union's infrastructure, but I am convinced that if we took less than half the money we spend on licensing union's software alone and invested that in training users for an open source system, we would be far better off in the long run. I would very much like to hear Slashdot's ideas / opinions on this 'Strategic Direction' and the silencing of our technical opinions
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If the submitter needs an explanation for why this is.. he shouldnt be working in IT. I know many of you have a venemous hatred for Microsoft and its products.. but considering that ANY user can be quickly and cheaply trained on using their products and when set up properly have little downtime.. going to some arcane, obtuse open source alternative (because thats EXACTLY how they would see it) would be astronomically expensive in not only man hours of training and frustration but also back end administrative costs. You fucking dorks cant see the forest through the trees. IF open source was a viable alternative.. especially considering the up front costs are "free" (LMFAO!) it would have a much bigger place in the market after all these years. But being the typical anti social retards who could give a fuck about the end user experience.. you all just fail miserably to see it.
Yes, the subby's comments are valid. and the PBHs are being a pain and are believing the FUD.
No, the subby shouldn't push this issue. Even as an IT contractor you will have these Pro- Microsoft people claiming that anything Microsoft is a strategic platform. Since the PBHs don't see anything Firefox can do that IE can't, they see no reason to ALLOW firefox into the building.
If it was a discussion about spending hundreds of thousands of $$$ on a simple PBX instead of using a Linux based Asterisk system, that is one thing. This is a different siutation.
So the lesson today is if the PHB don't allow firefox then comply with the order. Remember that it is the PHB's that are signing your paycheck.
How about you let the IT guys do their job, and you do your job. Now go fetch your mop and bucket.
There are a lot of factors that can influence whether a change is viable. One could be whether you can move all or majority of your systems to another vendor without bothering too much, the other one is education and general willingness to try. I personally see the later the major obstacle not only to linux adoption but also to a reform in any other branch of life esp. when more than small group (me and my brother-in-low) is affected, say national health system, tax system etc. It is always the same story - people refuse to change because the old shit is the shit they know, and new shit could be dangerous or even cause SPD (soft penis disease) . Now whether actually linux would be cheaper is an open question. As far as I can tell Germans are good at counting beans so I would expect that they counted it all well enough. The city of Muenchen switched (I think the process is still not quite complete) to Linux some time ago and what the guy responsible for it claimed this change to be cost neutral.
Don't forget that there are probably multiple data privacy components at play. What is it going to cost to meet those requirements in a non-standard shop? Detailed logging, user access control, automated software updates, automated configuration controls, all of these need to be delivered in the environment, with ability to prove during audit, in order to be certified compliant. Will the benefits of non-standardization cover the extra cost to still meet all of the security requirements, plus support and management? Doubtful.
I've worked IT for a health organization before. They're probably mandating this because whatever they've implemented to comply with HIPAA and/or other regulations is dependent on AD and Group Policy. I can tell you from experience that if you're operating on a limited budget and are already running and AD/Exchange environment, you don't have to spend any extra money to become HIPAA compliant. However, that does lock you in to using MS products, since they're the only ones (easily) supported by GP. Could other operating systems and software be introduced and still be compliant? Of course, but that would add administrative overhead supporting and auditing those systems and applications that fall outside control of your AD/GP domain.
Never start vast projects with half-vast ideas.
"They've probably heard, ad nauseum, from bitchy admins go on and on and on about how 'Microsoft sucks and we want to move to Linux.'"
Wouldn't be the first time an admin came off as unsociable.
You know, I'm a long time Linux SysAdmin. I like to have both a Windows and Linux machine around. Each has it's purposes. On Linux I can do real work. On Windows, I can play video games. ;)
I ended up getting a nasty virus on WinXP a few months ago. I continued using Linux.
I got a copy of Win7, and was entertained by it. I actually kinda liked the pretty of it. ooohhh.. aaaahhhh. Glad it wasn't me spending the money. I ran into hardware compatibility issues. The video drive that worked for two months suddenly caused blue screens after about 5 minutes. Something else fatal happened, where it just blue screens during bootup. The only solutions I've found where to reinstall. But, I have games on there, that I don't want to reinstall. Oh well. Now it blue screens during the install. The only references to this one I found were that the install media has a fault. {sigh} I guess I have to go to the store and buy a new copy if I want it to work.
I threw another drive in there, and am running under Linux very happily. It installed quickly (like, way faster than XP, Vista, or Win7 do). All my devices worked right out of the box. The only real configuration I had to do was to set up Xorg (xorgsetup [enter][enter][enter]).
The people who whine about how bad Linux is, or how hard it is to work, are the folks who have never just sat down and tried it.
I've had a few people come by. They want to use my computer for something. I point at the Firefox link at the bottom and tell them to have at it.
Under Linux, I'll have Firefox or Chromium (or both) up, and several xterms.
Under Windows, I'll have Firefox or Chrome (or both) up, and several putty windows.
For average Joe User, there's no big difference between the two, except you can't play your video games. I know, some work under Wine, but for me I still consider that the only drawback. Since I spend about 3 hours a year playing video games, I can find that outlet elsewhere.
Now, for the topic at hand ... who cares. So the guy in charge wants his shop MS. That's his problem. Maybe he likes his Windows. Maybe he's just annoyed because there's some subversive zealot changing the way his shop works. If he's in charge, those decisions are his to make. There may be good reasons those decisions were made. Maybe he uses AD to manage all his machines, and it automatically updates and continues to make sure things work right. Hey, sometimes that works. For some reason, he gets paid the big bucks there, so he can make the calls. If he wanted an all OpenBSD shop, with Links as the only browser, and Pine as the only mail client, so be it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I think that's why some UNIX folks are so hidebound to the tools they already use - they don't want to cram additional command line options in their aging brains.
" But the last thing open source needs is "John Smith died because MS Exchange stopped working on his doctor's computer. The culprit?"
The culprit would be the moron who installed Exchange on a doctor's computer. It belongs on the Hospital's server and only ever on a server.
Its because in real life, average people don't give a fuck about Linux or Open Source. They need a place to vent and let out some nerd-rage. Ofcource, leaving a comment on a website is pointless, and I imagine even the strongest anti-ms troll realizes that. So, I guess I don't mind the colorful flamebaity trollish comments because most sane people already know that slashdot is filled with MS haters. If you already know someones bias, then their comments aren't that annoying.
Truer words and all that...
Services is strategically a Microsoft shop and when talking to staff / customers we are to support this strategy. I no longer want to see comments promoting other Operating Systems.'
The last thing the boss wants to hear is that you have been lobbying staff and clients to push your own agenda - whatever that may be.
You talk to him. You work through channels - or you keep your big mouth shut.
You really should get out more.
your boss' boss' boss' boss.
That would be his Great Great GrandBoss
Actually, that's not true. MS was anti-lobbying until their competitors had a long conversation with the DOJ.
Then they realized that entering the political arena had become part of the game and they had to play it.
This directive came from above the head of the sender of the memo. Microsoft owns the US government. Supporting the software company with the most number of employees is simply good politics.
Microsoft does that to many of their customers as part of their licensing agreement. I'll give you a break off the top provided you scratch my back later. The mafia framework lives on.
Are you saying that they refuse to consider anything other than MS internally or that in addition to being internally a MS shop, the products are all in MS-only formats and no effort will be made to, say, make sure their outward facing web site is compatible with the top 3 browsers?
One is a design decision which may or may not cost more in the long run, but the latter forces citizens to purchase products from microsoft just to view their output, which is fairly unethical if deliberate.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
a lot more about what the hospital is using computers for, what custom or pre-packaged software they use, what hardware exists, what proportion of the users are Office users and to what level of expertise, are online patients records involved, etc.
It isn't just the OS...it is the whole cost of purchasing the software to run the hospital, the paths future upgrades in response to private and government demands will take, the enforcement of privacy protections, etc. All in the midst of a rapidly changing medical funding environment when everyone is making demands to change...in one direction or another.
When you have a total understanding of the implications of every line in the IT department's budget, who the stakeholders are and the politics of what software they use (doctor driven, insurance company driven, medicare driven etc) then you'll be in a position to discuss what OS they could use in business terms. Once you have compared your hospital's budget for IT against a similar sized and functions hospital using another solution and you present that comparison, I'd bet OS costs are a triviality compared to the other IT costs. What is the cost of eliminating the expertise of all the rest of the IT support staff in terms of patient care, doctor functioning, etc? People resist change..they are scared of it. Not sure they can measure up...no matter how smart they are.
When you make an argument on the basis of a better OS, you just show to the higher-ups you don't understand their real problems...you are just one of those techies.
Take it to the politicians who oversee your hospital and provide funding and ultimately governance.
My guess is that Democrats would be the most likely to care about this, either from a public interest perspective, a conflict of interest or possibly even kickback basis, or even a freedom of speech basis (yes, you don't have freedom of speech at work but the rules are often more fluid when you work for the government).
I'd like for Republicans to care about this from a government-money-being-wasted basis, but AFAICT the general trend seems to be Republicans generally being in favor of corporate alignment, sweetheart deals, executive preference and suppressing workers.
The right politician on this case might actually put the fear of God in the executives responsible for this.
I would also throw in IBM, CA, and Oracle. Why, because it's IT shops are runned by people who simply can blame someone else if things go wrong. Simply put, IT management lacks the courage and will to be good at what they do. Those companies know that.
Bosses often do things that don't make any sense to their subordinates. Sometimes you just don't have all the facts to understand it and other times he's just nuts.
Either way, you're likely to encounter this sort of scenario for your entire career unless you work for yourself (in which case your customers will drive you crazy instead).
Just make sure you don't lose your job over Slashdotters' version of political correctness.
"As a taxpayer, I want nothing more than to see our health systems improve and run more efficiently. I am not foolish enough to say all our problems would be solved overnight by changing away from Microsoft's infrastructure, but I am convinced that if we took less than half the money we spend on licensing Microsoft's software alone and invested that in training users for an open source system, we would be far better off in the long run."
Sure. Take your decision right to your boss, just like that. And he'll say, "Exactly how did you arrive at your estimate of 'less than half', what's your measuring criteria for 'far better off', how long is 'the long run', and what training makes this magically appear?"
At that point you'll probably stammer something like, "Open source good - Microsoft bad! Nerd SMASH!" and then your boss gets to push the button that opens the trap door beneath you.
If you're hacking through the registry and you're not a developer, you're doing it wrong. Period.
Microsoft is cheaper.
It may well be the case for the company in question, but that's no reason to ban Firefox on corporate desktops, or prohibit employees from any remarks that can in any way be seen as promoting alternatives.
Among other things, you can't objectively judge if something is cheaper or not if you suppress any discussion of competing products.
WTF are you talking about? Even some Microsoft KB articles tell you to enter the registry.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The majority of comments I see here seem to be focusing on entirely the wrong thing. The 'outrageous' part of this situation has nothing to do with them being a Microsoft shop and using Microsoft-only software. Any given organization has to put in place policies that they see as being beneficial to smooth and practical operations. People can disagree that going Microsoft-only is a good solution, but if the policy gets the job done and makes the organizations infrastructure cost-effective and manageable, then this hospital is entirely within its rights to implement this policy. Removing Firefox is perfectly acceptable if their policy deems this application to be problematic for whatever reason.
Everybody is up in arms about how to get Open Source into this organization and how to make them see the benefits of OSS, as if the lack of OSS was the real problem here. It isn't. The problem is censorship.
'(XXXX) District Health Board — Information Services is strategically a Microsoft shop and when talking to staff / customers we are to support this strategy. I no longer want to see comments promoting other Operating Systems.'
There's a fairly thick line there between, "we don't use Linux because our homogeneous infrastructure is easier for us to maintain", versus, "as a publicly funded institution in a sector that has nothing to do with selling software, we believe it's acceptable to act as an advocate for one of our vendors, and we intend to squelch discussion about competing products". Whomever sent this email intends to muzzle anyone making comments that don't promote Windows. This is a problem. Information Services isn't looking out for the hospital here, they're looking out for Microsoft. They're acting as a corporate shill using taxpayer funds.
I'd be pissed too. I have no problem with them choosing to use Windows. I have a problem with some asshole telling me I need to act as a Windows sales rep. And I have have a REAL problem with this sort of behavior being funded by tax dollars.
Unless you have a real shot at making any changes just let it go. The decision seems to have come down from the top and any time for your input (assuming it would be accepted) is long past. As has been said you need to pick your battles.
If you're involved in a project that can be better served by something out of the FOSS community then you have some kind of chance at making a change. Otherwise you're just being a pain in everyone's [insert anatomical reference of choice] by complaining about a done decision.
My favorite way of getting past this sort of thing is summed up by "I put exactly as much emotional involvement into a situation as I have chance of changing it." No chance to change? Don't care. It's kept me from ulcers and ill-timed outbursts. I suggest you consider it.
That should've been "I would never silence my own purely technical opinion."
Many other factors come into play.
We are rolling out Windows 7 where we are now. One of the smoothest OS roll outs I have ever done. Our largest problem was user training. These users had all the shortcuts they ever needed on the desktop before. With a new computer they had to make those shortcuts again and they forgot basic windows stuff. We had to show people the start menu and how to get to network drives (that were already mapped). I will never get these users over to Linux.
Others that had Windows 7 (or Vista) at home picked it up and ran with it. No training required when they teach themselves. That is huge for any company.
Our migration is a slow roll out. It is going so smooth that any problems we have with XP machines that are not quick config changes, we just replace them with a Windows 7 computer. I'm not saying that a Linux deployment would not be that smooth, but I don't know how to do it. I do a lot of things with Group Policy for Windows 7 easily that I would not know how to do in Linux. For that same reason we do not support Mac.
Digital Imaging support was our big question in moving forward with Windows 7. I expect the same considerations would be in place if Linux was on the table. Digital X-Ray is the big thing now where I am. We have a huge variety of digital scan units and sensors and readers that all support Windows. Some of these units are portable so every clinic machine needs to support them. Clinic software is the other limiting factor. I expect there are some talented Linux pros that can pull this off even with out vendor support, but in some cases you have to have that support.
In some cases there are contract or legal or cost reasons. We have one system for email that someone paid way too much for and we are stuck with it because of it. That is one part of our infrastructure we don't control. We hate that we can't change is but we love that we don't have to manage it.
And it is very nice to have a consistent environment. All of our computers are from one manufacturer and we buy batches of the same model number when we can. We know our Windows 7 computer image will work with every computer and only have to update the image with new drives when we add a new model number (and only then if the drivers change).
Every situation is different in every company. A friend looking for an IT job saw one posting that he had to share with me. One requirement was to be able to implement the technology they use and not question it. Sometimes the part about being a good employee is doing what you are told.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
Unfortunately, the reality is that our IT support folks have little experience outside of MS products. Getting them training and experience would not be without cost. Any interoperability issues that came up would not be without cost. Those "extra" costs are going to be frowned on in a publicly funded organization - we're supposed to be frugal with the taxpayer's money :)
Bottom line, everybody here is going to have an MS desktop. Most of the servers are going to be running MS. It would be difficult for our management to compare the cost of paying MS licenses versus the cost of any disruptions that might come up from switching over to FOSS. They're going to push their thumb down hard on the scale when it comes to weighing disruptions. As in any bureaucracy in the USA, the slightest hint of "trouble" is like throwing a bucket of chum into the shark-tank. Can you really blame someone for not wanting to chum the waters and then dive right in?
On a positive note, we do have a couple of Linux servers for databases and web servers. The IT folks are getting used to them - they don't have to patch, reboot or otherwise fiddle with them as much as they do the MS servers. As others have pointed out, that kind of organic growth is productive over the long term.
-- How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.
I would have to say, that the cost of off the shelf software has very little to do with the cost of running a hospital. A copy of MS Office professional costs $400 on Amazon. Windows 7 Ultimate costs $300. That's nothing compared to the cost of the actual people working in the hospital. Or if you compare it to the cost of medical supplies. They probably spend more on latex gloves per year than they spend on off the shelf software like Windows and Office. Most of the expenses are specialty machines, tools and software.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The CIO should be balancing the cost efficiencies, and "consistent user experience" of standardization. That said, department standardization or unrestricted defaulting to a single vendor generally may run afoul of Single / Sole Sourcing rules in government procurement policies. Contacts or formal "deals" may exist in some cases, but not as offer as people expect.
Blatant abuse can be reported to the auditors of the approximate level of government (state/ province, federal, etc.). But first, you'll need to know the general rules applicable in your case.
Successful Skunkworks style project with your immediate supervisor's approval (convince them it will a) work, b) make them look good) is the best way to introduce chance. But making it a obvious fight is a losing approach. Try the stepping stones approach, of Open Source / Free Software on Windows, before trying to encourage a wholesale conversion. Servers are about the only exception I've seen work.
And license fees are moot - they are often seen as a "computer tax" and just the cost of doing business, they are perceived as a small cost in the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) which includes hardware lifecycling, training, and helpdesk / support. Having an adequate pool of trained or "qualified" staff in the public service can be seen meaning whatever is "popular" and "common" ("industry standard"), at low wages compared to private sector.
The Illinois Department of Employment Services (unemployment Office) requires Windows and IE to file claims online. It brings up a page if you attempt to access with anything else and informs you of this.
When you get a knife wound or get hit by a car, ask the ambulance to take you to ANOTHER hospital. That'll show 'em!
A try to moan "Linux" through the pain, although I wouldn't try to moan "Open Source" because medics think you're saying "Open Sores" and will move you around looking for missing bandages.
Don't you get it, anyone with any degree of intelligence will dedicate his life to memorizing arcane horseshit that some "hacker" in the 70s thought was a clever joke. That's how computers are supposed to be. This focus on usability is for sheeple.
Unfortunately, the majority of computer users are jackasses, and do better with the menus.
Doesn't make it OK to sabotage your workplace by encouraging open IT revolt. Honestly I don't know why so many MS haters feel like whatever they do there actions are appropriate as long as it's anti-MS. You fail to show us if you have any understanding at all of why MS is being used, or why you would think something else would be better overall. I know all the complaints about MS products, but honestly they are just a very few of the thousands of factors that need to be taken into account when buying software for a large business. I am in no way saying here that there are not better products to do the jobs you do than the MS products you are using. However the only thing you really tell us here is that you hate MS and find it upsetting that your Bosses what you to do what they tell you. If you think there should be a change in policy and have some legitimate reasons why perhaps you should put them on paper and talk to your bosses. Don't be surprised when your bosses have legitimate reasons for wanting to stay with what they have. Planning IT for a large org is more complicated than you might think.
I also am a part of gov't grant-funded group in healthcare sector with managers and coworkers promoting ourselves as a Microsoft shop and strongly discourage other alternatives for our software development and whatnot. It feels rather alienating to be part of an ignorant group who are more afraid of open source due to lack of their skills.
Blanket email the entire company pointing out that the Department of Homeland Security recommends against using Internet Explorer for reasons of National Security.
I suspect you are in New Zealand from the terms you use. In that case it is vital that you invoke the 'whistle blower' legislation, and get that memo out in public. Public entities are not allowed to make prejudicial decisions about any service or product they buy.
I work at a state government agency and we were recently told that we couldn't use firefox because it isn't secure. :-S We were recommended to use IE7 instead. Unfortunately I am not aware of a single coworker who used firefox previously and stopped then using it.
"And hacking into the registry isn't complicated?... But in general, anyone who thinks Microsoft's offerings are really that much easier than *nix must have horseshoes up his ass."
Well, I've been using Windows since forever, and linux since early slackware. I counted recently, and I've been through 12 distros at different times over the last 15 years or so. Most recently it was Ubuntu about 18 months ago. I've also spent the last 10 years working in Solaris on SPARC for part of my work.
I'm as technical as they come, but the last three years I've made a registry modification exactly once, to fine-tune some tcp/ip settings.
In my experience Microsoft's offerings are all easier than *nix ones. My linux installs never last. Something stupid always pisses me off eventually and I ditch them. I have a hard drive in my system that's ready for the next attempt - it's just unallocated space at the moment. At some point I'll get around to distribution 13 (which I will avoid installing on a Friday), but I'm willing to bet four months later I'll be wiping it once again.
This last Ubuntu trial started off stupid. In order to have my dual-monitor settings actually persist through a reboot I had to run the monitor configuration control panel as root. That kind of idiocy holds back linux.
I work at a public hospital in the computer / technical department and (amongst others) was recently outraged by an email that was sent around our department: '(XXXX) District Health Board — Information Services is strategically a Microsoft shop
Seriously, the only way anything ever gets done in this world is by naming and shaming:
Canterbury District Health Board
Information Services, Level 2, H Block
The Princess Margaret Hospital
Cashmere Road, Cashmere
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone: +64 33 640380
Web: http://www.cdhb.govt.nz/contact.htm
As well as the Hospital Advisory Committee:
Web: http://www.cdhb.govt.nz/aboutus/management.htm
And the douchebag responsible for this mess is:
Michele Hider: michele.hider@cdhb.govt.nz
The command line is a fine interface. Graphical interfaces are fine too. Haven't we all learned by now that there isn't one UI that is absolutely superior to all others, but rather it depends on the user, what the user is trying to accomplish, and the context?
Just to illustrate my point, I used to give demos of using Photoshop with a digital photographic printer my company made. Even doing so in Japan, on a Japanese-language version of Photoshop wasn't an issue because I know where each option was in the menus. It was quick and efficient (as opposed to keyboard shortcuts on a Japanese keyboard)... no "hunting" required.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Hey. First, do you know how much money is being spent on licensing? Microsoft offers very reasonable licensing costs for government and non-profits. In most cases, such licensing agreements include support. Do alternatives offer that? At the same or lower cost? Have you actually researched and proven your assessment on cost savings with some kind of tangible ROI or is it just a hunch that you pulled out of your ass based on what you have heard on the Internet. Have you considered compatibility with the rest of the world? Support for legacy systems? Existing investments?
Secondly, as a tax payer, wouldn't you prefer that employees in said organization spent their time doing their jobs, as directed by management, as opposed to wasting their time fighting tooth and nail decisions which have already been made. Don't you think that bickering and ruffling feathers with people in your own organization leads to inefficiencies as well?
Finally, to answer your question, the best way you could affect the change in this policy is to become one of the people making the policy.
i know this is a little elitist but i find that barrier to entry of command line environments almost reassuring, any idiot can click around a gui and just about get by, or even screw something up completely, it's harder to do something wrong in a command line unless you're being fed misinformation.
I tried to get a community college to switch over to Linux based systems strictly for their image libraries (pictures used in classrooms) because their aging slide projectors were going the way of the dinosaur, I had a nice tidy system set up using Gallery 2, it was fast, efficient and cost *nothing*, the other program they were looking at was $40K, with no support.
When I brought up the switch to the IT team at the school the head guy broke into a rage, was literally frothing at the mouth in outrage "there's no way we will do that".
Basically it translate to this for these guys "I'm old, I don't want to learn anything new, and as long as I have a M$ product I have someone else to blame" and of course, a healthy spoonful of fear of the unknown (that being Linux).
The seat licenses and software for M$ based systems is a huge part of their yearly budget, to bad they can't see any other way.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Though I was working in a private high school, there were a lot of factors that came into the ultimate decision to switch the entire system from Novell NetWare + SuSE (for backend services) + Windows to an entire Windows shop. For one, there were a lot of high powered donors who we couldn't really question, since some of them really WERE shills for Microsoft and basically gave us free licenses for all of our server operating systems. Second, we brought in consultants, including a consulting project manager who was playing it safe (he was also heavily promoting Microsoft and proprietary products over anything else we could draft up as a solution; I kept hearing "best practices" when talking about Microsoft products, and "not best practice" for any OSS software.) Third, I was the sole person in the department (out of four) who was comfortable with the UNIX command line interface. Finally, fourth, I had a direct superior who had just taken over as IT Director and didn't want to rock the boat too much.
I riled a lot of people up before I left, and I admit, I fucked up in my politicking. After fighting with the project manager (and on a much smaller level, with my direct boss), I was able to get a grand total of two FreeBSD boxes and one Debian backup box (out of twenty servers.) When I decided to leave, the fate of all three were in question, despite them providing internal services that we simply didn't have (network/host monitoring, centralized syslog, backup.)
I tried to suck it up, though what ultimately made me leave was the irrationality of possibly dismantling services for no reason other than the fact that other people didn't understand UNIX (I made the business case of all three servers and didn't implement them simply because they were FOSS.)
So I think you have three options:
1) Play it safe.
2) Try to rock the boat and see how far you get.
3) Leave ASAP.
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
I can almost relate with this point of view.
I work for a Los Angeles County public facility, with a total of 2 IT staff, supporting 400-500 employees at 3 sites. Yes... thats TWO. there are no other technically educated employees here. This is almost an impossible scenario to function in, but its all made possible.. by microsoft.
Active Directory pulling everything together, users/servers, as well as high end utilities that let us deploy to users with ease and 5mins of training (or packet shape, or fine control group policies). Not to mention the availability and low cost to hire temporary contractors that support MS OS's.
It does get on my nerves when the mac monkeys or linux lovers promote other OS's that dont even begin to meet the functionality and versatility that Microsoft has made possible. Macs are pretty, i get it... leave em at home. Linux.. i know.. its super stable... leave it at home.
Just have to accept that in some business environments, working smarter and easier is far greater than a pretty computer case, or open source that requires training by IT staff you dont have to spare.
There is a considerable difference between fucking around on a home installation and actually making production servers. I mean, at home, I'll happily try things in both in any OS install that I wouldn't even dream of doing on a production server.
Put it this way. I've been running a Debian webserver and Debian STMP proxy/gateway server on the same install for the better part of two years. They started out as standalone servers, and I transferred them over to KVM guests under an Ubuntu server (which itself has been up for about eleven months now). These servers are treated like any production server should be, conservatively. I don't just run around installing any old damned package, mucking around with custom-compiled modules or any of that. That's what test servers are for (and also what makes virtualization so great, I can create an image, screw it up to my hearts content, and then restore the backup). And Windows certainly is no proof against FUBARs. I've seen Windows machines, even servers, that were just gawdawful frightening disaster areas, to the point where I recommended reinstallation rather than trying to clean up what had been done to them.
There is a considerable difference between "Linux on the desktop" and "Linux in the server room". Linux on the desktop can be a pain (though so can Windows, I know, I administrate dozens of the things), but in the server room, it has a healthy heritage of nearly forty years. Server software like Samba and Apache have most certainly stood the test of time and use. But production servers require patience and most importantly discipline. I've seen too many "tech savvy" guys fuck things up horribly because the one thing they don't have is the cautious mindset. They treat production equipment like their home computer.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You're right, people should use open source because they choose it...
They should use *anything* because they choose it...
Unfortunately, this is not the business model MS have chosen. They promote their products not by making people want to choose them, but by forcing them through various lockin schemes combined with heavy marketing and "training" schemes which encourage ignorance of the options available.
Very few people do proper research and then choose MS based on the results of that research showing it to be technically or financially superior. They either do no research at all, or their selection criteria are corrupted because of lock-in.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Windows NT/2K/XP/Vista/7?
Com/ActiveX/.net
Need I go on?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Hold on there. I am one of the hospital IT guys you're talking about. It has less to do with desire, and much more to do with supportability and the lives of the patients we care for.
There are several best-of-breed products out there for hospitals, such as McKesson Horizon Patient Folders, Horizon Medical Imaging, Horizon Emergency Care, and a few others that DO NOT have support for any other browser than IE. Installing Firefox or other alternative browsers can result in programs that are required for our staff to not work.
This is a serious risk, not only for our ability as an IT department to support the software, but it can even impact patient care directly! Nobody wants to see a patient suffer because you can't get the order for their pain meds to the pharmacy in a timely manner. Nobody wants to watch their doctor/nurse flail around with the computer they are documenting your care on. No end user wants to have to call IT every time they upgrade a non-standard browser and need to reset the default browser back to IE.
Locking down systems to a single configuration that simply works with the software they use is not draconian, it literally is a life-saving measure.
Of course, this applies more to patient care areas, and less to administrative functions - but the principle is applicable to both. IT departments at hospitals, like most other businesses are an expense and often support resources are outsourced, meaning there's nobody there to just "run down" and fix a system that some user installed their preferred browser on when it breaks things like their reporting tools.
I agree that MS is not really the best for all cases, but you're leaning too hard the other way, given the current state of development in the Healthcare industry. ...and stop deleting my posts please. Posting anon is because I can't reveal my employer.
Unless your title is something like "CIO" or you're also wearing a hat as a policymaker for this institution...then it seems to me you're overstepping your bounds as an employee. If it's a public institution then you absolutely have a right to bring it up at the next public meeting (most have boards of directors or elected representatives) and you can say anything you want as a citizen. If you believe in it then use that forum. But as an employee it seems like you're in a pissing match with your boss and that rarely goes well for the person farther from the top of the org. chart. ;)
Could the Firefox element also be that they don't want to support multiple applications or have to try and maintain them for security purposes. I know where we're at there was a recent Firefox vulnerability that has made different Federal authorities take notice recently and since it's not an official standard we removed it from our network...leaving what is only IE as a standard. Corporate and government networks are increasingly shifting from the policy of letting users install what they want as long as it's not a threat (blacklisting)....to presuming it's a threat and only allowing it if it's a recognized standard and managed (white listing).
I've found Microsoft is often the default product line certainly, but it's only because somebody hasn't presented a compelling business case to switch or to spend the money to support multiple standards.
Back a couple of years ago, I was IT coordinator at a public school district. At the time, we were aggressively rolling out new computers, and we had a mixed environment of Macs and PCs. I had always used Open Source software on my personal computer, and on my office computers at work. Being a poorly-funded school district, which had just spent a considerable ammount of our budget on the new machines, I advocated the use of Free Open Source software as a way to bring functionality to the users while keeping costs down. Prior to this, I had been making sure OpenOffice.org was installed on all of our machines, alongside MS Office (even though we didn't have enough licenses for MS Office as it was, Management told me to "shut up and install it anyway, not like they are going to audit our little district"). I started a pilot project in the Elementary school where I only made available OpenOffice on computer lab machines, and provided teachers with basic training on how to use it. It worked fine, and there were few complaints. I did this with approval from Administration. After a successful school year running an OpenOffice-only Elementary school, I decided that I had sufficient data, cost/benefit analysis, etc, to make the push to do the same at the High School. I was given go-ahead from the Administration to make both Office suites available, and to encourage use of OpenOffice. I did not anticipate what would happen next... students and teachers started to complain about the new Office software, and that the district was being "cheap" and that "no one in the real world uses OpenOffice". Despite me pointing out the advantages of the new software, and pointing out other instances of Governments and Businesses using the software, it didn't matter. I was even providing free CDs with the OpenOffice software on it for students to take home and install, and there were several students who were grateful for this. It increased their ability to do homework - at home! Alas despite my best efforts, with the best interests of the students and taxpayers in mind, the Administration reversed their decision. They announced that starting immediately, we would only be using Microsoft Office software, and that they would be diverting funds to purchase enough licenses to install it on every computer in the whole district, including our successful Elementary school implementation. I protested that this was a waste of funds, especially in the Elementary school, where we had no problems, and that it wouldn't be good for the users there to change ships in the middle of the school year. So I was told that I was to immediately begin installing Office 2007 on all district computers, and removing any OpenOffice software. Guess what? A few weeks later I was fired. My grounds for dismissal? Insubordination. Installing un-approved OpenOffice software on district computers. Failure to remove OpenOffice software from district computers. I protested and said that I didn't have enough time to make the requested changes, as we have over 500 computers, and I'm the sole IT person. I explained that I have to make new computer images, and test, and deploy those images, and that can't be done overnight (although I usually did my ghosting overnight when no one was there /pun). Alas, they wanted me out of the door, because I dared to think differently, and because "the Open Source software you installed was not good for the school."
And the funny thing is, this is the same Administration that adopted an official policy (with little input from me) that all school computers must run Firefox. To this day at that school, users aren't allowed to run IE. At all. I believe that started from people complaining that our Google Apps and Google Email systems didn't work well with IE. No one complains about Firefox, everyone loves it, and that seems to be what drives the school board. They don't respond well to people complaining, and unfortunately, the people complaining about the OpenOffice software were outnumbering the people co
NO, the corporate management tools for Firefox are in no way comparable to what is commercially available to IE.
That's debatable.
If admins really did all these things, there wouldn't be bozos in the corporate world there still using IE6.
I know, I just had to twist a lazy bozos arm to do the upgrade, since it was never actually pushed out to him.
Fascism as the overlap of political ideology and business?
Given that businesses doing business in the Iraq War were being grilled on their political leanings, rather than their skills in doing the job.
Well, actually that's exactly why we victims of the "Bush Derangement Syndrome" label called Bush a fascist.
Well, that and the part where he okayed having people tortured.
and had phone calls illegally intercepted
and had US citizens held without trial
and used a major U.S. Network as an arm of the administration
Of course it's easier now to be a Fascist than it used to be even two years ago. Two years ago none of that mattered. Today? Trying to get people health insurance is sufficient.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Wow, what an ingorant post. If you think it's confusing to edit the registry...you might want to stay away from .conf files.
Not withstanding the free speech issue, I wonder why management had to make such a statement to begin with. Perhaps there is way too much discussion going on putting constant and unnecessary pressure on the procurement process of systems already decided upon by committee and senior management. When it comes to determining the architecture and authorized systems on an enterprise system, there is typically a process for determining user needs and weighing that against resources, security, and abililty to support. In this, I agree with management that once a system is decided upon and developed, there is no place for end-user free lancing, and there absolutely should be an iron fist against installing unapproved applications (no matter how trendy or useful they may be). I am more concerned with tax-payer dollars being spent on a system which is not secure that I am concerned about a techy end-user not getting their way. It aint a democracy just because its paid for with tax dollars.
I can guess that you, the mods and the parent are probably windows IT people, speaking as a unix/linux user -- neither you nor the parent have provided any evidence that this is actually true. Why should I believe you? What I see when I see a windows environment is an automatic processor penalty due to the need for anti-virus running all the time, an OS that is generally annoying and slow to use (this is my opinion, yours may differ), and the need to install additional software (cygwin) just to do what I need to get done, done.*** That and windows doesn't run a lot of the software I want, or has a high processor/memory overhead (hello superfetch!) just due to the OS.
*** For a living, I do calculations that generate data files routinely > 10 Gb and I need to do substantial post-processing on those data files. As far as I know, windows doesn't have the array of command line tools necessary to do what I need to. That is, I use the 30 years worth of unix tools like bash, grep, sort, sed, etc.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Whoever decided this policy will either be rolling into work in a new car, taking a very expensive summer vacation, or soon will be 'golden parachuting' into a well-compensated consultancy gig for a front company indirectly owned by a certain corporation located in the Pacific Northwest.
Browser add-ons routinely break
You need browser add-ons to correctly run your "critical" applications? You need different applications. One of the largest points of moving business applications to web interfaces is that the interface is standardized. That is, your web apps should run in IE, Firefox, Opera, etc. etc., because all these apps follow the same published standards. (BTW "Microsoft" is not a standard.) If an app does not follow these standards, you don't buy it, and that is what saves you headache down the road.
This was mentioned elsewhere, but I thought I'd restate it.
This is an opportunity to practice the politics of change within an organization.
1. You don't want to make enemies or make this a 'battle.' You'll lose.
2. This is an opportunity to practice working with management thinking as opposed to service ticket processor thinking.
3. This is an opportunity to practice selling new ideas. Yes, there's salesmanship involved in any career. In management circles they call it 'leadership.' But it's basically the ability to change someone's thinking and have them believe in you, not the other guy/girl/vendor/whatever.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I'd like to know an answer one way or another on this question. I'd also like to know the nature of the benefits the CIO is getting.
I've seen perfectly reasonable low-cost vendors/solutions get discarded in favor of ridiculous ones (cough)Oracle!(cough) many times the cost and zero productivity gain.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I am seeing some well reasoned responses to this topic. Some posters seem to believe that it may be wise to be an MS only shop.
Could you please cite all this anti-msft hate and fud to which you are referring?
I agree, totally, but the core point remains - fail at practicing those skills and you put your job at risk. Is this an issue worth putting your job at risk? I'd guess most people would answer "no."
The question of "can it be done" (to which the answer is obviously "yes" if handled properly) and "should it be done" are different questions. Obviously, both need to be answered before moving on to the "how can it be done" question which is where the OP seemed to jump straight to.
I have to agree strongly with this last part. 'build a pilot operation at home'.
Back many years ago I worked for a company that was a Microsoft shop. We built networks, apps, websites all using MS products.
I started using linux at home and after a few months of working on it came in telling them that this linux stuff was really stable. The answer was always 'No, No , No We can only trust MS'. I'd go away and come back and tell them you know this MySQL stuff is fast, you know I mimicked that last app we had and I got twice as many transactions per minute vs SQL Server. 'No, No, No, we can only trust MS and Oracle'. I'd go away and come back and tell them you know this PHP and perl stuff works really well. I redid our latest app using PHP and perl and it works just fine, maybe we should take a look at this Apache on linux thing 'No, No, No we can only trust MS IIS '. So I went away.
Then one week a patch came out and screwed up a app that was written in VB. Then the following week we were hit with a storm of viruses. Then we had to pull developers off of projects to help the guys who did maintenance. Then there was the realization that network admin and developers have a completely different skill set. But this went on patches breaking things and worms and viruses. After about 2 months of this everyone was tired and I was being asked about this linux stuff and open source solutions.
After 3 months of testing and a lot of hard work, we had moved all new development over to linux and all of our codebase was being tested on ASP on linux. First the IIS servers went , then the SQL Server, then the PDC servers and we became a linux house. We lost some people who just couldn't do without their MS shiny baubles and always wanted to return to those days. Including my boss. Guess who became the head of IT. Yep, and don't think I don't know that there are technicians who go home and practice with their AD server every night. (I've been known to do that also). But in these last few years we have sales people call trying to sell us stuff and they are always incredulous that we have no MS Servers. I keep waiting for the day when a sales rep won't be shocked to find that out.
But anyway you have to work with the internals to learn it. Just to give you an idea, I don't hire people because they have updated there home desktop to the latest version of Ubuntu or Fedora for the last 2 years. Red Hat or Canonical may hire you, but good luck with that.
Sorry, but it's true. You can either spend thousands of hours managing Linux and it's terrible interfaces, or get Microsoft that does it already for you.
2004's Mandriva+KDE's interface was superior to today's Windows 7's interfaces; it didn't get in the way of what you wented or needed to do. The layouts were logical. Microsoft's are seemingly random. What's more, Windows' interface changes from release to release so you virtually have to learn how to use a computer all over again, as I found out yet again yesterday when I bought a new netbook with Windows 7 on it. Gad, but I hate Windows 7, it's the worst version of Windows I've used yet.
Even back in 2004 I'd install Mandriva dual-boot in computer-illiterate friends' computers when I got sick of cleaning out their malware, and I'd disable networking in Windows. None of them had any problem whatever doing anything on it after that, and all of them loved Mandriva. What's more, I spent a hell of a lot less time supporting their machines.
Now tell me, Mr. Troll, why is it that when I tried to connect to the wifi at the local bar it would connect to the network, but not the internet*, gave me the reason of it couldn't find the DNS server without giving me any way of supplying the server's address (I know the owner so could have easily gotten it), yet a woman there with an iPhone was able to connect to the internet via wifi with no problem at all?
You, sir, are abysmally ignorant.
*I found out later in the evening there was a problem with the bar's wifi router, but it didn't get in Apple's way and I'd bet it wouldn't get in Linux's way, either.
Free Martian Whores!
NO, the corporate management tools for Firefox are in no way comparable to what is commercially available to IE.
But are the corporate management tools for IE 6 better than those for IE 8?
This is nothing new.
Here is my take on the whole controversy.
I originally got into unix because I noticed the smartest guys were into unix. I got into open source software because it gave the user power.
In the end smart powerful people will triumph. It will be a battle but I'm not worried about the outcome.
OP Here --- FYI Microsoft makes the hospital pay PER COMPUTER (around): NZ$250~ for the OS and client access software. + NZ$470~ for the MS Office license. =$720NZD ($500~ USD) Per Computer. And that's just on the client side.
fail at practicing those skills and you put your job at risk.
I see your point, but I think being mindful and cautious will mitigate the risk. Firing off unsolicited cost-benefit analysis (plural???) will not work.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
That was an excellent comment and I'm glad you posted it, but there's something that (pedantically, sorry) sticks in my craw.
Linux on the desktop can be a pain (though so can Windows, I know, I administrate dozens of the things)
It's "administer", not "administrate". "Commentator" rubs me wrong the same way; it's "commentor". A DJ on the local radio station did the same thing yesterday morning (I forget what *ator word she made up was) and I damned near called her.
Bartenders are the worst. You don't "bartend", you tend bar!
Damn, I must be getting old and cranky. I'll bet I made some stupid error in this comment. Sorry, again yours was an excellent comment (other than "administrate").
Free Martian Whores!
The answer to this is "Upper management is tired of hearing people whining that their purchase decisions are crap, and the next person that calls Upper Management a Microsoft shill is fired." It really makes sense if there are a couple Linux nuts that run around installing rogue software, whining about their jobs to the users (unprofessional regardless of what they are supposed to be installing), and generally causing disruption. The Upper Management did the ROI/business case once. They won't do it again for a long time, even if wrong. That's business. If you work for them, you do what they say. If you complain to your users that management is idiots (and that's how management sees constant complaints about their choices), then management would be right to fire you. You are undermining their leadership for a choice that isn't yours to make.
If you can't live with that, become a contractor.
Learn to love Alaska
What you have at your place are executives who don't want to make tough decisions. They want the decisions to be made for them. If they give Microsoft exclusivity over their I.T. choices, it makes their life much easier.
I suffer from the same things. We've been an IBM shop forever. Our managers have basically given all control to IBM to make our decisions for us. But we hired a new CIO. Not a friend of the mainframe. While we haven't abandoned the mainframe yet, its going to happen. Unfortunately, our CIO is making the same mistakes as the previous generation of CIO's. While he's no ally of IBM, he's had no problem going with Microsoft for everything else. So nothing has really changed.
I believe its really the culture these managers came through. In 10 years, we'll see more upper-level managers who accept open source or Apple technology.
I guess its really hard to find upper level management who believes in their employees. They are going to side with Microsoft over what their employees tell them.
My company hasn't listened to me ever. They only listen to IBM, Microsoft, and Gartner. Yet, when Gartner tells them the same thing I told them 18 months earlier, its like a revelation to them.
The cost of purchasing MS software is trivial in your budget I assure you. It may seem like a lot of money, but the salaries of the people using the MS software probably eclipse your entire software budget in less than 2 weeks. The cost is nothing.
Training is not just a financial cost, this is a ignorant view point and shows very little connection with the reality that is the job of those people you support.
Open source will likely cost more overall. You'll have more difficulty integrating with proprietary systems in use, because those private systems have no urge to deal with Linux, its not worth their effort to hit a target that moves daily. Then you have to deal with all the incompatibilities of whatever other OSS supporting software you add in, like OO.org and how those documents deal with other organizations the hospital has to deal with. You'll lose more the first year in time because of people sending documents in the wrong document format (OO native instead of MS compatible) than you'll save on the price of Office.
The problem with your post is typical with the FLOSS community. The problem is the misconception that the cost of purchasing software is the expensive part. You couldnt' be more wrong. Software cost is in day to day operations and maintenance, which FLOSS offers no advantages to and several disadvantages. You can argue that 'fast patching' is an advantage, but to most IT departments its not. Its FAR more difficult to deal with breakage from randomly updated packages for your distro than once a month patch tuesdays. Any sane IT department isn't tracking patches as they come out anyway, they're going to QA them in their environment first, so they are going to establish some sort of schedule for this sort of thing thats effectively going to put them on a once a month or less often cycle anyway. FLOSS offers the promise of open access to your data, but no one cares how open it is from a technical point of view if every time they send it to someone else, the other people can't view it. It is in fact for all intents and purposes less open with OO.org in native format than DOCX as far as the normal user is concerned.
Training people to switch from Windows to Linux is not as cheap as you think, you can't just send them to a couple classes and everything will be dandy and they'll be just as productive as they always were. They won't, it will take years for them to return to that level of productivity ... because ... they've been using the system they already use for years. You can't replace it and expect to return to the same level of productivity any time soon. And regardless of how much you think each version of windows or office is different than the past versions, the switch to something like Linux/KDE or Gnome and OO.org are FAR FAR greater transitions than going from Office 95 to 2007, you just don't realize it because you're constantly dealing with software that is unlike the rest of the software on the system ... Linux users are used to no consistency. These users work with Windows and Office everyday on their own, at home. They know how Windows works for them and the subtle differences are the ones that waste most of the time. The obvious difference people get used to quickly, the little quirks that you respond to subconsciously take YEARS to retrain yourself for.
The cost for YOU to switch to Linux from MS software may be less since you already use both. The cost for your desk workers who do not work on computers as their primary job function on the other hand is much much higher and you're ignoring it completely.
You might want to consider that those people making the choices above you might ... maybe ... have just a little more experience managing than you do. I realize this is hard to see from your perspective and you may think they are morons but they have a different view of the organization than you do and are privy to a lot of information to whi
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
My employer is 99% Microsoft shop, and just cut loose our web developer. He was, *by far*, the brightest of all the candidates we interviewed.
Being a LAMP guy who used a Mac, he just couldn't bring himself to be a team player in a place that is 99% Microsoft.
He thought he could come in and change the culture, and he was wrong.
You are either misinformed, lying, or your bosses are embezzling money.
In volume licensing situations, nobody pays close to the amount you quoted.
Someone at my work emailed me this, thismorning: "I'll tell you this we had an opportunity to use a product to compete with end note and save us thousands of dollars and they denied it. They even wanted him to remove it from his computer. All he wanted was add a add-in to word so he could use this open source type end-note program. He was looking at this because his department couldn't or wouldn't fund end-note $600"
Dude, you have a job. Why is it an issue for you whether the management supports their microsoft stock by making you use it? You might want to consider also that as a 'public' operation they may get the licenses on the cheap. Are you using the latest and greatest M$ releases?
"There is a considerable difference between fucking around on a home installation and actually making production servers...There is a considerable difference between "Linux on the desktop" and "Linux in the server room".
Well of course there is. But we were't talking about which one is stable, which one has heritage... we were talking about which one is "easier". I was arguing from the desktop side, to be sure, but even on the server side I'd maintain MS products are "easier". The registry, which you shouldn't even have to touch anymore, seems obtuse until you start looking at some of the horrendous conf files scattered across the linux file system.
I am convinced that if we took less than half the money we spend on licensing Microsoft's software alone and invested that in training users for an open source system, we would be far better off in the long run.
What about taking the other half and contributing to the developers of the systems that help you to succeed.
There's nothing wrong with Microsoft or any other company making money on their software--as long as they make their money fairly. If IE provides the best value for your company, why not pay for it? If Firefox works best, why not pay for that?
If the only advantage of an open source system is a cost advantage, you probably haven't found the best system.
If you really hate Microsoft systems and think they are holding you back, put your money into better systems. That includes rewarding the developers financially.
Same value for less money is a race to zero. Seek better value for the same money.
The reason in a word is "Support".
Large companies/corporations/government etc... do not like people using unauthorized software on their systems. Usually it is locked down so the user cannot change it, though it is impossible to totally lock it down and not become overly problematic.
There is a limited amount of tech support for a given system, and typically they are trained and required to know how to fix authorized things. Go outside of that scope and not only do some of the tech support become lost, but the number of things that can go wrong increases exponentially.
A pertinent example of this occurred last year for me. I am one of those users that doesn't have his admin rights totally taken away, many times I need to use custom software, or non-standard software not covered corporately. Anyway this also allows me to install Firefox, so that is what I use for most things.
However one time I called down to tech support they couldn't for the life of them figure out why a custom web application wasn't working for me. In the end I figured it out myself. It didn't initially occur to me because I just got used to using Firefox, and never considered that the crappy web application was not optimized or even compatible with other browsers other than IE. So now when using 3 distinct web applications that were designed in house (badly apparently), I switch over to IE so I can use them, and use Firefox for everything else.
Tech support, however within its narrow scope of responsibility wouldn't have a clue that I was using Firefox, nor that that would cause a problem, as the standard is IE.
If anything the only fault I saw is designing web applications on such a narrow scope of IE, just because that is all we are supposed to use currently. Bad design and short sighted. Anyway bottom line is tech help desk doesn't want to have to support every piece of software (or operating system in this case) in the world.
"State procurement laws don't prescribe the degree of openness or standardization within the government." Well, yeah, some do, in the US and elsewhere. Netherlands is a strong example. And at the US federal level, look at OMB's Circular A-119. Hmm. If you changed the vendor name here ... a hospital CTO who says "we will use only RedHat (or) only Dell (or) only Novell Linux (whatever), and I don't want to see anything else" ... would you have the same problem? Is it generically a bad idea for CTOs to pick sole platforms for an enterprise? You'd have to oppose virtualization, too, then, right?
Oh, and get your resume ready first.
Its your choice.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Licensing is the smallest of the costs. Maintenance and security nightmares are drastically reduced if you can get rid of Microsoft products.
They're not even 'standard' with between versions.
"No comment. I've been asked to keep my personal opinion to myself by hospital IT management while I work here."
Having multiple browsers can cause tracking issues when your other technologies assume only Microsoft stuff is being used. This means policies and possibly government contracts cannot be properly completed when other technologies are deployed. Some firewalls and proxy server authentication mechanisms are tied to MS authentication methods.
BTW, I work in a 100% non-Microsoft server company, but even we still use mostly MS-Windows on the desktops (it pains me to say).
.
Hi Charly - how're ye doin?
Thank you, finally a sane poster.
1) Nobody's forcing you to take the paycheck. Don't like their ideas? Go elsewhere and have it your way.
2) "was recently outraged by an email" Outraged? This isn't helping you.
I used to be religious over things like this and then realized it doesn't help. As many have pointed out you need to take a step back, figure how this relates to the big picture, and see if you can either accept decisions or build a base of credibility through productive contribution. I've rarely, if ever been in a shop where "technical freedom of expression" is encouraged. It's just too tough on the wallet in terms of support.
If this is that offensive to you then you may want to avoid working in places like hospitals (the HIPAA point is spot on) and maybe consider getting a job at a university. I worked in one for a while and they were about as far from "standardization" as you could get. It's why I left, actually. PITA to get anything done given there was no common ground to build from :P
What troubles me is the word "outraged." Really - it's not worth getting mad over. You're the only one who suffers with that. You've got to channel that energy into something positive. Look around - most good OSS projects are the result of frustration being channeled into something productive.
There's 2 issues here, and you have to treat them separately:
First, there's the fact that the company you work for has partnered with MS and standardized on their software, and the IT directive is to do that unless there's a very good reason not to. No matter how much you dislike MS, there's nothing wrong with this from a purely policy standpoint, and your job is to implement it. You can try to make good arguments for alternatives, but unless the policy changes there's not much you can do.
Second, there's the free speech aspect. You say this is a public hospital, which in theory means it's run by the government. They can tell you what software you have to use, but they can't tell you not to talk about alternatives. Banning comments promoting other OSs is a violation of Free Speech, IFF (if and only if) the government runs your company. If it's privately run, you're out of luck, but if it really is public they can't stop you from talking about it. OTOH, they CAN completely ignore everything you have to say, and while they probably can't just fire you for not keeping your mouth shut, they probably can find ways to hurt your career in other, less-provable ways.
Pick your battles - if you can't demonstrate a clear benefit to your career in making a fuss, think long and hard before you do it. However, if you can prove any violations of state law, you should be covered under whistleblower statutes and should take it up with the AG's office.
What I am a bit curious about is the roles involved with the sender and audience of the Email. Is the Email from an engineer who examined a problem and selected Microsoft only to be harassed by junior engineers who have not examined the whole problem? Is the Email from the procurement department to stake holders indicating that a contract/agreement is signed and there is no point in further debate on this matter? Is this from an IT manager directing subordinates to stop negative comments about the existing environment? Is this from a project lead to instruct an individual to cease the public derision for a disagreement in solutions?
Context does matter, especially when so many of the material fact may have been changed or censored in the post.
Linux isn't really more difficult, it's just different... In many ways it's actually easier, to do anything complex it's a lot simpler for instance and most configuration is done in text files that often have very good comments.
The problem is that people think windows can be run by any idiots (thanks to ms marketing it as such), which simply isn't the case... If you want a windows based network that's even remotely secure or stable you need to hire competent staff, and those people are generally not cheap... You also need a lot of third party software to keep a windows network running properly.
If you've content to have a flakey windows network operated by the cheapest possible staff you *might* save money, especially if you don't consider the costs of security breaches. If you're willing to invest in decent staff and think long term, linux will almost always come out cheaper.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Most of the biomedical equipment in the hospital runs on a hodge-podge of platforms, with the predominance of maintenance and calibration software running under Windows. You want something real easy to ask your top-dog about why using Windows exclusevely sucks? Because your radiology department, if it is digital, is most likely running Solaris to store, view, and produce the images from your CR plate readers. Siemens, Phillips, Matsushita, they run linux/unix variants to produce your radiographic imaging. And the doctors are blind without diagnostic imaging. Does your MRI, CT, run Windows? These are pretty important departments being screwed over, to be making a blanket "No anti-windows talkie talkie" statement.
Allah vs. Jesus.
Do I win the interweb?
Stick Men
So you have asshat zealots for bosses and you came to Slashdot for advice? Let the games begin!
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
The Ministry of Justice released an Open Source adoption paper in 2008. Grab it from here http://research.elabs.govt.nz/ministry-of-justice-open-source-adoption-paper/
Also see http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/spec/446B512F34E476C0CC25749000796965
The NZ Open Source Society is also running a Public Sector Remix project with 14 govt. agencies. I believe that the Ministry of Health declined an invitation to participate: not a positive signal to DHB's.
Microsoft is cheaper.
Sorry, but it's true. You can either spend thousands of hours managing Linux and it's terrible interfaces, or get Microsoft that does it already for you.
I see you needed to post as AC since you don't want to attach your name to such statements. That tells me all I need to know about the strength of both your character and your argument.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I'm working in a publicly owned utility. I was thinking I might publish a suggestion in the local paper (under a pseudonym of course) regarding how our county could save some money, and possibly avoid a few layoffs. Some of the proprietary software we are being forced to use is inferior to the free alternatives. In other cases the proprietary software is very good, but if the provider thought we were investigating other alternatives, they might give us discounts. I wonder whether Microsoft would cut us a deal on MS Office if we installed Open Office on every machine and encouraged our staff to experiment with it. And I see no reason that we shouldn't replace Lotus Notes with a free (as in beer and speech) alternative.
Memory-hoggage vs security vulnerabilities?
You can buy RAM, assuming that was even an issue anymore. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than dealing with a security leak.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Several of the IT big-wigs at the DHB are seemingly blindly pro-Microsoft and seem all too quick to shrug off other, perhaps more efficient alternatives.
And the people over them have no clue and must rely on the advice from the "IT big-wigs". Even if there is a massive IT failure that has its roots exclusively in the Microsoft OS environment, that culture has developed many ways of shifting blame to outside villains and the cure is always newer MS software (along with updated licenses) and additional hardware and software for "better protection". That's all just to protect their jobs and their little empires. Professionally, they're simply too lazy to learn different technology in order to make better decisions. The result is that you (and FOSS) lose to these professional pinheads every time.
I've always found it amusing that one of the most frequent excuses for not adopting FOSS is that supposedly intelligent MCSE admins are not capable of ever learning anything about UNIX administration.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
With the Windows Logo on it, required to be worn by all the IT staff.
Microsoft is cheaper.
Among other things, you can't objectively judge if something is cheaper or not if you suppress any discussion of competing products.
Blocking discussion or use of FOSS is just a crass, unprofessional way of validating the choice made by the PHB. And it's a good indication that the PHB probably knows he would lose in a "fair fight".
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Well, I've been using Windows since forever, and linux since early slackware. I counted recently, and I've been through 12 distros at different times over the last 15 years or so.
So that's a total of maybe six different versions of Windows, most of them direct upgrades to the previous one, I'm guessing? Probably longer, since you say "since forever", so more experience, but probably still not 12 distinct flavors of Windows.
I'm guessing this might be your problem.
In my experience Microsoft's offerings are all easier than *nix ones. My linux installs never last. Something stupid always pisses me off eventually and I ditch them.
Just guessing, but I'll bet Microsoft's offerings occasionally do "something stupid" also, but you slog through and fix it.
I mean, I'm not defending this kind of thing:
In order to have my dual-monitor settings actually persist through a reboot I had to run the monitor configuration control panel as root.
On the other hand, in order to get dual-monitor to work on Windows, I have to download a random exe from the Internet containing video drivers. Then I have to configure the "primary screen" to be the one I want games to run fullscreen on, because they will refuse to run on the other monitor. Then I have to...
So, while it's all GUI and therefore "easier" than typing a quick sudo command, I'm guessing your perception is largely skewed given how long you don't give Linux. Also consider what MightyMartian said -- desktop Linux isn't perfect, but server Linux is a lot closer.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Well, I am no "newbie," having bought my first personal computer in Oct 78, having used personal machines (not owned by me) and timeshares for 5 years previously. And I've done development AND FIELDING of systems to end users (soldiers) who were not particularly computer aware, as well as tools/infrastructure development for the technically literate. I've administered small proprietary standalone systems (e.g. Wang), VAX/VMS, Ultrix and HP/UX. I'm currently using MacOS X Server in my home office.
What I've observed as a matter of culture is that too many IT people believe the entire business runs for their convenience. WAY too many times I've been trying to do my job and been prevented because of IT policies designed to make a -non-producing- part of the business "easier". When the CIO gives me a charge number against his account, that I use whenever his IT policies keep me from being productive (e.g. when he decides to push an update in the middle of the day, trashing network performance, my computer performance, and even a few times a reboot cycle...)
Talking about Microsoft Office formats: I've had more problems about incompatibilities within Microsoft products than between MS Office and Open Office. In fact, until recently I'd get PowerPoint documents that would crash PowerPoint, but would open just fine in OpenOffice.
If you value consistency, buy a Mac, damnit. And that's a major reason why I've preferred Macs over the various iterations of Windows I've used over the last 20 years. If you want to talk total life-cycle costs, there are lots of studies that show Macs have lower life-cycle costs, even though they have substantially higher initial investments.
I also remember the time when we were analyzing/costing a major system upgrade, replacing some big Unix servers with Microsoft servers. The cost people had a 'figure of merit' that a Windows server cost 25% the life-cycle costs of a Unix server, and most of that cost was in the sysadmin/labor category. That looked great, until we looked at the actual performance of the Windows servers, and realized we ended up with 6 Windows servers to replace that 1 Unix server.
What bothers me about this story is the apparent unwillingness of the manager to listen to his staff. Even in the Army, it's much better to lead by example and by knowledge, than it is to lean on rank. There are times when you have to issue an order and expect it to be obeyed without debate. But the best way to get that kind of response is to have your subordinates believe that you've actually thought through what you're ordering them to do, and that requires listening and analyzing/comparing alternatives when there's time to do so.
Your experience may vary, but that's a reflection of my 30+ years in this business.
Conf files on modern Unix systems are self-documenting -- they have comments, and text editors will syntax-highlight them.
The Registry? If you know what you're doing, it might be "easier", but it's a hell of a lot less discoverable.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm able to control my IE deployments down to a microscopic level, all from a single scree (and tied in to many of my other deployed applications). I'm not able to do that with Firefox.
So why can't this kind of management be created for Firefox?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
OK, cool, $1100 grand and your set to do documents.
Did you keep the receipt? Did you file it away in such a manner that that you can conclusively prove to the Microsoft auditors that you have indeed payed for that software? Did you do that for every computer and every piece of software in you organisation? Are you now spending a significant amount of a administrative staff time and effort keeping track of these things (Or have you ignored the problem and hope that you don't get a visit from the software police)
have you got a server? Have you paid for the correct 'CALS'? Running terminal server? Great, you've now paid 3 times for an OS (The host servers, the terminal server and the clients pc) on top of the cost of terminal server. Are you keeping track of these licenses?
Maybe its become to hard? Why not subscribe - no more licensing worries. Buy another server to manage your licenses. You are now paying yearly and effectively *own* nothing.
The cost of software is not insignificant. Paying hundreds of thousands of dollars each to rent something is crazy.
Just come out and say 'its to hard, ms lets me get away with the minimal effort for the maximum cost and that suits me just fine'.
Mind you, if your organisation is now at the mercy of some geniuses magic excel marco, then the CIO/boss of IT is so not doing there job properly (like how I'm not doing my job properly by bleating to the wind on /. instead of wrestling with an inherited SSIS package from hell).
Why? They're readable. I'll admit some config files, like sendmail's, are pretty atrocious, but the sort of ad hoc .conf format that has evolved over the last fifteen years or so is perfectly manageable. For instance, I actually prefer smb.conf to the half a dozen holes that Windows sticks its networking and file sharing options into. I can open up my favorite text editor, I can quickly search for text, even replace it. I haven't made a Samba AD member server conf file from scratch in over two years. I can get a Samba server up and running faster now than I can a Server 2003 or Server 2008 setup.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You obviously know better than your management whats best for your company. I mean that MBA you have or Masters in MIS speaks volumes. Microsoft stuff just plays well together. ASP.NET web pages are best displayed in IE. You have no reason to run Firefox. Sure open source is free but Oracle isn't and don't even humor me with running MySQL, I would fire you for suggesting it. I used to think that open source was the end all to be all but 2 years of working in a Microsoft shop changed my mind.
I'm sure this will be modded flamebait if it's modded at all, but... The decision is most likely due to the perception that properly managed Microsoft networks are more secure than most Linux networks. Especially if the organization has traditionally focused on hiring IT staff that has more experience with MS networks then why wouldn't they make this decision? If all workstations are Windows and are domain-controlled with a well thought out policy then it's much more likely to be secure than one whose servers are Linux-based. Now, as for the decision to go IE only, that is probably due to ease of integration with Active Directory.
They share marketing money with customers who are pro-microsoft, so there is financial incentive for some to be MS only.
If you can't win against the Microsoft hedgemony, you can at least use the threat of open source to try to screw their prices down a bit. Who knows, that tactic - that is, getting the best deal you can from MSFT by creative use of experimentation with FOSS could be the lever you need toward getting the execs to have a look. Once there, perhaps, they might say "Hey, that's really not so bad, is it? Tell me more..."
Of course, I could be in a fool's paradise here.
But a really good investment sometimes is a competitor's coffee mug on the desk when you negotiate your deal.
I think a Firefox mug would look really cool, come to think of it.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Yes, it is a poor decision on it's face. Even a strict need for Microsoft Windows doesn't mean Linux can't play an important role in the organization. For instance, Linux is an excellent platform for mail or other basic services. It's very easy to manage mail, FTP and NFS services in Linux. Maybe no easier than on Windows, but it's cheaper.
Also, and I think more importantly, Linux is an excellent platform for hosting Windows VM's. It can play a vital role in any organization hosting a variety of Windows and Linux services on the same box.
Being able to look at alternative technologies and make long term planning decisions that are strategically sound is a primary CTO responsibility. Any CTO who refuses to look into cheaper and/or better alternatives is pig-headed IMO and shouldn't be in that position.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I'm posting as an anonymous coward to protect the guilty :)
A few years ago the Uni. where I worked at (I was the sysadmin for a large science department) decided to *centralise* all their IT services.
Nothing really wrong with that, except that the guys there were all pro-Microsoft. I was (and still am) pro-Linux. (However, we had a multi-flavoured
dept. and I did my best to support the users there. I understand that people will use what they are most familiar with.)
To cut a long story short - my ideas of how to keep linux running at the dept. (about 40% of users used linux, plus a number of servers) - conflicted
strongly with theirs. The dept. management didn't support me.
I left.
I now have a really good job still oriented towards linux, with better prospects, while the old dept.'s Linux support has filtered down to virtually nil (I still
have contact with people there) and most of the Linux users there try ingenious methods to keep their systems working. The IT center still doesn't
understand that scientists need more than just Microsoft desktops. (The IT center also degraded support considerably - so there are complaints
about them in general.)
My only final comment is that I'm glad that this wasn't a hospital, because lives would have been lost because of the attitude of that IT department. ...)
(I am, of course, extrapolating here
There is nothing objectionable about a public authority insisting that all users respect the chosen technology platform. In any other area except technology, the insistence of a group of users to do what they damned well pleased, would be grounds for dismissal - "No, I'm gonna write everything in gold ink on black paper and send messages on heart shaped post-it notes". Even in other aspects of technology use, such an attitude would be unacceptable - " I don't give a fuck about your 11 by 8in paper formats, I'm gonna print everything on A3 and insist on having a printer and supplies to back up my 'right'. Screw you". No, dear user - screw you. If you don't like the idea of belonging to an organisation, with organisational policies and rules, go and work somewhere where you can spread your wings and exercise your desired freedom...
The owner of the PC, or the organization/person(s) responsible for that PC have every right to determine how it is used, maintained and what software is installed on it. Case closed. If you don't like it, get a different job.
Pigskin-Referee
Linux: Yesterday's technology, tomorrow
Oddly enough, I have exactly the sort of experience you assume I don't have. A decade ago, I was a sysadmin in an all-Unix (SCO OSR) environment. The servers all ran unix. The desktops all ran unix. The laptops used by the field officers all ran unix. End user applications ran in multiple terminals, mapped to function keys. When a field employee needed to do word processing, they hit a particular function key. Same for email, their primary custom work app, and everything else. Life was good. We had about 150-160 "computer people" of all stripes, from developers to deskside support. They managed, without working too hard, to keep about 20,000 users happy as clams. Everything just worked. Everything worked so well that when we transitioned all our old, crusty, famously irritable field officers from paper files to computers, a not-inconsequential number of them actually delayed their retirements since the work was made so much easier and smoother.
However, we were 20,000 people in an organization of 140,000. Everyone else used Windows, from the desktops to the servers.
Upper management looked at the situation carefully. They felt like they were maintaining two separate information systems divisions, each with mostly-incompatible skill sets, and they didn't like it.
Everything transitioned to Windows. At first, the end users ran the old software under Cygwin. Eventually everything got rewritten. The servers were virtualized and consolidated until there are now just a few in a single data center. We've inherited all the problems that come with running Windows on the desktop. It well and truly sucks, from my perspective.
From the perspective of the end users, though, there are distinct advantages. Files can go back and forth between divisions without labourious, format-destroying conversions from WP to Word. An enterprise-wide encrypted email system has been set up that works well. The customer base and the organization are now on the same software and can read each others files. People can stay in touch with their ubiquitous Blackberries, something that would be pretty darn difficult if any of us were still on SCO OSR machines. And the same help desk, the same deskside support people can help anyone who needs help without having to learn an entirely duplicated set of skills.
These advantages are mostly customer-facing and may seem trivial to me (and maybe you). Lord knows, I screamed and hollered at the time of the transition that "Our stuff works and theirs doesn't! We should be converting to all-Unix, not all-Windows!" But that was just my viewpoint. The customer-facing advantages were bigger. That's the way the executives went.
I'm still not sure if they made the right decsion. I am sure, however, that it's better to have one standard in a large organization than as many configurations as we have employees.
One last thing - We are not consistent to the point of insanity. We have a very, very small number of people (a few graphic artists, some odd security-related functions, some developers, etc.) who simply can't make do with our standard image. They get to do what they want. They are isolated from the network and they are entirely responsible for their own support. If someone can make a real business case, they get accomodated. But business cases are never made by individual employees, only for classes of tasks, and the approval process is extensive.
The msft cost is probably amost free. They like lockin that way, until you have everything, then you get to pay full price.
In health care the individual departments often buy their own PC's (and pay for support)
The sad part here is that Microsoft has convinced most of IT that going with all Microsoft stack is an 'IT strategy'. They have succesfully perverted the entire 'business strategy aligns wtih IT strategy' that IT has been working for the last few decades. I see no need for the CIO of this organization to be 'at the table' when major business decisions are being made. After all, the IT 'strategy' is already set, right? No need for updating of for any correlation to the business strategy, ever.
The clowns running this organization should be ashaed of themselves for making such a clueless statement. Then again, welcome to public healthcare....
Do some basic research on IT strategy (hint: look for a pyramid shaped thingy) and ask the masters how 'windows shop' aligns with Business goals? Watch them struggle with the basic concepts....
Fuck the asshole in charge of IT.
If he tries to get in the way of me doing my job I will just ignore his sorry ass.
If he tries to fire me, then that's not really a great tragedy.
I won't let some moron interfere with my ability to get work done.
The PC itself is the ultimate manifestation of this sort of "fuck the CTO" mentality.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Hats off to you, sir !
I'm wondering how you manage you desktops (Windows I bet) without the use of Group Policy...
Your second sentence obliterates your first, now what is it? Are they playing it or not?